Underwater News

The trip is a bit long but my wife Agnese and me we got used.
And so, after 26 hours flying from Milan to Cebu, we have to drive three hours to reach the Sampaguita Resort in Moal Boal. We arrive at 8pm and after a tasty dinner and a couple of mojitos we go to the room for a good night's sleep. The next day, an employee comes to wake us up because... It's already time for lunch! When we get out from our bungalow we immediately appreciate the sunshine, the garden, the palm trees and the view of the sea.
We realize now that we will spend the holiday in very relaxing and enjoyable place. The resort is very simple and basic but the great thing is that after a couple of days you feel to be at home.
The bar's terrace restaurant is very cozy and is situated directly on the reef.
After lunch we bring our diving equipment to the diving center, and then we check and fit all our cameras in their housings: two housing for dslr cameras, one for a compact one, six strobes, four cameras, cables, batteries, arms, glasses...about seventy pounds of stuff! Of course we know that most of our dives will be dedicated to macro photography. Once everything is settled we go for a dive to test all our equipment.
We can do unlimited dives on local reefs, and every day we'll make two with the boat. The first dive is satisfactory and now we find out that the site is full of life and that the area left of the reef is frequented by many green turtles.
It's clear that for us, underwater photographers, the holiday will be challenging and satisfying. Our guide for the next three weeks will be Ren?, an expert diver and able to meet all the demands of an underwater photographer.

Another very interesting dive site is the one on the wreck of a small airplane, not only for the wreck itself but also for all marine life.
The dives are not deep (usually not deeper than -100/120 feet) and no current. At the end of the day we take our computer with us and spend a couple of hours on the terrace drinking some mojitos and checking our photos while admiring at the same time the beautiful sunsets. We dedicated our time to night dive just in front of the resort where there is a colony of mandarin fishes. The night dives sometimes last nearly an hour and a half because you can find many interesting subjects swimming at only -6/7 feet depth. What's more, the area is also populated by a big family of green turtles.
In case you would decide to do the nigh dive with Ren?...Wellll, you wouldn't never come out of the water!
We had the chance to go to Oslob where it is now settled a group of about ten whale sharks. The site has become very touristic because the sharks are fed by fishermen from dawn until one o'clock, and so you have to get there before the place is crowded of tourists.
We didn't love very much this experience because sharks seem dazed from too much food and there is nothing natural about this.

Our first dive by boat has been dedicated to discover the site Garbage. As soon as we dive immediately understand the reasons for the site's name as quickly on the bottom are various types of garbage as truck tires and metal tubes.
Ren? shows us anemones full of porcelain crabs, clown fishes taking care of their eggs, ghost pipe fish and many sea slugs. As we stop taking photos of a subject there is immediately something else to take care of: small crabs, clams, shrimp... There is so much stuff to take photo of that sometimes you have to control how much air you have left in the tank because the risks of forgetting to control the pressure gauge is very high.
Do you want to see the pigmy seahorse? Ren? brings before Panagsama where to live -32mt tiny pigmy to a small range of coral. Do you want to photograph the crab of soft corals? Ren? you will find as you want...at the end of each day we made three dives and about two hundred photographs of good quality.
The dive sites are many and all very close to the resort. We spent three or four days at Pescador island, about two miles right in front of the resort, where a huge shoal of sardines stopped for two years, then they moved ahead to the village of Panagsama. There there are millions of sardines. They are so many that when you enter the school you feel to lose your balance because it's like swimming in a "fish tornado" that turns around you, and at the end you feel like a drunk.

It was much more fulfilling a few days before the encounter with a whale shark he appeared alongside our boat while we were sailing from Panagsama to the resort. It was a real surprise!
We immediately jumped into the water without tanks. It was around 20 feet long and he came immediately towards us, slow and elegant...
He came so close that we could have touched him but of course we didn't. It was beautiful to see him disappear into the blue...and watch it slowly ascend from deep blue to reappear then...
Agnese was very happy and excited because until that moment she he had never met a whale shark.
The excitement was huge even for me, you bet! You never get used to the emotions that you can receive from the underwater world. The days pass quickly thanks to the good food, the mojitos and the pleasant company of a group of Italian divers. At the end of our vacation we checked all our underwater photographs: they were about 3000 and all very beautiful thanks to the clarity of the water and the skill of our guide. We spent our last day walking around Moal Boal and buying some souvenirs in Panagsama.
In the evening we had a great dinner with our new friends by taking a few drinks and singing a bit of Italian songs.
A long journey lies ahead: the return will be a bit sad but we will bring in our hearts the images of all those fantastic underwater creatures we met underwater and the faces of our new friends and the aromas and colors of this beautiful country where we hope to return as soon.

Words & Pictures by Davide Barzazzi