Day 1
After simple lunch, I joined the shore dive at 2pm. Because the boat of the shop was in Apo Island for their diving day trip, we took a jeep to the breach of the dive site and geared up there. Unlike the white beaches I usually see here in the Philippine, the beach is brown color. The name of this dive site is Sahara. Like Sahara Desert, it's all sand in the sight. I spotted around 20 Garden Eels in a group right after getting into the water and was surprised why the dive master didn't point them out for us. After 10 minutes I realized Garden Eel is not special here because there are a lot of them.
Everyone knows muck diving is famous in Dauin Coast. Actually, it's was my first experience of it. I thought the visibility must be very poor, however, the visibility was very good which was at least 20 meters during my first dive there. As long the divers control the buoyancy well and not to kick up the send, we can have a good vision. In that dive, we saw frogfishes in different sizes, sea horses, nudibranches, ghost pipefishes and more which are good for macro photography.
At 5:30pm, we departed from the shop again by the jeep for the night dive. The dive site was San Miguel. It's also a muck dive. Night dive always makes me excited because we can see some creatures not easily to be spotted during day time. The maximum depth we dove was 18 meters. Aside from some crabs and shrimps which are more active during night time, we also saw some frogfishes and one Stargazer. When everyone was looking for something special with the torches, I lighted up a small and colorful creature floating above the sea bed. That's Flamboyant Cuttlefish which I had wanted to see for a long time. I was really happy about my first encounter of this beautiful cuttlefish.
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Day 2
On my second day, we took the boat of the shop to dive around Dauin Coast. The first dive was Pablocion, also all sandy sea bed at the first. The maximum depth was 26 meters, and the visibility still reached around 15 meters. I didn't see a lot of special stuffs at that dive. After 30 minutes, we started to ascend and headed to south. There is a coral reef around 20 meters depth. Suddenly, the colorful corals and tropical fishes showed up in front of us. It looks like an oasis in a desert.
The second dive was Ginama An. As I mentioned above, Pablocion is like a oasis surrounded by the sand. And this dive site is like an artificial marine community in the water. It's still the sandy sea bed at the first, and we saw a blue-spotted Stingray. We swam to 16 meters and reached to an artificial reef made of tires. Many soft and hard corals attach on the tires and attract plenty of marine life to stay around there. It's a very interesting small spot that keeps everyone to stay and find something special. Aside from some common creatures in coral reef, we saw two big black frogfishes and 2 huge scorpion fishes there. The biggest gain for me during this dive was I finally took a clear shoot of Crinoid Shrimp.
The third dive was in the afternoon at Bonnet Corner. Aside from Dive Master Rocky, Dive Master Trainee Tony also joined the dive. They said most of the good stuffs in this site stay in the shallow. We moved between 6 to 13 meters to search something interesting. What we saw were Dragonet, Sea Horse, Ghost Pipefish, Flounder, some crabs, some tine nudibranches and more. When the dive time was 55 minutes, we were in the depth of 11 meters. It's about time to surface and finish the dive. Suddenly, Tony banged his tank several times. All of us swam quickly toward to him. There was a small octopus attached to a small rock, and at the first I thought it's just a common octopus. When one of our dive buddies placed his camera near to the octopus, it stretched the body and showed slight blue rings for few seconds. What!! It a Blue-ringed Octopus, my first Blue Ringed encounter. It wasn't willing to show it's beautiful blue rings, so I only had two pictures with slight rings. Anyway, it's still a good experience.
The fourth dive of the day was a night dive. We went to a dive site named North Car. Once again we saw a Flamboyant Cuttlefish, so I took few more pictures and videos of it. Moreover, something interesting we saw were Stargazer, Reptilian Snake Eel, Napoleon Snake Eel, and Coconut Octopus. Most impressive for me was I lighted up a cuttlefish 5 meters away accidentally. It swam fast to me and bumped into my shoulder. It discharged the ink right after the incident. It didn't escape right away, but hid in the cloudy ink. It's my first time to see this phenomenon, of course, I took some pictures of that. Some of the underwater photographer don't approve this kind of pictures because they think the divers might do something to threat the creatures in order to get this special effect. But, swear to the Mother Ocean, I was the one to be hit in this case.
I dove in Apo Island on my third day. It's a totally differently feeling, so I will share that later.
Day 4
Before going back to Cebu City on my forth
day, I decided to do one more dive in San Miguel. This time I saw two
flamboyant cuttlefishes moving together. If you want to see Flamboyant like me,
maybe it's a good option to dive in Dauin Coast. After taking more pictures of
these amazing cuttlefishes, DM Rocky signed me Frogfish and grabbed his hair.
Is it a Hairy Frogfish? I swam fast to him and saw a tiny yellow frogfish in
the rocks. I couldn't distinguish if it's really a hairy one at that time and
tried to place my camera closer. I got excited because it might be my first
sight of Hairy Frogfish. I could feel my camera hit the rock, and then it
showed an error message. I kept turning on and off my camera to try to make it
work again, however, it didn't. That's it. That's my last shoot of the trip.
It's kind of special way to remember my 100 logged dive.
Anyway, I will be back, Dauin, Philippines.
Awesome sea creatures! Muck diving is a really fun activity. I first tried it at PNG, specifically at Tawali muck diving resort.
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