Diving in Sogod Bay So Gooood

This post is a bit on the borderline of my blog, but underwater photography is also looking for dive sites to find good subjects.

Having never been to the Philippines, only one place came to me: whatever happens, I would go first to the east of this archipelago. A place somewhat anonymous and off the beaten track, which hides its little creatures well, was the description that Austrian divers had left me.

There is no bar, pizzeria, disco for tourists but schoolchildren who shyly watch you with giggles, fishermen who share their port at night with the few dive centers along a coral reef .

After visiting other spots throughout the Philippines, my favorite will remain Sogod Bay in the southern province of Leyte.

Getting to Sogod Bay

To get there, you have to love the journey and its little ups and downs. After taking a ferry from Cebu City to one of the ports in Leyte province, you must then take the road to get to Sogod Bay. Allow about 6 hours of transport in total. Filipinos take the ferry like a Parisian, the metro, well almost. People dare to look each other in the eyes, we chase, we eat and we have the right to smile 🙂 Some are lying on bunks, others look dumbfounded at the blockbuster in the air-conditioned room of the cafeteria and they have in common not to travel light since large colorful plastic bags filled with food (including boxes of donuts :)) rest at their feet.
Porters at the departure and arrival of ferries can help you transport your luggage.

The southern province of Leyte is the countryside, buffaloes in the rice fields, small stalls of fruit and fish along the road that leads us to Padre Burgos. For all the roads are in good condition, memory of the Japanese occupation during the Second World War. There are few private cars, some Pedicab (motorcycle equipped with roof and side and rear seats that can carry 4-5 people and some chickens) and Jeepneys like jeep colored minibuses on which sometimes express artistic talents.

We doze off in the taxi and then we wake up with a hazy gaze, no longer knowing too well whether it is a dream or a reality, so much the jet lag and lack of sleep make us lose our time references. We revel in the morning and soothing landscape offered by the coastal road lined with coconut trees and at the bend of a bend, the taxi stops in front of a small, well-flowered pension. We cross the room which serves as reception, bar, dining room, TV room to find ourselves on the small terrace with a breathtaking view of a very wide arm of the sea where the green hills of the island of Panaon can be seen in the distance. .

In front of the macro!

The divemasters on the beach are busy preparing the equipment for the next outing. A little impatient to discover the depths, we hurry to take out the diving equipment. It left for a dive in front of the center following a fairly weak current. Even if the visibility is average, there are superb barrel sponges with convoluted or flattened shapes, coral potatoes covered with orange alcyonnaires and red whip coral, a school of jacks there, a school of gâtrins there, fish scorpions are hiding in the hard coral, flabellines so small that I need 2 macro lenses and a careful guide to find us critters that will make me make "ahhh!" ohhh! ” under water.
When we are passionate, we tend not to count any displease to the banker. Then the next dives will last at least 70 minutes.

The nightlife of a Philippine port

Still not satisfied for this first day, we want to do the night diving of Padre Burgos. Funny creatures would have taken up residence under the pontoon. This dive is allowed only 3 times a week and at night only. Our tiny bus goes down the hill to get to the pontoon and in the dark we put the vests on. Be careful when you go down the stairs, they are very slippery. Some onlookers gather around the driver to ask where they come from?
Needless to say, the depth gauge hit 7 meters, but it's a pleasure to see that gorgonians and sponges have colonized the pillars of the pontoon. I need a little time to recognize the head of this brown antennae as its camouflage is perfect. A tribe of black seahorses line up on an old junkyard and try to outwit the light from our lamps. Like a show, the meetings multiply and we do not know where to look, here a porcelain crab, a uranoscope buried in the sand, a couple of pipefish seems to dance, a robust ghostpipefish imitating the movement of an algae. I have a list of "shrimps to see and not to eat" prawns that feature: tiger shrimp "Phyllognathia ceratophthalma" and feather shrimp or Donald duck "Leander Plumosus". Our guide was able to find these two tiny shrimps (less than 2 cm) in the same habitat, rich in hydrozoans. It was difficult to take pictures and I came out with slight rashes on my hands. I cannot make an exhaustive list here but we did the dive a second time in the week. In the light and music of karaoke bars (be careful, it's serious in the Philippines, they are real music lovers), we return to our micro bus and remain speechless to remember all these meetings.

It's not just sandy bottoms!

The next few days will be 3 dives a day, alternating dives along the Limasawa and Napantao drop offs and muck dives in the afternoons and nights. I particularly liked the beautiful drop-offs of Napantao, where gorgonians and comatulas with beige and black hues are mixed, schools of trevallies pass along the reef to descend into the blue. The top of the reef was also full of fish and offers beautiful underwater scenes.

“Little Lembeh” in the Philippines

Intrigued by the name of a dive site, "Little Lembeh", in reference to the very famous muck dive site of the Lembeh Strait in Indonesia, we leave in the micro bus to discover this site which is 30 minutes away by road. . It begins with a good 15 minutes of kicking on a very brown sand bottom. Doubt then wins us over, there is nothing to see, just a porcelain crab and symbiotic shrimp housed in an anemone. My gaze and that of my buddy meet, perplexed. At the same time, our shoulders are raised and our arms move. Strangely enough, the guide persists and always wins. And there the habitats of hydrozoans, comatulas and pennatulas multiply, and it is again a festival of creatures: juvenile antennas, nudibranchs (flabellines, ceratosoma, chromodoris, ...), a popcorn shrimp "Hamopontonia corallicola" , beautiful periclimenes venustus, brevicarpalis and magnificus shrimp, another Donalduck shrimp and a tiger shrimp, robust ghost fish and a yellow seahorse to finish. The dive lasted only 98 minutes ...
This dive is very easy since it is shallow and particularly easy for photographers, you can turn on the fins and you have plenty of time to apprehend the creature and its movements.

Diving with a whale shark

Sogod bay is blessed between February and April by the migration of whale sharks. No guarantee is given then to swim with these mastodons of the seas. Here they are not fed. But you can be sure that if you cross them, you will only be a few people in the water enjoying good visibility. And with a little luck, you may meet them at a dive. Are not our most beautiful dives the ones where there is a surprise?

Keep the coral at risk

In their quest to survive and ignoring the devastating long-term effects on their marine resources, the Filipinos have blasted many reefs to catch the dead fish floating on the surface. Some years, the coral here undergoes the warming of the water and the proliferation of the corallivorous starfish "Acanthaster planci". Most of the dive sites around Sogod bay are “Marine Protected Area” for which divers pay a fee. It is forbidden to fish in these areas and it is a refuge for many species. The conservation of coral reefs is certainly a complex issue that does not fascinate the political world. But the diving center is committed day to day for its conservation, by coral cuttings or operations to slow down the devouring starfish.