Malapascua Day 4 & 5
Day 4
Eric and I both woke up around 4:30 this morning and then
were awake on and off until we finally got up around 6 a.m. It is hard to turn off the body clock once it
gets set.
We headed to breakfast around 7 a.m. and had the French
toast again. This time I got mine with
bananas and a fresh mango on the side and Eric got his with diced mango on
top—either version is delicious.
After breakfast we got our gear ready for the first dive at
9:30 which was to Chocolate Island. This
was by far the best dive of the trip so far.
We must have seen just about everything but sharks on this dive. We saw our first ever flamboyant cuttlefish,
regular cuttlefish, nudibranchs, a pair of black hairy frogfish, an orange
frogfish, a sea moth fish, and many others I can’t recall (typing this after
having two mango daquiri’s at happy hour—it’s a wonder I can remember
anything). After a great dive, we made
our way back to the resort for lunch and some lounging before our afternoon
dive at 1:30.
The dive at 1:30 was to Devil Ray corner—a dive we have
never done before. It is actually out at
Monad Shoal, which is where they do the morning thresher shark dives. On the way to the drop off for the dive, we
saw a bunch of Devil Rays flapping their wings on the surface of the
water. We were hoping when we got in the
water at the dive site we would see some.
Unfortunately, we didn’t see much of anything on the dive but a couple
of larger cuttlefish.
After our afternoon dip, we headed back to the resort for
dinner and reviewing our photos and videos for today. My camera and housing are working out quite
well so far. It is super easy to white
balance and the color and clarity seem to be really good.
We are going to crawl into bed early tonight as we have to
get up around 4 a.m. for the Thresher Shark dive at 5 a.m. Eric and I are signed up to do three dives
tomorrow and Eric is also going to do the night dive.
Day 5
Today was an early morning.
We were up at 4 a.m. to get ready for our 5 a.m. Thresher Shark
dive. The boat headed out just as the
sun was coming up. It is about a 45
minute boat ride to the dive site, but it is a nice ride in the early morning
with the sunrise and the ocean breeze.
It wasn’t too terribly busy at Monad Shoal by the time we
got there. We dove in and there was
actually quite a bit of current. Not too
long after we got in we saw a couple Threshers, but the visibility was poor so
we were unable to get any decent video or photos. We swam around for a while hoping to see some
other Threshers or something else like a ray, etc., but we only saw one other
Thresher.
After everyone was back on the boat, we headed back to the
resort for breakfast. We had a short
rest before the next dive scheduled for 9:30 to Chocolate Island. We had done this dive yesterday and it was
the best dive we have done so far, so we were anxious to do it again.
We headed out to Chocolate Island, which is about a 30
minute boat ride away. We dove in and
right after our entry there was a very large sea snake hunting and
feeding. That is the first sea snake I
have ever seen in the water. I was able
to get some video of it. We managed to
find the orange frogfish again and some other interesting critters. At the end of the dive, as we were finishing
our safety stop, we saw another sea snake surface for air and then dive back
down.
After the dive, we headed back to the resort to have lunch
before our next dive to Deep Slope at 1:30 p.m.
We had done this dive the other day as well and found a lot of neat
stuff. This dive it was just our guide
and Eric and me. We managed to find the
pigmy seahorse that we had seen the other day, multiple types of shrimp, and of
course nudibranchs, as usual.
After another good dive, we came back and had a bite to eat
at the restaurant before Eric headed out again for the evening/night dive at
5:45. While Eric was out diving I sat at
the restaurant and talked with a couple from Oregon that we have done some
diving with and typed up the blog for the day.
No comments:
Post a Comment