Author: cbartazo

Divers as Protectors of Ocean Planet

cbartazo

Camiguin Island Underwater Paradise
Just like climbers and campers have an ethic or code to live by – so do scuba divers. Project AWARE’s 10 Tips for Divers to Protect the Ocean Planet helps divers of all skill levels make a difference when they dive, travel, and more. Share the 10 Tips for Divers to Protect the Ocean Planet and do our part to take this ocean ethic to heart.

  1. Be a Buoyancy Expert

Underwater plants and animals are more fragile than they appear. The swipe of a fin, bump of your camera or even a touch can destroy decades of coral growth, damage a plant or harm an animal. Streamline your scuba and photo gear, keep your dive skills sharp, perfect your underwater photo techniques and continue your dive training to fine-tune your skills. Always be aware of your body, dive gear and photo equipment to avoid contact with the natural environment.

  1. Be a Role Model

New scuba divers are being trained and certified every day. Regardless of your experience level, be sure to set a good example for others when interacting with the environment – while underwater and on land. 

  1. Take Only Photos – Leave Only Bubbles

Nearly everything natural found underwater is alive or will be used by a living creature. If you take a coral, shell or animal, you can disturb the delicate balance and add to the depletion of dive sites for future generations.

  1. Protect Underwater Life

Choose not to touch, feed, handle, chase or ride anything underwater. Your actions may stress the animal, interrupt feeding and mating behavior or provoke aggressive behavior. Understand and respect underwater life and follow all local laws and regulations.

  1. Become a Debris Activist

An astonishing amount of waste makes its way underwater, reaching even the most remote ocean areas. Once there, it kills wildlife, destroys habitats and threatens our health and economy. Don’t let your dives go to waste. Remove and report what doesn’t belong underwater every time you dive. Make a conscious effort to buy green, buy local and, when possible, buy less.

  1. Make Responsible Seafood Choices

Overfishing leads to species declines while harmful fishing practices damage and pollute underwater ecosystems. You play a critical role as a consumer. If seafood is part of your meal selection, ensure you’re choosing sustainably sourced species and encourage others, including restaurants and shop owners, to do the same.

  1. Take Action

Scuba divers are some of the strongest ocean advocates on the planet. Now, more than ever, divers like you are taking a stand. Speak out for conservation, share your underwater images, report environmental damage to authorities and campaign for change.

  1. Be an Eco-tourist

Make informed decisions when choosing and visiting a destination. Choose facilities dedicated to responsible social and environmental business practices that include water conservation, energy reduction, proper waste disposal, use of mooring buoys and respect for local cultures, laws and regulations.

  1. Shrink Your Carbon Footprint

Global warming and ocean acidification are putting your favorite animals and the whole ocean planet at risk. Do your part by understanding and reducing your carbon footprint and look for ways to offset what you can’t reduce.

  1. Give Back

Ocean protection depends on all of our actions, large and small. Investing in the ocean protects our planet and lets the dive adventure live on. Donate or fund raise for ocean protection to fuel the grassroots action and policy change necessary to ensure a clean, healthy ocean planet.

We are all ambassadors for the ocean and we have every reason to be active in protecting the deep blue world given the privilege to explore and experience its beauty and wonders. What about you, how do you protect the ocean? If you are a diver, environmentalist, marine enthusiast or a concerned citizen, take the pledge and spread the word. The Ten Tips Action Kit is a great and friendly tool for your eco boost. Go ahead!

 NB. Source is www.projectaware.org

Captivating Depths

cbartazo

My quests in the blue world were not without challenges, some phenomenal but mostly intriguing.  Summing it up I enjoyed every bit of these experiences, always coming home with renewed spirit and increasing admiration and love for the depths.  It meant traveling far, passing a night at the airport, spending fortune, neglecting comforts, entrusting my life to strangers and extending limits of my self-imposed modesty. Sometimes it was surprising I have gone that far. The scale of challenges is increasing. Yes, I have gone that far.

My search around the country is still on-going and few of them stand out for their mystic and charm, like sucking senses and left a diver fazed in wonder. Here are few sites that captured my heart and curiosity, it felt like I can’t get enough from my descent on its depths.

  • Pescador Island, Moalboal
    OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA This lowly island held surprising secrets, the phenomenal sardine’s run will stir your curiosity how  these           millions of small fish come together and synchronize for a tornado.  It is so tempting to come and be amongst in their assembly and get lost in their midst!
  • The Canyons, Puerto Galera
    Swept off by the current!
    Hole in the Wall!
    Rich in marine life…

    Dropping at Escarceo Point, drifting fast with the currents passing field of colorful acropora corals, and race over  several drop-offs to reach the Hole in the Wall. Steadying for the entrance, I was completely surprised as I was sucked in the hole in a split second!  There, the Canyons teeming with marine life.

  • Akitsushima Maru, Coron
    There is that rush what’s beyond!
    A cannon ball hole?
    Who’s afraid of the dark?

    All the World War II wrecks concentrated in Coron Bay gave me that rush for the penetration but Akitsushima is different. She is simply beautiful, one of the few true warships among the wrecks. We penetrated chambers, crevices, holes and square openings.  Mysterious and truly engaging, the dark and its secrets and historic value held so much attraction to me.  Its externals is teeming with fish life, remnants like broken crane, canon ball hole, artillery and funnel.  It is an advance dive due to depth and currents.

  • Monad Shoal, Malapascua
    Thresher shark
    Tresher shark

    Watching a flock of quirky thresher sharks swimming before me on early morning was one of my unforgettable underwater experience, I almost cried in amazement! I can sit at the viewing edge and watch them until they are gone. Threshers are deep inhabitants but a herd always gathers every morning at the shoal to be cleaned from parasites and algae on their bodies by wrasses, more of a symbiotic relationship as these wrasses were fed from the sharks.  Monad offer guaranteed sightings everyday on early mornings!

  • Banaug Shoal, Mantangale
    Denise pygmy in corals!
    Resident scorpion fish

    The shoal is about 22 meters depth from the surface but this underwater hill can never be outdone in terms of diversity in marine life.  The swarm of damsels, red snappers, angels, sergeants, wrasses amidst hard corals and tangling soft corals, it is always as colorful as it was. Moray eel, stone fish, leaf fish, lion fish, nudis, sea stars are just few that inhabit the small hill.  It is always tempting to go deeper to explore what’s beyond.  This may not be in the diving map but its richness can be at par with exotic dive destinations.

Have you tried diving from any of these sites? I’m still in search for sites and I know I will never exhaust them in my lifetime.  There is yet a lot of secrets to unravel right here in my home country.

NB.  All photos courtesy of Angel using Tough 8000 with PT 045 casing

Leaf or Fish?

cbartazo

Leaf or Fish?

The leaf fish (Taenianotus triacanthus) resembles a dead leaf lying in the water. To enhance this camouflage it even makes gentle sideways movements in its pelvic area which make it resemble a drifting inert object. It is an ambush predator, waiting until a suitable prey, a small fish or shrimp approaches. Then it slowly moves with its pectoral fins close to the victim. When the leaf fish is close enough, the prey is sucked in by a sudden opening of its mouth. It eats victims up to half its body length but larger animals are completely ignored.

I was not expecting to meet her again at Banaug Shoal but she was there, silently taking refuge between soft corals as if swaying sideways by the current. It is just one of interesting residents in the house reef.  Simply beautiful …

Scuba Diving Bad Habits

cbartazo
Dive buddies stick to each other
Dive buddies are watchful with each other

Wonderful sights await when exploring the depths – hammerhead sharks, ribbontail stingray, barracuda tornado, sardines run and  a lot more.   Classic scuba diving bad habits are no exception – from experienced divers no less! This country is replete with great dive sites and attracted foreign divers, our companions when diving Coron, El Nido, Tubbataha, Puerto Galera, Malapascua were generally of other nationalities boasting their experiences.  Liveaboards also typically attract hardcore divers, on average the people on board had 300+ dives, but a few of these old salts made mistakes that even a brand new diver would consider a rookie move.

As a start for the year, I borrowed this article from www.padi.com as a reminder what to avoid and maintain good etiquette what was taught in my course when I first become a diver.  Cheers to great diving in 2014!

Bad Habit #1 – Skipping the buddy check

You ask your buddy, “You ready? Yeah? Let’s go diving.” Everything seems fine until you roll off the boat and discover you forgot your fins, your buddy’s tank is loose, or something even worse.
Forgoing a buddy check takes a shortcut on safety and increases the chance of having to solve a problem in the water. You can learn more about avoiding and adapting to problems in the PADI Rescue Diver course, but the best thing to do (as we teach during the Rescue course) is prevent problems before they begin with BWRAF .

Bad Habit #2 – Shooting fish butts

There were some very expensive camera rigs on board, but an expensive setup doesn’t guarantee good photos. Especially when the photographer doesn’t know underwater photo basics, or fails to practice good marine life etiquette.

I saw one diver with a top-of-the-line camera system taking a photo straight down over a coral head. I’m no photo pro, but I learned in the Digital Underwater Photography online course that shooting straight down on your subject tends to produce flat, uninteresting images. Perhaps it was an avant-garde shot.

I watched another diver race from one critter to the next – chasing off marine life as he went. The dive guides tried to counsel this diver, but he wouldn’t listen, “This is how I always dive” was his reply. I wondered how many pictures of fish butts he had… and how he ever found a dive buddy!

Bad Habit #3 – Not wearing the right exposure protection

Every time I show up at at a tropical dive destination, other divers laugh at me for wearing a 5mil wetsuit and a beanie cap in 28C/82F water. But by wearing the exposure protection that’s right for me, I never have to cut a dive short because I’m cold.

After a few years diving regularly in California I tried the PADI Drysuit Diver specialty and wondered, “why didn’t I do this sooner?” I imagine the cafe owners on Catalina Island wondered what ever happened to that girl who asked for cups of hot water to dump down her wetsuit.

Bad Habit #4 Wearing the incorrect amount of weight

Picture a brick, the kind used in home building. Imagine carrying it around with you all the time – taking it up stairs, trudging up a hill, etc. Having extra weight on board means your body has to work harder; your breathing will be heavier and so on.

When teaching the Peak Performance Buoyancy specialty course, that brick weight is (on average) the amount I take off a diver’s weight belt. New divers often wear excess weight, and get used to carrying it around. But there’s a major downside – too much weight can lead to excess air consumption. The extra weight means the body has to work harder to push through the water, and on top of it many divers swim continuously to keep themselves buoyant. All that extra effort drains your tank faster than necessary.

Drop that brick and extend your dive time! Review your open water materials for how to do a buoyancy check, or ask your instructor about the Peak Performance Buoyancy specialty course.

Bad Habit #5 – Neglecting gear service

Woe is the diver who pays half a month’s salary to go on the dive trip of a lifetime and has an equipment problem. When maintained properly, dive gear can last for years. Ask your local dive center about the Equipment Specialist course. You’ll get to know your gear and learn how to perform basic maintenance yourself. That said: some equipment service must be performed by a professional. Use the gear locker section of your ScubaEarth profile to keep track of when your gear gets serviced.

Season’s Greeting from Underwater World

cbartazo
blue, yellow, orange worms
yellow and white worms in pairs
green like a midget tree!
pinkish white, like on a snow

There are around 10,000 species of bristleworms, almost all of which live in the sea.  They live in plankton, buries in sand or mud, and also in crevices or moving around freely in rock and coral reefs.  One of the common we see underwater is Christmas tree worm, embedded in living coral and often in groups.  The crown is made up of two spiral rings of tentacles, the color is very variable: white, yellow, orange, pink, blue, dark purple, blackish and sometimes also spotted. It is sedentary and plankton feeder.

It is very timid and normally, retracts instantly in response to any suspicious shadow or wave movement.  Sometimes though, few can be generous and would stood their ground even with strangers so I got the photos above.  If you dive this month, get the chance to look for this elusive critters and be greeted for this season in the depths!

Have great dives this season!

NB. Above underwater photos were taken at Lapinig Island, Balingoan