Palau.

I know i should be writing about the philippines but i just need to insert this in; because of all the dive destinations in the world, there is one that comes up more than others. A place like no other, to see action like no other. There are grey reef sharks, Manta rays, turtles, leopard sharks, bull sharks and tiger sharks just to name a few of its under water wonders. A place where on most days the current is pushing you faster and faster towards the open ocean. yet thousands if not hundreds of thousands of divers come here annually to jump in and see what lies beneath. The mystic place i'm referring to is without question Palau.

In 2007 I was lucky enough to have been accepted to go and work on Palau's cheapest live aboard the eco explorer. She was an old boat with 20 rooms most of them too small for a queen sized bed. with a crew of 16 plus 5 DM's and a Boat manager. She was no luxury live aboard, but she would be the platform for some of the best dives of my life. I would live on her, and eventually manage her for the 8 months. And diving wise, it was the best diving of my diving career.

Palau had 22 major sites;German Channel, Big drop off, New drop off, dexter's wall, blue corner, Peleliu corner, Peleliu Cut, Yellow Wall, Peleliu Express, Blue hole, Virgin blue hole, Turtle wall, Ngedbus wall, Ulong channel, Siaes Corner, Siaes tunnel, Ngerchong, the iro maru, chandelier cave, mandarin fish lake, and jellyfish lake. (i will blog about the best ones individually later on.)

I dove them extensively the 8 months i was there and there was never a dull moment. Living on a live aboard meant we were to do 5 dives a day, and given that we were short on guides i did almost all the dives we offered while i resided in Palau. It was 8mos of diving, just diving there was really nothing else.

Diving in Palau is technical, i mean this not in the mixed gasses sort of way but in a timing and tide sort of way. It is not like the philippines where you can just jump in on one side of the dive site on an incoming tide and another side of the site on the out going tide.

Site selection in palau depends heavily on the tide tables and the timing should be followed religiously. Sites are either incoming tide sites or out going tide sites, there is no in between here. Dive Masters knowledge of this is a must or you will spend most of your dives fighting insane currents and missing all hook in points and points of interest. So if your DM tells you the group cant do blue corner twice in a row don't be mad, he's just making sure you have the best possible palau experience the truth is deep down inside he probably wants to do it again but knows the tides wont be right.

From the strong currents at Peleliu, to descents into caverns at blue holes and Siaes tunnel, to the exhilarating hook ons at blue corner, and just sitting on the sand at german channel there is almost never a bad dive in Palau and the only limit is the divers air consumption.

There are many land based operators but hands down liveaboards are still the best way to dive Palau, The 1 hour ride out and back to the dive sites from land based facilities is a pain and why do 2 dives a day at one of the best dive destinations in the world when for a little more money you can do 5.


For more information email m.santos@bluewaterexpeditions.net

ER revisited...

At the end of 2001 i met Jed Santos, and the Balai crew. Jed was a guidance councilor at my college and an avid diver at the time. One who liked to pull people and get them hooked on it. We would dive occasionally, and i would later start to help with underwater TV shoots and the like to make an extra buck while i was figuring out what to do with my life.

But it wasnt until our group of mery men made our way to the doorstep of the CAP oceans foundation that i realized that my calling in life would always be tied to the ocean. It was in that water that i remember feeling for the first time that i was finally home. That i had found what i was looking for.

Funny that the CAP ocean foundation was HQd at a place where a lot of good memories from my past were made right in the heart of the madrigal estate. A place i hadn't been to since the death of one of my closest friends in 2002.

Bu Madrigal Warns had put out a call for volunteer divers to build his final legacy, it was a large artificial reef covering some 20hectares of coastline and costing millions of pesos to fund it to completion. There in the same waters where Pacquito died. We were going to build a living breathing reef and i was all for it. I spent almost every weekend at the sight, doing hard work and heavy underwater labor day in and day out. To me it was a way of letting go, Paco had always talked about doing such a project in Calatagan and though he was gone it was finally becoming a reality. One that stands in testament to this very day to what can be accomplished when people put all their hearts into something. It was there during the days at CAP oceans that the seeds of the Ecorescue Foundation were planted.

The ER foundation was born from a need that had to be filled, we had seen the good of the CAP oceans project. Oye the project manager of CAP oceans wanted to bring it elsewhere, maybe not at that scale but to bring conservation no matter how basic to the rest of the philippines. Jed Santos on the other hand with an army of students behind him could provide the workforce for the foundation. And Boy Siojo with his contacts and long time experience in the world of conservation would bring the whole idea together. I would be the project manager, the mule or so it was, conservations soldier; always right in the middle of the action.

The mission of ER was to bring skilled volunteers where they were needed. If there was a conservation project anywhere requiring free labor ER would answer the call; If there was a need for rescue and relief operations ER would be there along with a battalion of volunteers friends and family all willing to do their part. From an idea an army was born, an army of young and willing individuals who would to go the distance to make a difference in this world; no matter how small that difference was. ER volunteers filled roles needed everywhere in the NGO society. ER tried as best it could to provide volunteers wherever they were needed when they were needed. No distance was too great, if they called we would come.

A few years later ER finally found a home in Alaminos Panggasinan, through fate as i see it we ran into mayor Hernani Braganza of Alaminos a staunch conservationist and someone who believed in what we were trying to achieve. From just plain volunteering we were now cast in a Coastal Resource Management role and the knowledge and experience each of us gained from this was extensive. We saw conservation from both ends now, not just the NGO side but also from the LGU side it was an eye opener one i wont soon forget. ER achieved so much in alaminos, many things of which sometimes when i look back i still don't believe we pulled off but we did. The plans were always grandiose and mostly started as silly drunken ideas, but many of them became reality. Ideas like bringing the "Pinoy Big Brother teen edition" tv show to shoot their final episodes at the hundred islands and even coming up with our own acredited National Service Training Program were just a few examples of those drunken ideas becoming reality.

For a good 4 years of my life i was part of a team that did what it could for the good of the earth. And even if it didn't last forever and we all went our separate ways...

I am just happy that i dedicated part of my life to ER's Quest. And the lessons learned and experience gained will always be a part of me.

It was a dream that i was happy to have been an integral part of.

In the Beginning...

In the beginning, I never thought i would dedicate so much of my life to the underwater world. I was just a boy of 11 and my mom wanted to take a course and get her C-card. At the time she would have no one to dive with so by default the eldest son was her dedicated dive buddy, bag and equipment carrier.

We took a course Under Louie Barrios and unknown to us at the time he would be the strictest and most stringent Naui dive instructors in the philippines, an accolade he still holds to this very day. To me it was all fun and games. We learned diving theory and my favorite would be diving practice. We would learn it all or so i thought, basic skills and not so basic skills, louie being the hard ass that he was taught us and required us to know a lot of advanced skills as well. Ditching and donning, buddy breathing, 33foot weight belt retrieval just to name a few. Some skills of which were not even required then; and some of which are almost forgotten in the modern day. Of our class of Eight only two of us passed the two youngest ones at that. My mom and other classmates did go on to get their certifications but elsewhere and under a less stringent PADI program some years later.

The early years were spent diving the philippines and all the run of the mill dive destinations that it has to offer. We did Batangas, Puerto Galera, Cebu, Bohol, Palawan. We did this all as a family my brothers and sisters were certified the year after i was and my older cousins were already all divers by that time. Almost all the breaks from school were spent at diving locations and my mom always tried to make it a trip where we were all complete. I felt sorry for the DMs back then, if a DM was assigned to us most likely he would spend all his dive time chasing us waiting for us or just plain getting mad at us.

No one and i mean no one ever followed the DMs. Mom would just stop and spend whole dives just looking at one thing. Paolo and Carlo would take off at their own pace, and alexis would go head down swimming into the abyss; leaving the DM scratching his head wondering whom he should follow. I on the other hand would just hover close to my mother as from the beginning it was always my job to watch over her these early years really honed my underwater protective instinct and little did i know it would be training for the life i would eventually lead.

I tend to mention my mom a lot when talking about diving. This is because she was instrumental in my early training and early diving experiences. She would put me through things that I would never experience again throughout my diving career. Experiences extremely horrifying at the time but eventually giving me a solid understanding of boats, the ocean, and extreme weather conditions. Believe me she was not a skilled diver at all, she was just plain adventurous, if they said it couldn't be done the more she wanted to do it and she would. She had a relationship with the ocean that to this day i will never understand.

like all kids, as i entered early college life diving was forgotten we were too busy drinking with friends, hanging with our girl friends, or just plain lazy to pack our bags and go diving anymore. Mom lost interest too and i thought that would be the end...

Little did i know it would merely be, the end of the beginning...