Holiday Update

I've been on some killer dives the past couple of days and I'd
thought I'd share. The weather has been a little on the weird side,
some of it was remnants of Utor, then cloudy days. We had some days
with really thick plankton after the new moon. So, it was, well, like
I said, weird. Then on Christmas Day, things started looking up. I
took some new divers to Angol and the visibility was nice. We could
see critters again!

On the 26th we went to Baling Hai. Odd thing as the visibilty is
getting better, the water temp is dropping! Brrr. On the 26th we had
a totally killer dive on Yapak 2. The current was so good that we
drifted all the way to Yapak 3! Visibility at depth was 30m or more.
On the 27th we did a channel drift dive. Even at slack tide, we felt
like we were flying. Yesterday we dove on the Camia II. Again, the
water temp is colder than anyone remembers, but the viz was great!
20m or more. And no current or surge. It's great!

Balinghai Stingray encounter!

Hendrick and I headed to Balinhai last Thursday for a little deep dive action as part of his advanced class. While heading out to the wall we were greeted by a Mantis shrimp outside his den. Heading down the wall we spotted a 2 meter banded coral snake looking for unsuspecting fish in a small crevice on the reef. As we crossed the sand patch at 18-30 meters and got to the outer wall a Green sea turtle glided by us, at this point I had turned to Hendrick three times pointing and giving a the "shaka" which mean we are seeing cool stuff. Hendrick remember as part of his advanced class to notify me when 20 min was up, and his buoyancy and trim were spot on. As we started to cross the sand patch I noticed lots of disturbed silt and sand in the water which looked unnatural. That meant one thing, Huge stingray! Hendrick and I followed the sand cloud till it reached it thickest point and there it was, at least a two meter brown ray flapping its wings in the sand. It looked up and saw Hendrick and I and wanted nothing to do with us and gracefully glided away. At 70 Bar we called the dive and started our ascent to our first safety stop 9 meters and then to 6 m and 3m with a 1 min stop for each. Another great dive in Boracay! Good job Hendrick!

Photogenic shark.

Gina, and I went for a dive to Yapak. Yapak is a wall dive. The top of the wall is about 30meters and it drops to about 55m. When we descended onto the wall we were greeted by one of the resident sharks. It was a small White Tip Reef Shark, Just Chillin. It stayed with us for a while, keeping almost just out of sight. At one point, it looked like it stopped on the bottom just for us to take a picture. Our dive time was 26 minutes including the safety stop. Short but packed with lots to see.