Common ear problems during diving....

Let's face it - we dive a LOT. We have to take care of ourselves...and especially our ears. It is no fun to join one of our diving expeditions and then have to sit on the boat while everyone els is diving. That's no fun at all!

Here's a look at the most common problems when clearing ears and how to solve them.

Congestion:
Stuffiness is by far the biggest barrier to ear clearing. Inflamed mucosa in the tubes shrinks the opening, making it harder to force air in and equalize the pressure, and too much sticky mucus can clog the openings, making it nearly impossible to open the tubes no matter what you do. A clear head is the ticket to clear ears.

Here's what to do:

Careful while snorkeling - it can damage your ears

Flush 'em out. Nasal irrigation systems like NeilMed's Sinus Rinse or Ayr Sinus Rinse flush out sticky mucus, wash away irritants that inflame your mucosa, and stimulate the cilia (little broom-like hairs) in your nose to help them work better at keeping the passages clean and clear. In a study of 100 divers with ear-clearing troubles, 69 percent of them reported improvement after performing nasal irrigation. Sixty percent of those who routinely used oral decongestants during diving were able to use less or stop taking the pills altogether.
It sounds slightly disgusting. And maybe it is ...a little. But it doesn't sting, and you feel an instant improvement. Irrigation also works dramatically better than saline sprays because it mechanically rinses out thick or crusted mucus in hard to reach places and reduces swelling in the mucosa, so you have more space for air to move in and out.

Drink up:
Dehydration contributes to thick, clumpy mucus. Drinking enough water so your urine is clear will help thin your mucus so it's less sticky and the eustachian tubes will function better. Don't worry - on all our boats you will have unlimited water throughout the day. You'll want for water, but you still need to drink it!

Stub out the smokes:
Anyone who's ever experienced a mucousy smoker's cough knows that tobacco smoke irritates the mucosa and promotes more mucus production. Quitting smoking helps to clear your lungs-and your ears.

Give the dairy a miss: 
Milk and other dairy products increase mucus production. "Avoid eating dairy for two days before you dive if you have trouble equalizing," says Frans Cronje, M.D., executive and medical director of DAN Southern Africa.

Avoid additives:
The same foods that can trigger migraine headaches also can contribute to congestion and ear clearing problems. Avoid red wine, chocolate, aged cheeses and foods containing additives like MSG (monosodium glutamate) and nitrites for a few days prior to diving.

Pop a pill:
Although recommended with caution and for no more than three to five days, when all else fails, 60 mg of pseudoephedrine (Sudafed) may do the trick. Be careful, however, as Sudafed can cause side effects that don't mix well with diving such as a racing heartbeat and can even cause an obstruction of urine in men. Be sure your body can handle this medication before diving on it, and ensure not to overdose. Also, because it stimulates your central nervous system, it may influence the nitrogen absorbtion and increase your risk of oxygen toxicity. Experts advise to be careful taking it if you are planning dives deeper than 26 metres or using enriched air nitrox. Here at Wicked Diving we strongly discourage their
use on a liveaboard due to potential hazards.

-Wicked Diving

Similan Liveaboard - Trip Report December 14

(sorry all - bit late - but we still had a great time!!!!)


9th December – Departing Tab Lamu Pier

There’s no rest for the Wicked! The mariner is off again for another three-day trip around the Similan Islands.

With our favourite Irish trip leader Colin heading up the staff for this trip, which includes Brett – crazy Australian dude who will be teaching Advanced course on the trip, Deaw – our loveable thai teddy bear who is guiding fun divers, Chrissy – our fun an out-going chick from USA, Jacob – our newly qualified Divemaster from NZ and finally myself – Krystal – For this trip I am finishing an Open Water course and am also responsible for writing this fun filled blog!

This trip we have a good mix of people from around the world, including UK, USA, Poland, Canada, India, Sweden so it will make for interesting surface interval conversations.
Some of the guests have already been on the boat for three days and are booked in for another three, and the rest are arriving on the Mariner for their first time.

We welcome them onto the boat with fresh coconuts, a boat briefing and our regular letting off of fire crackers to shun all the bad spirits away and make for safe crossing on the seas.

After making everyone comfortable in their cabins we are all delighted to hear the ringing of the ‘dinner bell’. Hungry and anxious to taste our famous food courtesy of our amazing kitchen cook P’Da we are all in line to serve up our thai cuisine for the evening. Ead is our new kitchen assistant on the boat, so we welcome her also.

With dinner out the way, its straight to business and we set up our equipment ready for the early morning dive.

An early night is in order for most, and as the Mariner makes it’s way towards the Similan islands, across the calm seas, under the beautiful night stars, we are all gently rocked to sleep in our cabins, ready for the adventure that awaits…

10th December – Anitas Reef, West of Eden & Stonehenge

Up early this morning and ready to go. It’s another beautiful morning in the SImilan Islands and I am first up with a nice cup of tea and my coco pops to watch as guests wearily start to appear from their cabins. Its nice to see that people are up earlier then Deaw's wake up call….. perhaps they preferred to wake up to a gentler sound.
Blurry eyed and weary the guests sit through our standard safety briefing by Brett and our dive site briefing by Chrissy we chuck the guests in the water and what a way to wake up!
Anita’s Reef is our first dive of the day, and it is beautiful today – visability is a good 20metres, nice white sand and clear waters.
I am taking my diver for her Open Water Dive 3 for this dive, which involves quite a few skills which she blasts through and we are on our way to explore around the reef.
Lots of colourful soft corals, clownfish and clouds of glassfish. After we finish the dive I harass to the others to find out they find lots of interesting things too…Deaw tells me he saw lots of garden eels and a lovey blue spotted ray to keep his divers entertained. Chrissy sounds like she had a good dive, finding an octopus and watching on as three crazy triggerfish chase each other around.

Everyone comes back from the dive and heads up stairs as the scent of freshly cooked bacon wafts through the boat….. Breakfast time!

Just time for breakfast and a little snooze before its briefing time again!
This time the guests get an interesting eco briefing before the next dive briefing and its time to jump again!
The second dive of the day is in beautiful West of Eden, where the divers are treated to lots of mantis shrimp, scorpionfish, octopus, sweetlips, giant moray, great barracuda, harlequin shrimp, giant pufferfish with trumpetfish following and also three mating sea slugs….Awesome!

I finish dive 4 of Open Water with my student Saira and her boyfriend Simson, Whoop Whoop! We cheer as we reach the surface…. Another certified open water diver is born!

Back on the boat and its that time again…. Time to eat! Lunch is served and we all take a break, swapping dive stories and looking forward to some well deserved hammock time!

We take a rest as the Mariner heads towards the next dive site which is Stonehenge – a dive site which surprises you with big granite boulders smothered in gorgonian sea fans, soft corals and sometimes we get the ‘green monster’ as we like to call it – a thermocline, which drifts in, the temperature drops a couple of degrees and visibility drops – but alas this is not all bad – it brings in food for the bigger fish so the hope of seeing something bigger out in the blue is always there!
We jump in and a gentle current takes us round to the end of the point and we are tucking ourselves into the rocks to make it round and not get pushed out by the current. We make it around and find pufferfish, clown triggerfish, some clown anemone fish and some cool unicorn fish.
We make our way up to the surface to find Crissy and her group coming up too. They saw the biggest EVER pufferfish and a huge ray they tell us as they grin from ear to ear!

Snack time on the boat, its time for fruit and cookies, a little snooze and then its off to the beach to explore!

Brett leads the way and the guests follow off to Honeymoon Bay, I send Jacob and Chrissy off with the camera to get some good photos of the guests having fun.
They take a nice stroll over to Princess Bay and Jacob tells me they say nicobar pidgeons, flying foxes and they went to the lookout , which was beautiful. Up some crazy steps, through a wonderous cave, which lead them up to a giant boulder at the top with an amazing view out over the whole bay. Sounds perfect!

Meanwhile, back on the boat P-da and her kitchen staff are cooking up a storm! Dinner time comes around and once again we are treated to lovely thai delicacies.
Everyone seems hyper and excited after the days activity and so there is a lot of dive talk going on and general good vibe.
Saira, my diver makes the decision to go on and do her advanced course as well, which is exciting, so I sit her down with some nice homework to do for the evening!!
Just as I am sitting at the table, Saira comes up and asks for a torch, apparently theres something in the water! Its dark by this point, so I grab a torch to investigate….. ‘Shark! Shark! Shark’ people cheer… or is it???
There is a big fish floating around the boat, around and around, its not a shark, the tail gives it away, but what is it?
After a while of wondering, I decide to get a closer look…. Fins on, mask on, torch in hand, I slip into the water quietly and approach this big fish… OK maybe this wasn’t such a good idea! Im less than a metre away from it, it is big and looking pretty mean! Its swimming with its head down and its tail right up at the surface, I wonder what is wrong with it before it disappears into the night. Unidentified as of yet, but a very strange and exciting occurrence non the less!!!
Back to my coco pops to discover that last nugget of excitement was the final straw and all are retiring to their cabins to dream of whalesharks, turtles and other mystical underwater creatures!

11th December – Elephant Head Rock, The Bombies, Three Trees, North Point Bay

Another early start today, and what a beautiful way to start the day… with a beautiful sunrise over beautiful tropical islands.
So, today we have lots of activity’s to get through, I am taking Sairas advanced course, Brett is also taking an advanced course with his guest Praveen, as well as nitrox diving with Byron and Andrew.
Not to mention its Eriks birthday today! Happy Birthday Erik – we hope you have a great day!
Bleary eyed guests start to appear on the middle deck in anticipation for the briefing for our first dive site of the day – Elephant Head Rock.

It’s a shock to the system, the fresh water first thing, but it does good things for the soul I believe, and so we make our descent!
Current is present on the outside of the rocks and so we weave inbetween the large granite boulders and make our way through awesome swim throughs. We see mantis shrimps, triggerfish, travellis – Definitely not a bad way to start the day!
As we all jump back on the boat, Colins group is excited by a flatworm they saw and Bretts group are happy to have their ‘deep dive’ complete towards their advanced course, followed by Deaws fun divers who talk happily about the scorpionfish they saw.
Time to eat again and we all sit down for breakfast.
Discussions lean towards the ‘unidentified’ fish we saw last night, but unfortunately my child like scribblings and ‘basic’ descriptions leave me with guesses not far fetched from unicorns and mermaids! Will I ever get to the bottom of the mysterious fish??

After breakfast we have a little time to relax before its that time again….. Brieeeeefing time!
Dive 2 of the day is at ‘Bombies’, I jump in for the regular current check and then Crissy takes the briefing before we are on our way again into the deep blue!
This dive is really awesome – lots of bombies covered in beautiful soft corals, all different colours, and seafans everwhere. It does not fail to disappoint even more when we see big spotted grouper, a boxfish, an octopus and at the end a lovely hawksbill turtle who seems friendly and sticks close by.

We make our way back onto the boat, where we see a green turtle who is hanging around the back deck, unfortunately expecting some food. We don’t feed marine life here, it breaks the cycle of their food chain and causes them to become to dependant on food from boats and not hunting from themselves.

We have a nice surface interval, eating lunch, catching some sun and for some, brushing up on navigation skills ready for the dive ahead.


The next dive site we go to is 3 Trees, which is a lovely relaxing site. Sloping reef, which has seems to have become inhabited by quite a few titan triggerfish it seems. As I am getting my student Saira to lead the dive for her navigation skills , I feel someone/something tugging on my fin…. Hmmm my divers are in front of me, who could it be? No other then a yellow margin triggerfish who seems to want to go a round or two under the water, he is biting my fins as I defend myself with them and swim backwards and away. I get a narrow escape with some teeth marks in my fins and continue the dive.

We come up and have a nice long surface interval before the night dive, which is spent mostly relaxing in hammocks and catching some rays. Relaxing for some, apart from Bretts students, who fill their time watching Nitrox videos and taking exams.
We start assigning out the torches as it starts to get dark, and I am once again hoping to see my ‘mystery fish’ again tonight. I’ve resigned myself to thinking it was a freak barracuda, it had a barracuda like face (very scary close up in the water at night), but the tail was a lot thicker and it didn’t have the same dorsal fins. Also, it seemed more brown colour then usual silver.

We will see if it makes an appearance tonight!
Brett heads up the night dive briefing, telling everyone not to get lost, not to shine the light in our faces and not to kick the crap out of the reef. Good to go then!
We jump in and off we go. It’s a relaxing dive the night dive, and very personal too because everyone is focused on their own little bubble of light.
We see lots on this dive, sleeping lionfish, lots of lobsters, a sleeping turtle, a cute little octopus, sleeping parrotfish and surgeonfish and not to mention the fun of blocking our lights off and waving our arms around to see the bioluminescence glow.
No mystery fish tonight, but its out there in the blue somewhere…..

We are treated to a feast of a dinner tonight, and not only that, P-da has cooked up an awesome pancake birthday cake for Erik! We all sing Happy Birthday to him and he blows out the candle after he has made his wish… I wonder which big fish he is wishing for!

Everyone is shattered after another awesome long day and retire early.

Thursday 12th December – Christmas Point & Koh Bon

Its 6.30am wake up call today, the earliest yet and the guests are up and ready for their two final last dives of the trip.
Our first dive of the day is at Christmas Point and it is really awesome. Not much current, so lots of fun swimming in and out of the big granite boulders and through swim throughs. We manage to spot scorpionfish, a grouper being cleaned by some little cleaner wrasse, two big napoleon wrasse and some cool red fire gobies.

Back on the boat and its time for our last big breakfast, before getting ready for our last dive of the trip, on the infamous Koh Bon.
We have our briefing and all rub our nipples as the calling sign for the manta rays before we jump in and off we go!
A few of our groups hang around on the ridge waiting patiently staring into the blue before deciding to carry on. We head past the ridge and over the rest of the dive site, again this place is buzzing with life – octopus, travelli, clouds of glass fish, blue dragon nudibranches. We are even blessed with a huge 6ft eagle ray, a big leopard shark and turtle playing with one of our groups on their safety stop.

Buzzing from the last few days, we all head up for lunch, to finish our log books and any other paperwork before its chill time (and tidy up time for the staff!)

It’s a beautiful day as we sail back into Khao Lak and the guests look happily tired out!

Congratulations to Saira our new PADI Advanced Open Water Diver, Praveen – our new SSI Advanced Open Water Diver and also to Byron and Andrew for completing their SSI EANX Diver certifications! We wish you all the best in all your future diving endeavours!
Thanks to everyone for an awesome trip – Simon, Sally, Praveen, David, Dina, Chris, Casey, Juanna, Jennie, Erik, Eva, Andrew, Susan, Avanti, Pawel, Eva.E Philip, Byron, Simson and Saira.


-Wicked Diving Thailand

Raja Ampat Liveaboard - Crocodilefish footage

Our Raja Ampat Liveaboard trips are now running with weekly departures and, quite simply, the trips are amazing. There are a few spaces left in February and March, but book your spaces early!!

Richelieu Rock Liveaboard - Trip Report December

Trip 16 already!? How can it be so? I would like to confirm that time truly does fly by when you are having fun. The beginning of a 6 day Similan liveaboard departed last night from Kura Buri Pier. 14 of our guests currently on board are going full on for the next 5 days. What legends! We are joined by (big breath) Simon, Sally, Eva, Phillipp, Susan, Avanti, Pawel, Michelle, Jeanine, Rob, Fi, Anna, Byron, Anje, Jesper, Erik, Eva, Andrew. For Dive crew we are Sinan, Brett, Deaw, Rob, Tim. Dive master Trainees, Chris and Kelven, and myself, Christa. (Such a lucky girl I am)



The trip was an absolute success, with wonderful weather conditions, great visibility, and a great energy on the boat. It was a really relaxed group, with guests from all corners of the globe. There’s not much more one could need or want.



We spent the next couple of days living the dream at sea. Some of us were learning how to dive, some were diving nitrox and some were becoming advanced divers, and the rest were simply enjoying the natural beauty that lies beneath the surface. Everyone thoroughly enjoyed their time on the boat, at the beach and underwater. I mean really, how could we not? We spent the first day splashing around the Surin islands, the second at Richilieu Rock, Koh Tachai and Koh Bon, and our final dive at local dive site, Boonsung wreck.



We saw a swordfish jumping at the surface, found some really cool nudis, swam around with some napoleon wrasse, watched trevally and tuna hunt and enjoyed some drift dives. We ate like kings and queens, enjoyed frequent nap times, spent hours looking through fish identification books and filling out our own dive logs. Lots of milo was consumed, plenty of quality sun soaking time, and danced around to some cool beats played from our ipods.



After all said and done, we were a bunch of happy divers. With majority of our guests staying on board for round 2, we can only hope to keep this level of enjoyment at such a high standard. We really are having a wicked ol’ time here, and hope that you are too! Until next time, Let the good times keep on rolling…

-Wicked Diving Thailand

Richelieu Rock Liveaboard - Trip Report December 7, 2013

A warm welcome was extended to new and returning guests to complete the second part of our combined trip to the Surin Islands and Richelieu Rock. Dinner was served in the harbour before cabins were assigned and everyone was given a tour of the boat, before heading to bed for an early start the following morning.

Whale Shark - enough said?

Captain Wit safely got us all to Koh Bon to kick off the first day in fine style with two dives. Napoleon wrasse were there to meet us, along with a juvenile emperor angelfish, some cool nudis, mantis shrimps and some not very shy cuttlefish and octopus couples who were enjoying some sexy time! Koh Tachai was next up stopping firstly at the Pinnacle for the third dive of the day. After a thorough dive briefing, the first group went down to get geared up, when a large fin was spotted breaking the surface. Attached to the large fin was a 4m whale shark enjoying a quick circumnavigation of the dive site and was spotted by everyone on the boat – certainly a highlight of the trip!

In and under the water, giant trevally and tuna were found, along with moray eels, octopus and more mantis shrimp. After another mazing meal cooked by the legend that is P’Da, everyone got ready for a night dive in Tachai Bay, where Christa fell in love with possibly the world’s smallest cuttlefish.

An early night was taken by most in preparation for the following morning’s deep dive back at Tachai Pinnacle. The water looked full of plankton, and certainly if I was a whaleshark, I would have been there for an early morning snack, but despite everyone searching, it looked like our friend was relaxing elsewhere. Schools of barracuda made up for it though, along with lots of rainbow runners, morays and dogtooth tuna.

After a mean bacon and egg breakfast it was time to head to the Surins, with the first stop being Torinla. The tide charts told us it was slack tide, but a current check told us there was some great drift, making for one of the most enjoyable dives. Two big whiprays, scorpionfish, blue spotted rays, a pair of napoleons and some monster lobsters put smiles on faces shortly before lunch was put into faces. Aow Pakad made for the third dive of the day, with some beautiful ribbon eels spotted, along with those napoleons again and Christa continued her tiny love affair with a very small lionfish. After a beach visit, everyone got quizzical in the Wicked pub quiz before settling down for the night.

Whoever was in charge of wind and waves on the last day made an excellent choice in letting us go to Richelieu Rock. Mooring up, it was a fine sight to have no sight – we were the only boat there to enjoy Thailand’s finest dive site, for not one but two dives! Two schools of barracuda were there with baby boxfish, many mantis shrimp, banded box shrimp and some sexy octopus. Sea stars were found with missing legs, but despite our best efforts, those elusive harlequin shrimp managed to enjoy their breakfast alone.

The trip drew to a close as the boat pulled into the harbour where taxis were waiting to whisk everyone back to reality. A fantastic trip that produced 5 new advanced divers and 1 new adventure deep diver, and lots of whaleshark photos – sounds like we had better do it again next week!

-Wicked Diving Thailand