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.