cetacean
Contributor
At the MNL airport after a week of diving in Dumaguete...
This is my 4th time diving this part of the Dauin coast - still impressed with the variety (and volume) of critters that can be found here.
The best dive for this trip was at the "Corner" where a few min into the dive we came across a Mototi octopus (sticking out of a bottle), followed by a blue ring octopus on a rock, followed by a coconut octopus in a shell... then throw in a flamboyant cuttlefish moving along the sand... great dive (only 1 DM, my son, and myself on the dive - lots of opportunities for shooting images).
So here's the thing: I've been here twice in the spring, once in November, and now once in January. The frogfish are here all year (multiple frogfish on each dive), as well as several different kinds of not so common nudibranchs on each dive, and lots of shrimp, crabs, and other critters. However here's something we noticed, in the spring we usually find ghost pipefish (robust, ornate, or halimeda) on every dive (so much so that we jokingly told the DMs that it's easier to find ghost pipefish than frogfish here).
On this trip - across 20 dives, not a single ghost pipefish (and we were looking for them). Might be time of year... certainly interesting.
Oh - this time of year also has the advantage of the occasional whale shark swimming by. They saw 2 at Apo Island the day before we arrived, and we saw one underwater (swimming along in the distance) on one of our dives. Set up for super macro - just watched it swim by.
This is my 4th time diving this part of the Dauin coast - still impressed with the variety (and volume) of critters that can be found here.
The best dive for this trip was at the "Corner" where a few min into the dive we came across a Mototi octopus (sticking out of a bottle), followed by a blue ring octopus on a rock, followed by a coconut octopus in a shell... then throw in a flamboyant cuttlefish moving along the sand... great dive (only 1 DM, my son, and myself on the dive - lots of opportunities for shooting images).
So here's the thing: I've been here twice in the spring, once in November, and now once in January. The frogfish are here all year (multiple frogfish on each dive), as well as several different kinds of not so common nudibranchs on each dive, and lots of shrimp, crabs, and other critters. However here's something we noticed, in the spring we usually find ghost pipefish (robust, ornate, or halimeda) on every dive (so much so that we jokingly told the DMs that it's easier to find ghost pipefish than frogfish here).
On this trip - across 20 dives, not a single ghost pipefish (and we were looking for them). Might be time of year... certainly interesting.
Oh - this time of year also has the advantage of the occasional whale shark swimming by. They saw 2 at Apo Island the day before we arrived, and we saw one underwater (swimming along in the distance) on one of our dives. Set up for super macro - just watched it swim by.
