Malapascua Trip Report

[chip104]

Thanks for reposting the report, Bill!

I love the above water shots with the wide angle.

 

[jonix]

damn awesome trip report bill! thanks

 

[Babydamulag]

Can't wait to read more!!! Now this is the new standard in trip reporting. Somehow we need to capture all of that data for reference. Awesome job. The SQUIDS taught you well!!! Looking forward to reading more.

 

[bill22]

Awesome trip report Bill! And what a coincidence, we have the same shot of the seahorse taken at the lighthouse.

I went and took a look.... very nice pictures... you got much better shots than I did... :14:

The seahorse you shot is very similar... but not the same seahorse.... this is the brother-in-law of the seahorse you shot. The seahorse you shot is pregnant now and having severe morning sickness so was not able to make the photo shoot... sorry I was supposed to pass the message along sooner. He said to let you know he's looking forward to your next trip so you can come by and see the babies

 

[bill22]

On the 27th we went to Gilianio. I had gotten just a glimpse of a Thresher earlier that day at Monad, but no pictures. Gilianio went a long way towards making up for that. This would turn out to be another great dive.

I was diving 32% Nitrox. Maximum depth was 63 feet, average of 46 feet. Water temp was 84 degrees Farenheit. Visibility was 30-35 feet. We were in the water at 11AM on the nose. We were fighting a fairly strong current, nothing to bad, but it did eat into my air supply. I was out at 11:49 AM with only 500 psi left in my tank.

Very nice corals at Gilianio. As we swam towards the wall I looked down and saw a sea snake. I signalled Steve and our guide Je-ann. Steve shot some video and then we moved on to the edge of a shallow wall that descended down just over 60 feet. We kicked along the wall basically shooting whatever took our fancy. Je-ann tapped on his tank and seemed very excited. Steve also. I came over to take a look. Steve was shooting video of what appeared to be some kind of black sponge. I'm thinking to myself... "what is this and why are they acting like this". Must be something "good" I thought... "take a picture and find out later". So I took a picture... when we were back on the boat, I asked Steve, "what was that black thing ya'll were so excited about?" What I thought was just a black sponge turned out to be a frogfish! )

This was a really cool reef. I came across a cave that seemed to extend fairly far back. A little to constricted for penetration though. Just out from it was a fan coral growing up from the sea floor. Je-ann was pointing something out to Steve who began shooting video of it.

While they were focused on whatever it was they were looking at, I noticed a large jellyfish. I was always trying to get a good picture of a jellyfish. My camera seemed to have a hard time focusing on them and they usually seemed to just fade into the water. The shot here, I manipulated once I got back so that it's a little easier to see. It ends up looking like a night shot, even though it was taken in the middle of the day.

When Steve was finished they called me over. At first all I saw was coral.... then when I looked closer I saw it! A Pygmy Seahorse! Talk about adapted to it's environment. It looked like a piece of the coral that it was clinging too! I put my closeup lens on and then tried to maneuver for shot. Not easy to do in the current! I was working very hard not to crash into the fan ) After several attempts I managed to get a couple of shots that "seemed" acceptable.

I moved out of the way as Felimar, my guide from the first day at Monad came over. He was guiding a group from the Netherlands today. As one of the women lay on the bottom for stability in the current while trying to get a shot, out of the corner of my eye I saw a sea snake approaching.

The first thing I thought was "that's interesting". All the sea snakes I had seen had pretty much ignored people. This one seemed very "interested". Had I been looking at a land snake, like a water moccasin (a very posionous snake and common where I grew up) I would have considered this agressive. Again behaviour that I had not seen previously in a sea snake.

The snake stopped about six feet behind the woman and looked at her. I began trying to get Felimar's attention. He looked at me, I pointed, and about this time, the snake moved again, this time stopping right between the womans knees as she lay oblivious of the snake, spread-eagled on the bottom, focusing on getting a picture. Felimar began moving to slowly maneuver the woman out of the way, not wanting to excite the snake I think. All of a sudden the snake moved! I never realized just how fast they could swim. In a flash it had left swimming into the cave in the wall that I had seen earlier, which was about 15 feet away.

After that we began making our way back towards the boat, again shooting as we went anything that we found interesting. I finally got an interesting shot of a False Clown Anemonefish (very difficult to shoot clownfish, because of camera lag on my point and shoot).

Later when we were topside, Steve who had seen the snake about the same time I did and captured the whole thing on video, joked to the woman that it looked like it was getting ready to "bite her on the bum" ) or words to that effect We all agreed that we had never seen a sea snake act in that manner and it was very unusual!

 

[bill22]

Can't wait to read more!!! Now this is the new standard in trip reporting. Somehow we need to capture all of that data for reference. Awesome job. The SQUIDS taught you well!!! Looking forward to reading more.

Thanks for the kind words... I did get to practice my writing when I worked Public Affairs for my Naval Reserve unit and I do have to write reports and evaluations as part of my job now that I'm back on active duty, but I wouldn't give the Navy to much credit for my writing )

What little I know about writing I learned in high school Journalism classes and in college. I also did a lot of writing about martial arts when I published my own newsletter when I was teaching karate. I even had a few articles published in a martial arts publication which was pretty cool

My background prior to coming back on active duty was really photography. In high school I was a photographer and wrote articles for my school newspaper. After high school I was a US Navy Photographer for almost ten years. After the Navy I went to college (I need to finish that up some day, I'm about 20 credits shy of a BA in Photography). Then I worked for Photographic Services at Cape Canaveral and NASA on the US Space Program for ten years. While I was there I worked as a lab technician and cameraman, doing still photography (film), video, high-speed motion picture, and photo-optical tracking. After that I worked as a photo lab manager for almost two years. In late 2001 I came back on active duty in the US Navy.

Despite all that background in photography, I had never taken an underwater picture before August of this year. I still have a LOT to learn on that score )

So a little about my background since I don't think I ever really introduced myself on this board.... sorry about :blinking:

 

[bill22]

wow...details....photos....what more can I ask for? I'd say this is the Grand daddy of trip reports, thanks for sharing, Bill. Lets dive sometime in the future...

Thanks! I hope that we do get to dive together. I should be able to make it down for Sogod Bay and Cabilao in February... I don't forsee any problems, I should still have enough vacation left over.

Right now looks like I'm headed to Guam next month for a week of diving with a friend from the dive club... he got a package deal... airfare and hotel for 45,000 yen... a little less than $450US.

 

[pakman]

Now that's a trip report. Thanks for sharing Bill

 

[bill22]

On the 28th we had rough seas. We did make it out for the afternoon Manta Ray dive at Monad, but that was the only dive that day. It was a very "wet" ride out and back. Pretty good current to :-D Earlier I practiced Rescue skills off the beach in front of the dive shop, so it wasn't a totally wasted day )

On the 29th we went to North Point. We were in the water at 11:06 AM. This dive was made a little shorter so I could practice Rescue skills. I was warned ahead of time that anything could happen so I was watching. Little things like Steve's tank coming unfastened )

I wasn't too surprised towards the end of the dive when Steve swam up and signalled "out of air" and we buddy breathed to the surface. It's a little trick to buddy breathe with someone while maintaining a safety stop in open water and deploying an SMB at the same time I found my habit of never using the anchor or mooring line to hang on to during my safety stop (unless there was a strong current) paid off now. Deploying an SMB from depth though is something I'm still trying to perfect ) I hadn't actually practiced deploying it since I got it, so the Rescue course gave me a perfect opportunity to practice under "realistic" conditions ) Steve gave me some really good tips which of course as the instructor he was supposed to

North Point is a nice little dive. Maximum depth was 63 feet, with an average depth of 42 feet. Visibility that day was was 30-35 feet+... not bad considering the rain and bad weather we'd been having. Lots of coral heads to move around. Nice fish life.. lots of clownfish and saw several nudibranch. Steve found a nice black one with red dots all over it for me and I spied another one on the move underneath an overhang. I was practicing manual white balance, always trying on every dive to improve and practice my photography skills.

That afternoon we went to Chocolate Island. No underwater pictures here. This was all Rescue dive. This was all about practicing search patterns which I did for 53 minutes :-D. We were in at 3:37 and out at 4:30PM. My maximum depth was only 18 feet with an average depth of 7 feet ;-) Looked like some nice fish life and I saw several sea snakes, and there was a lots of nice corals, wth channels and crevasses. My focus, though was playing out scenarios with a "diver who has lost his buddy". Visibility was not particularly good, around 20 feet, which made finding the "lost buddy" a little more difficult.

The 29th was the day that I got stuck by the sea urchin during the night dive at Lighthouse.

The next morning on the 30th after diving Monad where I saw a nice Neon Slug (didn't like my picture though), had breakfast and worked on finishing up bookwork for my Nitrox course. Late morning we headed out to the Dona Marilyn.

The Dona Marilyn was a passenger ferry that sunk in 1988 when it was caught in a typhoon. It sunk stern first taking 389 people with it. Only 147 survived. 1988 Pacific typhoon season - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

We were in the water at 12:21 PM and we were using 32% Nitrox. Visibility that day was over 30 feet. The boat dropped a shot line down to the wreck and we followed it down. There was some current that day but it wasn't bad. My maximum depth was 100 feet. Averge depth was 47', but I hung out for a while at 15 feet waiting for people to get on the boat. It was Steve's second time diving the wreck. The dive plan was to make a penetration, conditions and air supply permitting. It would be my call as this was my "final" for my Wreck Diving Specialty course. Penetration was not required to pass the course.

The ship is lying on it's starboard side in just over a 100 feet of water. It had lots of soft corals, small fish, sea urchins, all over the wreck. I saw a school of striped catfish. Steve, Mal, and myself descended to near the bottom and then worked our way along looking for a good place to penetrate. We eventually found a place to penetrate, but when I looked at my gauge I had used almost a 1000 psi. I was just over 2000 psi. The "rule of thirds" applies just as much in Wreck diving as it does in Cavern diving which I'm also certified in. I had started with 3000 psi. I'll admit there was a temptation (just for a moment ) to make a "limited" penetration, I opted not to. We continued to work our way around the wreck which was covered in soft corals and had plenty of fish life. We found another good penetration spot at a depth of around 60 feet. With a wreck that is over 300 feet long this is normal. One might have to make more than one dive to "survey" the wreck and then make a plan.

We were out of the water at 1:01 PM. Steve and I both talked about it after we were back on the boat. I think had I had more time in Malpascua we would have made a penetration on the next dive, but now I was getting close to end of my time in Malapascua. There were other places yet to dive in the Philippines and as it turned out not a place that I had planned on, but a place I kept hearing about after I got to the Philippines.

After the Dona Marilyn we headed for Gato Island. When we reached Gato again I had Rescue practice during the surface interval. Then Steve gave me a break and told me that this would be a fun dive. We started our dive at 2:59 PM. Visibility was 25 feet +. Maximum depth was 62 feet, but our average was only 31 feet.

There were lots of nice coral heads and "canyons" in between the coral heads to swim through. Good fish life. I found a nice zebra lionfish underneath an overhang. Also a hawkfish and various other reef fish... the usual suspects wrasse, angelfish, anthias..... We found a cave that was full of Whitetip Reef Sharks. Unfortunately, my flash was back in my room on charge, so no pictures :-( On the return to the boat we saw two nice cuttlefish. Ended up with a bottom time of exactly 60 minutes

On my second trip to Gato 2 days later I only made one dive. Lots of nice fish life again. During the second dive when the rest of the group went into the tunnel underneath the island I was finishing up my Rescue scenario's. Steve could tell that I was dissapointed about not making the second dive and offered to do the dive and finish up scenarios the following day, but I knew I needed to finish. That turned out to be a good decision as I don't think we would have finished in time the next morning to make our transportation back to Cebu.

So that's it for the "diving" portion for Malpascua

I think I'll start a separate thread for the remainder of the trip on Cebu and Moalboal and link it back to here....

 

[bill22]

I didn't talk much about how I spent my off time... mainly because there was so little of it. Bookwork took up a lot of my spare time. Doing three courses was probably a little optimistic on my part. I think I was glad when I finished them all

Most of the places along the beach like Hippocampus, Cocobana, Bluewater and Sunsplash were a little pricey for things like breakfast (although the view was nice). Breakfast would run 150-190 pesos. I could go to Ging-Gings which was on the main path that ran behind the resorts and dive shops on the beach and have breakfast for half that. You could also let them know what you wanted for dinner when you went in for breakfast and they would make sure to purchase fresh ingredients for your dinner that night. More than once I ran a tab there, because they were often short of change. This was not really uncommon. I bought a t-shirt from someone right next to Hippocampus. When I didn't have change they said it was okay, just bring it when I had it. I was diving a lot so it ended up being a few days before I saw them out again. The woman said she never worried about it. Her husband was a dive guide at Sea Explorers and her brother-in-law was one of my dive guides at Thresher Shark Divers. The bar above Thresher Shark Divers was open everynight after we came back from the last dive of the day. 2 for 1 during Happy Hour . Sometimes we'd have a beer there then go to Ging-Gings for dinner. By then it was time to go to bed since we had to get up early for the morning shark dive. There was an internet place at the Japanese restaraunt. Internet could be unreliable (one night I gave up after about 10 minutes) and it was always slow. I only used the internet three times in the nine days I was there.

I had wanted to go and see the cockfights while I was there having never seen them before. Mal who is a vegetarian told Steve that she was all in favor of cockfights now after having to listen to the roosters crowing every morning (and half the night) ) Steve and I often joked about eating chicken since the more chicken we ate, theoretically the less roosters there would be crowing ) The chicken curry at Ging-Gings is very good by the way