Palawan: El Nido & Tubbataha reef (Philippines)

Precautions of use : The summary is factual and concerns my experience. 
For the trip before and after the dive - Palawan visit - I can provide info and photos, email: izoch06@yahoo.fr.

Diving in El Nido

We dived at Palawan Divers. The team is very friendly and also efficient for hotel and ballad information. The diving boat is 2 meters wide, can be 2,5m by pushing. It is a outrigger canoe, one on each side. It is therefore very narrow and it lacks space when everyone is preparing.
The blocks are pre-equipped and placed upright at the front, tight against each other and to my amazement they only fell once. But when it falls, it's the domino effect. In the event of rough seas, a sailor goes to the front and maintains everything. We were worried about our personal materials (I'm a maniac).

Getting back on the boat is sporty if there are waves. When arriving, pay attention to the swing of the pendulum on the head. The weight belt and the block are given to the sailor, then the fins, we avoid the bow, we go up the ladder, a sailor holds out his hand but sometimes it is insufficient and as at the top there is no handrail, at the first good wave, we fall back into the water.

We did 3 dives, saw some clown fish, a turtle, surgeons, a few coral tables. Quite a few broken or dead corals. Information heard on the spot: there was an invasion of starfish which "ate everything" and unbalanced the flora and fauna. The panorama to go to the dive sites is very beautiful, you can also do the ballad and only PMT.

Info from a former diving instructor from Port Barton, met in Port Barton: he closed his club in 2004 because there is nothing more to see. He said the funds damaged at 95% by dynamite and intensive fishing has completed desertification. After trying to alert the authorities, to inform the fishermen that it was also vital for them to preserve their resources, he threw in the towel and opened a restaurant. We did not dive in Port Barton, we cannot confirm, but that would join the general impression of diving in El Nido.

Tubbataha - Sulu Sea - 13/05/11 to 18/05/11 in the morning
The site is completely prohibited to fishing, it is open for diving from 15 / 03 to 15 / 06.

When I started looking for an agency in France, the answers were long overdue and a week after sending my email I had to call to get the answers - Ha! my good Dam ', the client is not what it used to be! - "we don't do", "we are complete until 2012". 

Finally, search on the net and I find Dive & Cruise, without bad comments, nor on the Expedition Fleet boats which are the ones offered. Cruise booked with Dive and Cruise, contact Johann.
He is French, he answers emails the same day or in 24h, the phone number to reach him is in France, we leave ours on his answering machine and he calls back. When he is absent for several days he warns and gives his return date. That is the demand of the people ? He is based in Phuket but it is not a problem. I found it square and efficient, even giving me tips for flights. The booking history:
- we were booking from 14 to 20/5, Stella Maris boat but a group rented it in full
- we were transferred to the Pacific Explorer II from 13 to 18/5 with one less diving day. This boat had an engine problem and Johan informed us that we were changing it
- we arrived on the Borneo Explorer with the same dates but without nitrox, nitrox compressor system broken.
Johann managed by passing the pill diplomatically, being himself an intermediary of Expedition Fleet and knowing that it was impossible to do otherwise.

The boat : he is naughty and when you look at him coming back from diving, you laugh so much he looks "cubic". It has been rehabilitated for diving and is basically functional. You feel safe there and it looks maintained.

Timetable (forecast and adapted according to the weather):
- 6h00 standing and light breakfast
- 6:30 am briefing
- 7h00 dive 1
- 8:30 am breakfast
- 10h00 dive 2
- 11:30 am lunch
- 13h30 dive 3
- 15h00 dive 4
- 16 p.m. afternoon tea
- 18:00 p.m. night dive
- 19:30 p.m. - 20:00 p.m. dinner
Water temperature: 30 to 32 ° C at the surface, 28 ° to 30 m.

To port and starboard has been added a platform which mounts in navigation and lowers to let the divers settle in the small boats which bring them on site. On the platform two large basins to rinse the equipment and a cold shower.

To equip, two rooms are juxtaposed to the platforms and measure approximately 5 x 1,5 m, the coveralls are hung on hangers along the window and plastic boxes stacked in a corner store everyone's equipment. A small bench allows 3 divers to sit down to finish getting equipped but when there are 10 of us getting ready, it's really narrow. There is no reliable place to put your camera equipment. Once on the small boat, next to you on the bench, if the neighbor puts on his seatbelt, we are not very quiet and we protect the device with his hands. Otherwise it is placed in the crate and piled up with the others.

A table ! The food is good, varied and like on all boats, the cook is popular. At the main meals, vegetables, fish and / or shrimp, meat, rice, potatoes and / or legs, mangoes, bananas, yellow melon. The dining room is large enough to hold 20 people but it quickly gets noisy. There is TV which allowed fans to watch a boxing match.

Our cabin, it is located at the front, we have 9 windows, the view is at 180 ° of the sea and our living space must be 15 m2, plus the bathroom / toilet, it's very luxury! You sleep well there, there is almost no noise. We have not seen the other cabins and I cannot describe them but the envious said that they are much smaller.
Air conditioning is general, so you can't turn it down or turn it off. Two small hatches, to open or close according to your desire for cold, serve as a thermostat. The solution for other passengers is to leave the door open to let in the heat; hello energy saving, we gave up. I was sick from the second day (big sinusitis) and I missed 2 days of diving on 4, I had the lead.

In front of our cabin a small terrace with 3 sun loungers and at the rear the same space with a table and 4 chairs. On the convivial side, as there is no large pleasant lounge deck where you can collapse and chat after meals, it's difficult to get to know one another. Two groups are formed according to the dives that remain the same from start to finish.

The mix is ​​global, Australian, Chinese, Japanese, Dubai, Filipino and the atmosphere was relaxed on the 3 day, with the exchange of good diving tips around the world, eating habits that make others laugh and the experiences of each.
A Japanese man to whom I gave 70 years, made 3 weeks of dives on Tubbataha. This unusual character had t-shirts from around the world, plunged into the blue, completely disinterested in the reef and explained to us that he wanted to exclusively see big things. I liked him.

The crew are very attentive and do everything possible to be pleasant and to accede to the wishes of the customers.

Diving safety : There is everything you need on board. For diving, count only on yourself and your buddy if you are used to diving with it. This is also where we realize that our federated French education and our state certificates are at the top (Cocorico! … yes, I like it !).

I don't know what they learn from Padi (I know, I'm restricting my potential as friends! Though ..!) But in the series the sketches:
- divers put on their belts without fins on their feet (I was trained by the old school; thank you Bernard, Paul & Daniel)
- our instructor is young, she flippers a lot, the team stretches over 50 m, the photographers have little time to take their pictures and she is only worried about the absence of 2 divers already back on the boat.
- at the end of the dive, she gets on the boat first, completely removes her equipment and is therefore absolutely not able to return to the water if a problem occurs to someone who is still there. It is true that we signed a total discharge but morally, this is not a reason.
FYI, a diver was lost at sea (not at Dive & Cruise) 15 days before our cruise. When we discussed it with the other dive master (French), the elements suggested that the sea was bad, the boat that brought the divers on site turned around and that the diver would have either been knocked out, or would have had his weight belt without fins on the feet, and sank.

The dives :
palanquée : 9 divers plus the instructor. To 10 people, to take photos you have to want it and a good photo with a subject that has not leaked, is a miracle. The first dive stops after 30 min, one of the divers (advance) has only 30 bars and has not warned the instructor. I still managed to make some bad shots of a shark and the reef. Hubert goes back up with 100 bars and I go back to 80.

There we touched closely on the PADI system, (Hi Franck!) the dive master is not a monitor in the sense that I understand it. My little level of English translated as "diving master", or am I wrong? It is a dive guide which shows the site and which gives no advice on how to dive, no advice on breathing, balance, restlessness or kicking. It is the binomial ofAdvance and the divers who did it progressively and we managed to dive 50 mn - bravo Advance and thank you all (like what we can all be monitors Pas-Dit, re-hi-Franck! Personal message: make us a DPS saga, Desesperate Padi System, I already have first names, Padimanche, Padici, Padirac, but I'm getting lost, ha! Ha!)

Dialogue with the instructor:
- "You asked for the amount of air for each?
- Yes, but sometimes people lie to stay longer.
- Well, on the first dive, you ask for the amount of air and you check yourself by taking their mano, that frames people for the next dives.
- Uh… ”
I like her, she is nice, funny and in the spirit of appropriateness, but there are things that amaze me. A posteriori, it makes me laugh! As one of my say old instructors "advice does not replace experience".

The sites : Malayan Wreck, Wall Street, Amos Rock, Gorgonian Channel, South Park, Shark Airport, Washing Machine, South West Wall, Hanging Park, Staghorn Point, Delsan Wreck

They are located around a large coral plateau, there are a maximum of 5 boats on one site. The boat managers communicate with each other in order to plan the dive sites during the day and try to reduce the number of divers per site.

The reef : large pink, white and blue gorgonians planted on the drop offs, beautiful coral tables, many small reef fish, surgeons, some chestfish, some sharks, some clownfish, a napoleon, a large school of tuna , an eagle ray, humpback parrots. Hub also saw a small "devil ray".

For the last dive I wanted to dive despite the sinusitis. The team seeing me "sinusitée" found me a pair and I was lucky to have a private guide, Jack, sailor and diver; I really appreciated. Flat sea, no current, I took 10 mn to get to 12 m, he had patience. It's my best dive because at 2, less noise and we saw a lot of things, a big school of barracudas, a turtle, a beautiful gray shark and a guitar shark on a large plateau of white sand, potatoes rocks and coral. It was beautifully colored.
The dive descended to 40 m hoping for hammerhead sharks came back empty-handed.

After three days of diving nothing big, no manta, no hammer, no whale shark - Hubert did all the dives. I thought that in the open sea, it would be more provided and I wonder if it is not fished here too despite the park guards. Or the water is too hot. Or we were unlucky. Or the cruise is too short.

Self-critical sequence :
I am able to rave about, on a spirograph and wait 10 min to hope to take THE snapshot that gives it all its elegance, on the blue electric Castagnol babies, or look for a mother-of-pearl in a posidonia field. Not really the moon.
Have I "stuffed the slack" on Tubbataha, I am choosy? I had the chance to go there, to see everything that I have listed above and I want more. Right now, I'm hungry because I wanted to see big stuff and I convinced myself that they would be there. After all, the Japanese gentleman also came for that. Given the price of the cruise and the price of transport, you want to amortize your dives, knowing that it is silly and that the sea is what decides.
Reason kept now : luxury cabin, beautiful sea, warm water, seen a slew of fish, charming people, and all ready to go for… three weeks! If you can go for it.