DIVE DAY SIX: MEETING ALMA JANE

DIVE DAY FIVE: WRECKED IN PARADISE

Sabang Wrecks

Because we arrived from Dumaguete in the early afternoon, all those who wanted to dive, had the chance for two dives -- an afternoon checkout one, which we did at Monkey Beach, and another, a night one at Sabang Wrecks. That site is where a group of intentionally sunken vessels for the purpose of creating an artificial reef, lie.

Night dives are always fun, for the chance to see life which doesn't usually come out during the day and to have the eerie sensation of blackness and not knowing what's around the next corner. For an amateur underwater shooter like me it presents the added challenge of properly lighting and exposing subjects, maintaining buoyancy and focusing while trying to capture an image.

And for this dive there were some very nice targets, all pointed out to us by dive guide Henry Cubilao, who would be our small group's dive guide the rest of the way. For those of you who haven't yet dived at night, it's an additional challenge keeping up with your dive leader, especially when other dive groups are converging on the same site, as was the case here. For Henry, it was his bright orange headband I used to identify him.

On this dive, I was able to capture images of a lionfish, a sweetlips, a whitemouth eel and yet another colorful nudibranch.

Dive Buddies: Jim, Mike, Brittney, Rick
Dive Guide: Henry Cubilao
Max depth: 66 feet
Total Bottom Time: 46 minutes
Water temperature: 75 degrees Farenheit
Exposure Protection: 3mm shorty wetsuit
Air source: Enriched Air Nitrox 32% oxygen
Photos Copyright Gil Griffin 2009.

DIVE DAY FIVE: WHEN MONKEYS FLY -- OR GET CAUGHT IN RIPPING CURRENTS

Monkey Beach

You'd never be able to tell it from looking at these images of nudibranchs (above) -- some of the tiniest, most colorful and beautiful creatures in the sea, but this dive, at Monkey Beach gave us all we could bargain for. How? With an unexpected and ripping current that challenged us.

This isn't supposed to happen during a checkout dive -- usually your first dive when you arrive at a resort, just to get comfortable, check your buoyancy and weights, etc. But this short ride outside of Sabang Beach -- once we descended -- threw us for a big-time loop.

Drift dives are fun, as you let the current just carry you along. So why'd I feel like on this dive, we were being rushed across the Pacific? Still, Vic, or dive leader was able to herd all of us back to him where he inflated the orange safety sausage for our boat captain to spot us and haul us back into the speedboat. Nice dive -- and a helluva wake-up call.

Dive Buddies: Jim, Mike, Brittney, Rick,
Dive Guide: Vic
Max depth: 60 feet
Total Bottom Time: 60 minutes
Water temperature: 78 degrees Farenheit
Exposure Protection: 3mm shorty wetsuit
Air source: Enriched Air Nitrox 32% oxygen
Photos Copyright Gil Griffin 2009.

DIVE DAY FIVE: NORTH TO PUERTO GALERA

Give Scuba Travel Ventures props for something amazing: Getting a coveted police escort to cut through legendarily tough Manila traffic. Well, also let's give a shout-out to the Philippines Department of Tourism. Between the two groups, getting out of Manila's International Airport, onto the Manila Skyway and motoring south to the Southern Luzon town of Batangas proved to be miraculously fast.

The fleet of vans which met our dive group was shepherded along by a group of Manila's finest, riding motorcycles and displaying flashers and sounding sirens -- for the first 30 minutes of the ride. For those of you who haven't yet visited Manila, imagine a sprawling metropolis characterized by rivers with mangroves (Manila's name actually comes from the Tagalog words "may" and "nilad," which in English translates into "many mangroves") and flowing, intricate maze-like streets connecting hundreds of barangays ("neighborhoods"). Throw in a population of more than 10 million and add every kind of vehicle imaginable, from jeepneys and tricycles to buses and cars to the highways and streets and you've got a challenging snarl of traffic not too unlike what you may have experienced in Southern California. You get the feeling of being overwhelmed and fascinated all at once -- that even if you spent your whole life in Manila, it would take several lifetimes to explore the endless paths the city lays before you.

After being whisked south to the city of Batangas -- about a two-hour trip -- we boarded another bangka to head to the island of Mindoro to Sabang Beach, where another Atlantis Resort awaited us. The coastline near Sabang is reminiscent of the waterfront near Catalina, in Southern California, or the Mediterranean skirting the coasts of France and Italy. It was a 180 degree turn from sleepy Dauin, where nothing but beach lies within reach. Sabang is clearly a resort and tourist town, with plenty of dive shops, bars, restaurants and discos -- oh and did I mention hawkers who meet your boat, with every kind of merchandise in tow, from sunglasses to imitation Rolexes and earrings and woodcarvings?

One man, just trying to make a living, tried flattering me into buying from him, saying I looked like President Obama. I made the mistake of saying I might buy something from him someday, though I had no intention of doing so. Hopefully, he had other customers today and the days that followed.

And if you're wondering why you're starting to see photos from me again...I must again give serious thanks to the staff at the Atlantis Resort in Puerto Galera who, after hearing my lost camera sob story, allowed me to rent an underwater digital camera for the duration of our stay, at no charge. Big thanks to Andy at Atlantis for helping arrange that. Utang na loob (see previous posts to learn the meaning of this all-important phrase).

Photos Copyright Gil Griffin 2009.

DIVE DAY FOUR: TOPSIDE TIMEOUT -- POUNDING THE PAVEMENT IN DUMAGUETE CITY

After the Malpasod Sur debacle and a lunch of humble pie, it was time to put things in perspective, shop, see some new sights and learn some things in the process. So our group headed out in the tricked out jeepney and a couple of SUVs to Dumaguete City, north of the Atlantis resort.

It's home to Silliman University, one of the Philippines' leading institutions of higher learning, where a reef conservation program is in place. The campus is right at the center of town, shrouded in towering shade trees. Silliman is also home to a very educational Anthropology Museum, where the entire group toured the four-story building where there were artifacts dating back centuries, from the Malays, Chinese, Negritos and Ifugao -- the last two are indigenous Filipinos, with the first having dark skin and African features and the second, mountain dwellers from the Luzon island highlands. Well-drawn maps catalogued the hundreds of different regional language and ethnic groups that define the Philippines.

The Philippines, after all, are a group of 7,107 different islands, each with personalities, topographies, histories and cultures of their own. But as a history exhibit taught us, the Spanish conquest, followed by American occupation, Japanese occupation, liberation and finally independence, is something all the islands shared. It was disturbing to confront the fact that the American "acquisition" of the Philippines from the Spanish after the 1898 Spanish-American War and resulting occupation, was equally brutal as what the Spaniards perpetrated on Filipinos. Though it's not well-known in American history textbooks in school, Filipino nationalists engaged their American occupiers in a war for freedom that immediately followed the Spanish-American War. It was only after the Japanese invasion of the Philippines in World War II that Americans saw Filipinos as their equals and jointly fought to liberate the islands. Yet even after independence was "granted" by the United States to the Philippines on July 4, 1946, Filipinos the world over recognize their true independence day as June 12, 1898, their liberation from the Spanish. And even today, those still-living Filipino World War II veterans who fought side by side with American troops to defeat the Japanese were not -- despite the efforts of U.S. Congressmen, who sponsored bills -- extended benefits or granted automatic U.S. citizenship, as America extended them to soldiers from dozens of other countries who fought alongside her. Dive leader Ramcel Eloy told me his own grandfather is one of those soldiers.

Outside the museum and the Silliman campus Dumaguete pulses with activity. There are no traffic lights, but traffic ebbs and flows with hundreds of tricycles operating as taxis, ferrying people to their destinations. The covered city market we visited has a maze full of stalls, with virtually everything imaginable being sold, from clothes and jewelry to medicines and food. The most overwhelming sights and smells came from the fish market, where thousands of fish were being cleaned and packaged for people shopping for their households.

But I found the most welcome sight outside the City Market -- Jollibee. It's a Filipino fast-food chain specializing in burgers, spaghetti and fried chicken and in Filipino favorites like palabok, halo-halo and lumpia. I first had food from Jollibee back in 1999 on my first visit to the Philippines in the town of Puerto Princesa, after an all-day trip to the St. Paul Subterranean River, which included a strenuous hike through the jungle to the sea. Since then, Jollibee has made its way across the Pacific and has stores in Filipino-American communities in California like the San Diego suburbs of National City and Mira Mesa and San Francisco Bay Area ones like Daly City, Vallejo and San Francisco. After all, who can resist the adorable bee mascot?

Not me. And thanks to a San Diegan, dive buddy Jason Bradshaw, for snapping this image of me, with the bee.

Photo Copyright Jason Bradshaw 2009.

DIVE DAY FOUR: SEARCHING FOR CARS -- AND CAMERA

Now comes an admission I hate to make.

It's a very embarrassing moment that happened during this dive, at a spot called Masaplod Sur. I was cruising along a sandy bottom, about to take a picture of a coral formation. With my left hand, I was moving my camera's leash to slip around my right wrist, then slide the leash up my right arm until it reached my shoulder...only when I reached around for my camera, it wasn't there. I mean it...wasn't...there. And I slipped into a fit. I couldn't find it near where I was on the sand bottom and I didn't see it floating away, above my head. I was sure, even then, I'd find it. I searched around frantically with no luck. I motioned to other divers. Nada.

So...for the first time in my 10 years of diving, I lost a camera. And I remained pretty angry with myself. Fortunately, dive buddy Paul Washington, who has been exceedingly generous with his computer expertise and his willing to share that knowledge with me and several others on the trip, last night helped me download more than 300 pictures onto a Google album. So all was not nearly lost -- just the images from today's two dives. But I also feel I let down a friend who was nice enough to arrange for a camera to be sent to me to use. I'll try not to beat up on myself too hard, but it's a tough lesson to learn, as another dive buddy, Steven Miller, would later tell me -- always keep the camera's leash on your wrist. At all times. Always. No exceptions.

While I'm in Mea Culpa mode, let me also give a serious maraming salamat to the folks aboard the dive bangka, the so-called "boat boys" who, out of their kindness, searched in the water on mini-bangkas to help find the camera, but to no avail.

DIVE DAY FOUR: SEARCHING FOR CARS -- AND CAMERA

This dive was an example of the best laid plans going awry...until your divemaster improvises and comes up with something better than the original plan.

Said plan was to dive the site Cars -- a collection of abandoned clunkers intentionally sunk and covered in years of coral growth. But dive leader Ramcel Eloy (pictured a few posts ago) noticed another dive boat approaching the site just as we were, loaded with new divers, likely to be inexperienced at mastering buoyancy and therefore might kick up a lot of sand. So Ramcel planned for us to hang out in the sand channels, searching first for macrolife, such as flamboyant cuttlefish, leaf scorpionfish and if we were lucky, seahorses.

As we continued on our path through the sand, we indeed saw several treasured small creatures, but we noticed we weren't going anywhere toward the cars, which were at 80 feet. It was only later that Ramcel told us he ditched the plan, because there were just too many other divers at the site. That suited our dive group just fine, as we were content to have a sand patch -- and a collection of intriguing macrolife all to ourselves. Again, dive buddy Jim Elliott, head of the nonprofit organization Diveheart, expertly captured all the action. As soon as I'm able, I'll update the info for this site.

Cars

Dive Leader: Ramcel Eloy

Dive Buddies: Jim, Mike, Rick

Maximum Depth: 75 feet

Total Bottom Time: 50 minutes

Temperature: 81 degrees Farenheit

DIVE DAY THREE: A NIGHT OUT WITH THE MANDARIN KING

Bahura

Seldom is anything harder in life than capturing an image of a mandarinfish. These creatures are exquisite -- silver dollar-sized, oval shaped and richly colored in orange, teal, green and royal blue markings -- and elusive. At this site, a short ride south of the resort, along the coral-laden coastline, they hide between spaces in lettuce corals and are only out ands about at dusk.

That meant a 5 p.m. departure from the dock, with a setting sun and having great buoyancy skills to be in the right position for the right amount of time, right lighting and the most important attribute -- patience -- to see these spectacular fish.

I saw plenty of them but wasn't adept at capturing images of them.

Fortunately, my dive buddy Jim Ellliott, founder of the Diveheart Foundation (http://www.diveheart.org/), who is routinely stunning everyone with his photos, managed to get several.

Photos Copyright Jim Elliott 2009.

MARAMING SALAMAT: SHOUT-OUT TO ATLANTIS STAFF, MAKING IT ALL HAPPEN

Before the accounts of Dive Day Four, I want to take a moment to say maraming salamat (Tagalog for "thank you") to a few very special people: some of the Atlantis Resort dive guides who have been so kind, generous, helpful and extremely knowledgeable since our arrival.

From the moment I told them in Tagalog that I spoke their language, am married to a Filipina-American, have a deep love of Filipino cultures and have extended family members here, we embraced each other as pareng ("brothers"). We bonded at the bar, where San Miguel beer and good conversation equally flowed.

So here they are, from the top left, with me in the middle: Ramcel Erum, Wing-Wing, Marco Inocencio and Kim Zudero. Top right: Marco Inocencio, a dive guide and marine biologist, leads a dive briefing for his group, about to dive Cogon, on Apo Island. Bottom right: Kim Zudero briefs his group on a dive top DuCoMi Pier. Bottom left: Dive guide Wennie Uy briefs a group on an upcoming dive. Not pictured here, but no less vital to our experience are dive shop manager Pedro Magsino, dive guides Gabi Flores and Jerry "the Mandarin(fish) King" Castillo, boat captains Ronnie Tropezado and Jaime Verances and everyone aboard the dive boats, such as Junnar Kitane and Ruben Dela Pena, who helped escort us into the bankgas and prepare our gear before and after dives to make sure we were safe, comfortable and relaxed at all times.

Maraming salamat sa inyong lahat!

Photos Copyright Gil Griffin 2009.

DIVE DAY THREE: APO ISLAND ADVENTURE

Rock Point East

After a short trip ashore on Apo for a barbecue lunch featuring chicken, fish and fresh fruit, prepared by our dive leaders and boat crew, we headed out to this site, on the island's southeastern tip.

More brightly colored, striking hard coral formations are here, as are aggressive saddleback clownfish. How aggressive, you ask? So much so that when I tried taking pictures of a couple living in the anemone at the Atlantis Resort, one swam slowly toward my camera and began pecking at my fingers. Tough crowd!

But then again, how could I blame the clownfish? Papa clownfish is just trying to protect his home, his mate and most importantly, the couple's eggs from any predators, real or imagined -- even if they're much larger.

During the surface interval after the second dive, we explored Apo, which has a small village, all under a canopy of greenery. To reach the village, you leave the beach through a gate, where about a dozen local women are selling everything from t-shirts to sarongs. It's a good thing I picked up a sarong -- a beautiful dark blue one with prints in white of turtles -- because Atlantis was having an upcoming sarong night, where entry to the restaurant was only granted with the wearing of sarongs (the restaurant did provide its own, though, for people who didn't furnish them. Most of the houses on Apo are open-air ones made of concrete blocks and small general stores line both sides of the narrow path. One dreadlocked Apo resident runs a reggae-themed shop, where he sells pictures of Che Guevara and inside, he composed a poem about the election of United States President Barack Obama.

Dive Buddies: Ernie, Doc, Jim, Annette, Mike, Brittney, Rick, Eric, Steven, Paul, George

Dive Guide: Kim Zudero

Max depth: 57 feet

Total Bottom Time: 62 minutes

Water temperature: 82 degrees Farenheit

Exposure Protection: 3mm shorty wetsuit

Air source: Enriched Air Nitrox 32% oxygen

Photos Copyright Gil Griffin 2009. Top left: Angry looking saddleback clownfish viciously attacks dive journalist; coral formation

DIVE DAY THREE: APO ISLAND ADVENTURE

Chapel Point

Anyone who dives can tell you he or she lives to hear that sound.

It's the quick, repetitive clanging of metal against metal, usually a long, thin rod or a caribeener against an aluminum tank -- your dive guide has just found something really cool and is alerting you to drop everything you're doing and quickly head over to what he or she has found.

We're in a small cave opening, where a school of glassy sweepers is shimmering and swimming and we're well past the impressive drop-off at a wall where we began the dive.

Could it be, I wonder?

My heart quickens as dive guide Kim Zudero gestures with his metallic pointer in one hand and contracts the thumb and index finger of his right hand. It's the signal for "eel" and as I follow his lead I'm rewarded with a face-to-face encounter with an elusive creature -- a ribbon eel (top left). At once, the eel is longer, thinner, stunningly brighter and impossibly smaller than the images I've only seen in magazine pages.

And the eel isn't shying away as other divers start showing up around me, eager as I am for this photo opportunity. It's body is a bright blue bordering on purple, with tinges of yellow. It rises from the sand within the cave stretching its body upward, contracting its mouth. After getting some face time, I head on, peering in every crevice of the wall of coral, trying to spy on other small life.

When you find something small and unusual like this eel, here at a site named for the nearby chapel on shore, it's as if you're on an underwater Easter egg hunt. So again, I'm excited to find yet another nudibranch and I also see a different colored sea star than the bright blue ones so common in the Philippines. Again, the corals are striking in structure, color and variety.

And as I've been showcasing photos of the friends I've made on the trip, this time (above) it's fellow NABS members Annette Myers, of Houston and Steven Miller of Amityville, New York.

Dive Buddies: Ernie, Doc, Jim, Annette, Mike, Brittney, Rick, Eric, Steven, Paul, George
Dive Guide: Kim Zudero
Max depth: 57 feet
Total Bottom Time: 62 minutes
Water temperature: 82 degrees Farenheit
Exposure Protection: 3mm shorty wetsuit
Air source: Enriched Air Nitrox 32% oxygen
Photos Copyright Gil Griffin 2009. Clockwise from top: ribbon eel in cave; sea star; coral formations; Steven Miller, Annete Myers; nudibranch.

DIVE DAY THREE: APO ISLAND ADVENTURE

Cogon, Apo Island

Call this one a high-definition drift dive.

Plunging into Cogon, a site just off the island of Apo -- a green, hilly landmass that for the first two days longingly beckoned across the water from our shores -- was like watching high-definition television for the first time.

The hard coral formations here, in a well-protected sanctuary, are strikingly vivid, intriguingly shaped and in pristine condition. There appear to be endless acres of clean, colorful hard corals, such as elkhorn ones, with some soft corals and anemone squeezed in between.

Add a nice, steadily moving current to drift a mile or more through the dive site and plentiful amounts of tropical fish, a school of jacks and a turtle and you've got a top-notch site.

This dive was the first of three on Apo Island, a 45-minute journey on the hotel's custom designed, power-infused, tricked-out bangka.

One of the most fun parts of the dive trip is getting to hang out with cool divers from other parts of the U.S. and the world, who are part of this familiarization trip put together by Ernie Arellano, co-owner of San Diego-based Scuba Travel Ventures.

Not that Ernie's not cool -- he'll have a good laugh when he reads that -- but it was a thrill to be accompanied by Dr. A. Jose Jones. Jones lives in Washington, D.C. and in 1991 founded the National Association of Black Scuba Divers (www.nabsdivers.org) -- uniting dive clubs of African descent across the world and inspiring countless others to get certified. It's an organization I joined in 2008 and am proud to belong to. Jones is also a renowned marine biologist, dive instructor, martial artist and underwater videographer. We affectionately call him "Doc" and you'll be reading more about him.

I also dived today with Jim Elliott, of Chicago, who founded the nonprofit group Diveheart, to teach and certify divers with physical challenges. Elliott's work has taken him throughout the United States and around the world, including certification of physically challenged divers in Shenzen, Taiwan. Elliott, as you'll discover in later entries, is a far more gifted underwater photographer than he gives himself credit for. In the meantime, here's a link to Elliott's website: http://www.diveheart.org/

Dive Buddies: Ernie, Doc, Jim, Annette, Mike, Brittney, Rick, Eric, Steven, Paul,

Dive Guide: Kim Zudero

Max depth: 60 feet

Total Bottom Time: 50 minutes

Water temperature: 82 degrees Farenheit

Exposure Protection: 3mm shorty wetsuit

Air source: Enriched Air Nitrox 32% oxygen

Photos Copyright Gil Griffin 2009. Clockwise from top: Turtle; hard coral formations; Gil Griffin (far left), Dr. A. Jose Jones (middle), Jim Elliott; more hard coral formations; sea star in hard coral.

DIVE DAY TWO: DAUIN SOUTH HOSPITALITY AND A PAIR AT THE PIER

DuCoMi Pier

When Kim Zudero, one of the local dive guides, asked early in the day if anyone wanted to dive the DuCoMiPier at night if slots were available, several hands shot straight up in the air in the affirmative. One of those hands was mine.
This is an opportunity that rarely is granted, given the strict security measures around the pier. It was a prime chance to do more muck diving.
But capturing images while navigating the narrow spaces between the coral encrusted pillars, dodging other divers, avoiding thumping into the corals that have taken hundreds of years to grow, taking care not to get too close to sea urchins or docile, yet venomous lionfish, holding a dive light and setting the strobe light on your camera for maximum effectiveness proved to be daunting tasks.
Oh, and did I mention keeping track of your dive guide and your dive buddies?
Or that strong current around the second set of pillars?
When it was all said and done, I came away with just a single image -- the one you see above, of a nudibranch. One of the more than dozen divers floated away from the group, but was safely found in good spirits and good humor around the corner of the large pier, where a group of local men had found the diver, who wisely and alertly surfaced and shined a dive light so our bangka captain could make a safe pickup.
Still, if the opportunity again arises, this is a night dive worth doing. But with so many divers simultaneously at this site, it can be a very difficult dive.

Dive Buddies: Paul, Jim, Mike and a cast of thousands
Dive Guide: Kim Zudero
Max depth: 56 feet
Total Bottom Time: 57 minutes
Water temperature: 75 degrees Farenheit
Exposure Protection: 3mm shorty wetsuit
Air source: Enriched Air Nitrox 32% oxygen
Photo Copyright Gil Griffin 2009. Above: Nudibranch at DuCoMi Pier.

DIVE DAY TWO: DAUIN SOUTH HOSPITALITY AND A PAIR AT THE PIER

DuCoMi Pier

Not in a million years would you think it, while cruising past the hulking, rusty tubs, the debris on the docks discarded by sailors from all four corners of the globe and the sweet, smoky aroma produced by the industrial buildings within a stone's throw of the boat landing.

But believe it -- even if, as one of the Atlantis dive guides, Ramcel told me, the locals don't -- DuCoMi Pier is one of the top dive sites in all of Southeast Asia, if not the world, for its assemblage of small and strange creatures swimming amok in the muck and the diverse and color spectrum-bending richness of encrustation growing unmolested for years on the pillars at two different piers.

It's a 15-minute ride south of the Atlantis Resort and it's so sought after among divers, shops have to book time slots with the local harbor master. Getting permission to dive the Pier at night, when the most elusive creatures are there, is a rare opportunity that shouldn't ever be passed up. Diving it involves a short surface swim near the topside boarding point and today the barge the Lancer was tied to the dock. If only the non-diving local residents and the sailors could see what's underneath, it would blow their minds.

Sinking to the sandy bottom and looking up at the towering pillars isn't too much unlike diving the kelp forests of Northern and Southern California, except here, there are no entangling kelp to struggle with. But as it is in the kelp forests, divers get the same "Jack-in-the Beanstalk" sensation of looking up and feeling infinitesimally small among the posts, as rays of sunlight cast an eerie glow in the blue.

The small pier features small creatures from shrimp and frogfish to stonefish, lizardfish, bright blue emperor angelfish, lionfish and spiny devilfish -- a sand dweller that will bite if provoked. It's a little more tricky to navigate underneath the larger pier, which divers swim to after the small one, as spiny sea urchins line the sandy bottom, taking away the ability to kneel in the sand and a forceful current sometimes pulls divers in the opposite direction of where they'd like to go. Schools of horseye jacks, goatfish and catfish are also on patrol here, trolling for food.

Dive Buddies: Rick, Jim, Mike

Dive Guide: Kim

Max depth: 56 feet

Total Bottom Time: 57 minutes

Water temperature: 81 degrees Farenheit

Exposure Protection: 3mm shorty wetsuit

Air source: Enriched Air Nitrox 32% oxygen

Photos Copyright Gil Griffin 2009. Clockwise, from top left: stonefish; batfish in shadows at DuCoMi pier; DuCoMi dive profile at dive briefing; looking upward at Pier; spiny devilfish; emperor angelfish (left in photo); lionfish; lizardfish pair.