Letters from the Philippines - Diving Deep for the Great Thresher Shark

 

Philippines Photo Album

I left the craziness of Ho Chi Minh City and landed in the laid back island of Malapascua, a tiny island just off the northern coast of Cebu, an island in southern region of the Philippines. I arrived just a couple days in advance of friends & SCUBA buddies Carole & Barry - so I had a couple days to adjust to the humidity and longs days at the beach. The island is very tiny, it takes only a couple hours to walk all the way around it. It is a perfect tropical island of clean white beaches with fishing & dive boats scattered about, coconut palms, simple wooden homes in dense neighborhoods. There are still signs of recovery as the residents continue to repair the larger structures still showing sign of damage from Typhoon Yolanda, also known as Haiyan, that hit in November 2013, one of the most severe on record in the Philippines.

Coming in to Malapascua

Blue Coral Inn and our beach

View from Blue Coral Inn

Sea Creatures Great & Small

Seeing Carole & Barry again was a real delight! It hardly seemed that almost a year had passed since we had seen each other; we quickly got into our dive buddy roles and enjoyed a week of diving with the Thresher Shark Dive center. The days passed lazily - even more so because TSD starts their dives later than I'm used to.

The dives were good - the visibility a little poor, the fish a little sparse, and the water temps a little cool but tolerable once I added a extra few millimeters my dive suit, and . However - the sites I saw made it all worthwhile. Pygmy seahorses!!!! Incredible and so much smaller than I ever imagined just hung tenaciously to the thin lacy branches of colorful fan corals. Thresher Sharks!! These very large, up to 20 feet, majestic, graceful sharks that come up to 50-90 feet from their even deeper feeding grounds to be attended at cleaning stations by little wrasses whose job is to dutifully pick off parasites and what-not from any and all locations on their huge bodies.

Because we had to descend to 90 feet to even hope to see the Threshers, our dives were short. There is no guarantee the sharks would rise to our dive site but the dive gods were with us and we were able to see several sharks before we had to resurface.

In between & after dives we sampled local foods and, I'll admit we did enjoy one authentic Italian dinner. We 3 resumed the Bubbly 6 happy hour tradition of past dive trips with the whole gang. It was great way to break up the routine I have established with solo travel and reconnect in person with dear friends. But - the easy beach & diving life had to end and we had to make our way back. Carole & Barry headed home to California while I was venturing off to Myanmar.


Philippines… a few stats from the 2014 Census, INDEX Mundi

Population (of 242 countries): ranks 12, over 102.6 million (USA ranks 3, almost 320 million)
Population density (of 242 countries): ranks 34, 358 people per sq. km; (USA ranks 176, 33 people per sq. km)
Poverty (of 215 countries): ranks 79 26% (USA ranks 127, 15% ), population below poverty line
Literacy (of 215 countries): ranks 95, 95% (USA ranks 45, 99%)
HIV adult prevalence (of 169 countries) ranks 150, 0.1% (USA ranks 62, 0.6% )

Life Expectancy at birth (of 221 countries): ranks 132, 72 yrs. (USA ranks 41, 79 yrs.)