My hoped for highlight of the trip, namely diving the USS Emmons was blown out, so the only diving I did in Japan was at Ishigaki.
I did three days of diving with Prime Scuba. The boat is quite large for the number of divers, a boat this size in the US or the Caribbean would easily fit 20-30 divers, while IIRC at most we had 9 divers which they considered to be at capacity. When you combine that with the number of staff (almost 1:1 when you consider everyone onboard and at the shop) it isn't surprising why diving in Japan is so expensive.
Logistics wise, they pick you up at your hotel each morning, and they were nice enough to let me stop at a convenience store to pick up breakfast, and some drinks. They take you to the dock where you do paperwork, boat briefing and setup your gear. The normal tank that they dive people is a steel 10L tank, that will have around 2,800psi of air, or about 71cuft. They have 11L steel tanks, and AL80s, but in all cases you are going to get about 2,800psi of air (they said it was Japanese law that they can't fill over 200bar) and yoke only. Nitrox is available, but I only saw two dudes using it. I dove air, I didn't feel like I was missing anything. I also was able to get over an hour out of the 10L tanks, but I have an average SAC/RMV rate in the 0.4cuft/min range so your mileage may vary.
They head out for one to two sites, you have lunch, and then hit another site or two to hit the total of three sites for the day. Sometimes they will head into the dock to pick up someone half way through. Lunch is provided, typical Japanese lunch, one day it was egg sandwiches (very good!!!) with beef soup, the next was Soba with Onigiri, and the final day it was curry rice with a vegetable soup. All three days they had pineapple, and provided drinks of water barley tea (hot and cold) and instant coffee. On board there was a head, and hot/cold water for washing.
After the diving day you just leave your gear on the boat, taking with you computers and cameras. The next morning I found it assembled fairly close to how I like it, so all I had to do was minor adjustments. And the end of the trip I said to just leave the gear with them, and they will ship it to the airport. I didn't bring my suitcase to the shop, so I will be going there this afternoon, but also because I need to distribute things between my bags.
Diving experience
Mantas are the big sell in Ishigaki, but due to strong winds we only got to one of the manta cleaning stations twice, and the Manta Gods only graced us with a single fly by of a manta, which I am told is pretty common during the summer. But saying that, the reef life was surprisingly healthy, lots of fish even on sections of the reefs that had a bleaching event and are only coming back now. One thing I saw that I rarely see in Florida or Mexico were the tiny baby fish. And even on the bleached sections you saw new young coral coming back to repopulate the reef. And the structure of the reefs are impressive, Palancar is famous for the tower reef structures that it has, and though the reefs at Ishigaki don't suddenly pop up like a sky scrappers you see at Palancar the heights are just as big if not bigger.
Fish wise, I couldn't identify half the fish (they had guides I really don't look at them). But we saw all kinds of stuff that the guides were able to name off, but I saw Nemo and his cousins. A male and a female Trumpet Fish (apparently the females are yellow), some few large local groupers, a couple of cuttle fish, and I think a baby lion fish. And of course the required "Send Nudis!"
Most days the groups were fairly small, on the last day they had a large number of people on the last day, with a lot of newbie divers. So after they first dive I put me with one of their Japanese only guides, which worked out, really well because it felt like day 4 or 5 in Cozumel once the guides get to know you, when they are more tolerant of some wandering, and let you manage your air.
I am hesitant to say this because if it gets too popular there was always negative consequences to the reef, but the diving in Ishigaki is fantastic. On my final dive on the third day, I was floating there the last person in the water, thinking "I don't want to go up, I am not sure when or if I will ever come back there."
Average dive profile:
Length: 58 minutes 58 seconds
Depth: 33 feet
Average Max Depth: 57 feet
Maximum Depth: 79 feet
I didn't take too much video as I like to mostly concentrate on the experience. But the staff does take quite a bit of photos, they provide a selection to you along with posting highlights to their Facebook page and blog. Here is one from my 100th dive:
Wow this is long, it certainly is a lot longer than I intended when I started typing.
I did three days of diving with Prime Scuba. The boat is quite large for the number of divers, a boat this size in the US or the Caribbean would easily fit 20-30 divers, while IIRC at most we had 9 divers which they considered to be at capacity. When you combine that with the number of staff (almost 1:1 when you consider everyone onboard and at the shop) it isn't surprising why diving in Japan is so expensive.
Logistics wise, they pick you up at your hotel each morning, and they were nice enough to let me stop at a convenience store to pick up breakfast, and some drinks. They take you to the dock where you do paperwork, boat briefing and setup your gear. The normal tank that they dive people is a steel 10L tank, that will have around 2,800psi of air, or about 71cuft. They have 11L steel tanks, and AL80s, but in all cases you are going to get about 2,800psi of air (they said it was Japanese law that they can't fill over 200bar) and yoke only. Nitrox is available, but I only saw two dudes using it. I dove air, I didn't feel like I was missing anything. I also was able to get over an hour out of the 10L tanks, but I have an average SAC/RMV rate in the 0.4cuft/min range so your mileage may vary.
They head out for one to two sites, you have lunch, and then hit another site or two to hit the total of three sites for the day. Sometimes they will head into the dock to pick up someone half way through. Lunch is provided, typical Japanese lunch, one day it was egg sandwiches (very good!!!) with beef soup, the next was Soba with Onigiri, and the final day it was curry rice with a vegetable soup. All three days they had pineapple, and provided drinks of water barley tea (hot and cold) and instant coffee. On board there was a head, and hot/cold water for washing.
After the diving day you just leave your gear on the boat, taking with you computers and cameras. The next morning I found it assembled fairly close to how I like it, so all I had to do was minor adjustments. And the end of the trip I said to just leave the gear with them, and they will ship it to the airport. I didn't bring my suitcase to the shop, so I will be going there this afternoon, but also because I need to distribute things between my bags.
Diving experience
Mantas are the big sell in Ishigaki, but due to strong winds we only got to one of the manta cleaning stations twice, and the Manta Gods only graced us with a single fly by of a manta, which I am told is pretty common during the summer. But saying that, the reef life was surprisingly healthy, lots of fish even on sections of the reefs that had a bleaching event and are only coming back now. One thing I saw that I rarely see in Florida or Mexico were the tiny baby fish. And even on the bleached sections you saw new young coral coming back to repopulate the reef. And the structure of the reefs are impressive, Palancar is famous for the tower reef structures that it has, and though the reefs at Ishigaki don't suddenly pop up like a sky scrappers you see at Palancar the heights are just as big if not bigger.
Fish wise, I couldn't identify half the fish (they had guides I really don't look at them). But we saw all kinds of stuff that the guides were able to name off, but I saw Nemo and his cousins. A male and a female Trumpet Fish (apparently the females are yellow), some few large local groupers, a couple of cuttle fish, and I think a baby lion fish. And of course the required "Send Nudis!"
Most days the groups were fairly small, on the last day they had a large number of people on the last day, with a lot of newbie divers. So after they first dive I put me with one of their Japanese only guides, which worked out, really well because it felt like day 4 or 5 in Cozumel once the guides get to know you, when they are more tolerant of some wandering, and let you manage your air.
I am hesitant to say this because if it gets too popular there was always negative consequences to the reef, but the diving in Ishigaki is fantastic. On my final dive on the third day, I was floating there the last person in the water, thinking "I don't want to go up, I am not sure when or if I will ever come back there."
Average dive profile:
Length: 58 minutes 58 seconds
Depth: 33 feet
Average Max Depth: 57 feet
Maximum Depth: 79 feet
I didn't take too much video as I like to mostly concentrate on the experience. But the staff does take quite a bit of photos, they provide a selection to you along with posting highlights to their Facebook page and blog. Here is one from my 100th dive:
Wow this is long, it certainly is a lot longer than I intended when I started typing.
