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Perry Guo
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« 回复 #2 于: 八月 17, 2007, 10:14:54 pm » |
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Diving report for Dumaguete diving :
Dive Site: Dauin Banca and Car Wrecks
Depth: 5-30 Meters
Diving Level: Beginners to Advanced
Features: In front of the resort of the Negros Recreational Divers or Nrds for short lie the remains of a giant banca and several vehicles. It is interesting to poke (figuratively of course !) around the 2 artificial reef for critters such as pipefish, dwarf lionfishes, sea horses and frogfishes. Divers should also be careful of scorpion and stonefishes which have made the wrecks their home. Closer to the shore, the seagrass beds hide more critters such as nudibranchs, bobtail squid and harlequin ghostpipefish. The mimic octopus has been spotted and photographed here too.
We spent a week diving around this area. We managed to visit well known Apo Island, an open water site with masses of good corals, turtles and schooling fish. But our hearts just weren't in it - we wanted to critter hunt so we spent dive after dive revisiting our favourite site, Dauin.
This small bay isn't for everybody. It's certainly not a pretty place, but full of the most fantastic critters. Seahorses, ornate ghost pipefish, frogfish, mantis shrimp, snake eels, flamboyant cuttlefish, pegasus seamoths and so on. We were also the first people to discover the incredible mimic octopus in the bay. He was being a snake eel when we first spotted him, then a mantis shrimp and then a banded sea snake.
Spectacular sand diving in Dauin:
It’s approved again that even diving just on a sandy slope without any corals can be very fascinating. Just beside Pura Vida Beach & Dive Resort some rare species like Hairy Frogfish (antennarius striatus) on the picture together with a Painted Frogfish (antennarius pictus), Wunderpus and even Mimic octopus were encountered the last days and weeks.
Dumaguete
Just an hour away was Dumaguete and our next destination, El Dorado Resort. This was quite different to our previous week, with a strong international influence and an on-site dive centre.
Our first full diving day started at a site called Daiun and we were itching to see how much had changed in such a short distance. OK, the water was still 28 degrees, but there the similarities stopped. The sand was dark, there were rocks and patches of seagrass plus the visibility was down.... MUCK diving!!! At three metres our reference point was a man-made bamboo pyramid, encrusted with corals, small sponges and all sorts of interesting creatures. However, Mark , our guide, indicated that we should head down a sandy slope that dropped off to nearly 30 metres - we were on a seahorse hunt.
At first all we could see was coconut husks, sticks and bits of rubber tire interspersed with small sponges, anemones and sea pens. We found puffer fish, shrimps and moray eels. Then at last, we spotted a seahorse attached to a stick, but we were out of bottom time so it was back up the slope, spotting more amazing creatures along the way. There was even an inimicus lurking in the sand.
We made a point of visiting Dauin daily, and every day we found a new critter - a white clown frogfish, a skinny, brown one and a blenny in a bamboo hole. There was a log with balling catfish, two old tires with dwarf lionfish and a little cave that had a tiny ornate ghost pipefish. Cockatoo waspfish and Pegasus seamoths lived in the seagrass, shamefaced crabs scuttled about the sand and newly born frogfish and lionfish at less than an inch long were always about for the spotting. We came across seahorses regularly and loads of tiny morays, flamboyant cuttlefish and even a white stonefish. One day we thought we spotted the rare and elusive mimic octopus. The next day we went back to check and glimpsed him from a distance. Very slowly we crept up until we were close enough to get a shot. He seemed equally curious about us and withdrew one long thin tentacle to probe around. This behaviour is regarded as mimicking a banded snake - and we couldn’t believe we were seeing it. Then the film ran out. We surfaced with the most enormous grins... what a find!
Dauin was one very superior muck dive as was the house reef which we liked it best at night. It was there that we found several different species of frogfish, leafish, cuttlefish and both types of mantis shrimp.
We also visited Apo Island, regarded as the big draw-card for this area. There were many good walls, drop-offs and outstanding visibility but strong currents make it quite a challenge. When we visited the sea was choppy and we tucked into a bay for protection. We were impressed at the variety and condition of the hard corals, and the huge number of schooling fish, trevally, tuna and barracuda.
A great destination
At the end of our second week, we were amazed at what we had discovered. Two completely different destinations and two widely different dive experiences - the blue water splendour around Alona and up-tempo muck-diving at Dumaguete. Both places had exceeded our expectations and put to rest any worries regarding problems either on land or under the sea.
The Philippines is particularly good value with the peso pegged to the US dollar at about 40. The dollar goes along way when a small bottle of beer costs around 30 pesos and a 2-course meal for two with drinks was around 500 pesos. Standards are generally good with rooms mostly being air-con although a little quirky when it comes to size and decoration.
Over an hours flight from southern Mindanao, the Visayas region is trouble free and unaffected by the recent political problems there.
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