For our final week of diving in the Philippines we headed south to Dauin at the southern tip of the island of Negros. One thing about travelling around the Philippines is it takes time. The 30 minute boat ride, followed by a 7 hour drive, another 30 minute boat ride and ending with a 30 minute drive to the resort left us somewhat exhausted. Don’t feel too bad for us though. The Pura Vida Beach and Dive Resort is pretty darn nice.
As in Malapascua we are diving with Sea Explorers. Such a pleasure to dive with companies who are well organized and have quality equipment. We were able to plan out our days of diving when we arrived, then kicked back and relaxed for a day.
It seems that the two big attractions in this area are the whale sharks at Aslob and the muck diving right in front of our resort. For those not into diving, the whale shark is the largest living fish species in the world. They feed entirely on plankton and small fish and are no threat to humans whatsoever. Muck diving is fascinating in that it involves finding tiny incredible creatures in quite bland environments. It initially didn’t sound very enticing to me, but once you do it you get the reason why it is so popular.
We have been trying to see whale sharks for nearly 15 years, so when we swam in under them and there were more than we could keep track of we were pretty happy. These are incredible creatures. When you watch them open their mouths and massive amounts of water swirl into them so they can filter out their food it is awesome. Check out the video at the end of the blog. I got a couple of great clips of them.The whale sharks come here because the local community has figured out it is a massive tourism opportunity for them. It is shear chaos on the surface. Even though there are marine biologists there in small boats to police the activity, and the guides ensure that people don’t try to touch the whale sharks. It is pandemonium as dozens of tourists float around for their prescribed hour to see the sharks. At noon all the sharks disappear as they have learned that the feeding stops then, but will resume again the next day around 6am.Despite the questionable ethics of how the whale sharks are manipulated to show up at Oslob, we were still thrilled to see them. Hopefully they will maintain the restrictions that are in place for the health of the animals that live in the area.We did three days of diving while we were in Dauin. It was nice to go out on large well outfitted boats.When you were diving on the house reef and in the muck in front of the resort you always wanted to be aware of the sounds of any boats passing by when you surfaced because these fellows could zip right along.At the end of the day of diving we could enjoy a cold beverage and watch nature put on a little light show for us.As we walked up the beach from our resort you could see where the locals were making an effort to clean things up, but they still have some work to do.From our table in the restaurant every evening we got to watch the local fishermen paddle out and throw in some hand lines and work to bring home some dinner for their families.We had a great time here and I would recommend it to any divers wanting to explore the area. It is hard to beat looking out across the water at the end of a good day.
Have a look at the video below if you are curious about our diving.
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