It’s been a while since I wrote something about diving and its difficult knowing how to begin. So much has happened since my last submission that my thoughts are all jumbled and I don’t know where one story ends and the other begins.

In the past months there have been a lot of positive developments – both in my personal diving experiences (more about this next time) and the local dive community in general. One particular that I really find exciting is the holding of the 2nd Dive Guide Seminar Workshop for Macro-Photography at Malipano Island last January 20-22.

The activity was organized by The Blue Team, composed of some of the country’s top underwater video and photographers such as Davao’s-own Marissa Floirendo, Gutsy Tuason, Solana Resort’s Joel Uichico, and businessman Nonoy Tan. The team gave tips on shot composition, image editing techniques, animal identification and other valuable inputs for the seminar participants.

Aside from being just a forum for photographers, the seminar was even more important as a training ground for ‘critter spotters’ or those dive guides who specialize in finding and identifying small and often hard to spot underwater creatures.

Wilson Serang, a top dive guide from Lembeh, Indonesia flew in especially to assist the local participants in improving this skill. Among those who gained the most from his guidance were several local Samal fishermen who were invited by Marissa to be trained – not only in spotting – but also in scuba diving. Other local diver’s who attended the seminar were Sunstar’s Stella Estremera, Czaldy Garote, dive instructor Eugene Lara, and from Pearlfarm and Wind and Wave Richard Agraba, Ricky Ihalas, Julius, Randy and Felix.
During the three days that the spotters – which came from as far away as Batangas, Donsol, and Mindoro – spent diving in Samal, they became so adept that they were able to find several species of ghost pipefish, sea fans full of pygmy seahorses, frog fishes, a pair of harlequin shrimps, and more nudibranchs than you could shake a stick at.

For me, what was even more amazing was that most of the really cool finds were made on a short strip of beach that most local divers would never even think of going simply because there’s nothing there of what you would normally want to find in a dive site – such as corals or even fishes.

I remember my personal experience from the 1st edition of the Dive Guide Seminar in Davao in December 2005 (which I consider the turning point in my diving life). There were fewer participants then, just Marissa, Wilson, Bobby Yin, and Karina Escudero but the output just as prolific. I confess that up until that time my idea of a good dive had always been of big coral reefs, big fishes, big wrecks, big everything. So when I first found out we would be diving on sand and rubbles of broken corals, I wasn’t exactly what you’d call enthusiastic. But I was more than just pleasantly surprised by the new world I found; one that had always been there but which I had largely ignored.