Days 9 and 10

The dive team at the Atlantis Resorts in Puerto Galera have split the ImageMakers into three groups, and at 0745, we split up into our separate teams for a thorough briefing with our guides.

The sites around Puerto Galera are characterized by a series of fringing reefs, following the shoreline. This gives a combination of white sand muck diving and more conventional hard and soft corals.

The boats are moored literally outside the dive center, and the attentive staff did a fantastic job of ensuring that everyone and their respective equipment ended up in the right boat. The boats are small skiffs, with outboards and the travel time to the dive sites usually is 10-15 minutes.

Once there, gear up and a quick backward roll gets you onto the site.

They are classic muck sites with lots of critters on the sand and some coral rubble and reef. The sand is very white, especially when compared to the sand at Dumaguete and Lembeh. This can cause problems with exposure.

The critters are classic muck, with a wide variety of octopus:

Nudibranchs:

Frogfish:

Cuttlefish:

And other critters:

As mentioned in the previous page, I have been trying to get to grips with the Laowa 24mm f/14 2 x macro probe lens in its Nauticam housing kit. It is a manual focus and aperture lens, so it takes some getting used to. It provides a unique perspective, which, as yet, I have not managed to exploit to its fullest potential…

We did three dives, returning to the dive center between each dive. The resort will offer 3-4 dive super day, but our group tends to be doing longer dives, so it is easier to do 3 long ones. There is the option of a night dive each night too.

Day 10 continued in the same theme, with lots of diving and image making.

The results with the Laowa lens were more pleasing:

After lunch, we visited the town of Sabang, just around the corner forth resort. The resort is quiet and relaxed, and it is a shock to find the bustle of a busy town literally around the corner!

For the afternoon dive, I swapped from the Laowa lens to a Nikon 105mm along with Inon’s +4 ND filters on my Z330 strobes and the Nikon UCL-67 and Nauticam SMC-2 macro conversion lenses.

Tomorrow, we will head out to Verde Island for the day. Billed the “Epicenter of biodiversity in the epicenter of biodiversity,” the island’s reefs host more species than anywhere else currently surveyed. Check out tomorrow’s post to see how the diving went!

Days 1 and 2.
Days 3 and 4.
Days 5, 6 and 7.
Day 8.
Days 9 and 10.
Days 11 and 12.