I selected the special repositioning trip from Tubbataha which only allows divers 3 months out of the year, back to Dumaguete which is better for muck diving, and it's actually excellent muck diving.
The Siren is a beautiful and spacious wooden boat
Shu our cruise director, giving us a welcome briefing
The food was pretty good:
In Tubbataha, we had a quick excursion to a bird island:
We also went to see the ranger station on top of a sand bank:
But of course, we were there for diving. Thanks to Arturo for sharing a few shots of me:
practising my fish wielding skills
We got super lucky with whale sharks. We saw 3 different ones in Tubbataha, including a baby one on our 2nd dive. I was barely ready for it as it literally swam super close to me:
Later, we saw many more at Oslob in Dumaguete, where they get fed (yes, that's cheating, but I didn't mind ;) )
I wrote a separate post just for Diving with Whale Sharks at Oslob, Philippines
We saw few full size cuttlefish, although this one pretending to be a weed, won. The other were pigmy ones we mostly found at night:
also a few squid at night
but they mostly swam away
octopus were very shy and more rare
Real sharks, outside of whitetips, we didn't see too many, but we found that school of baby ones:
Loads of crabs though, from tiny ones to huge ones with a house on their head:
And probably the most frogfish we ever saw:
Oh yeah, and friendly sea snakes:
A few choice videos:
Sea snake hunting in trio with 2 other fish:
Just a fun video of sea snakes swimming;
Lots of jacks, I mean *lots*
Super sad video of a dead blown puffer fish being carried around:
https://youtu.be/MXr87Rvv3x0
Fish and shrimp + gobi digging out their nest:
An interesting crab holding a baby (I didn't poke it with the stick, it actually grabbed it and held on to it after I lifted it gently):
Turtle scratching itself:
Night dive vids were good too (muck diving mostly). Snake eel, had never seen one before:
Cool crab:
A giant basket sea star, a Very weird animal that folds when it sees light to hide from predators:
And a scary-ish trigger fish attacking our group:
And more pictures, still:
And a few more pictures from other people on the boat with better equipment than mine:
And after 12 days of diving all good things must come to an end, with a party and sunset. Thanks to the great crew who took care of us:
