Down, Down, Deeper & Down

Now that the bad weather has broken and we've started to see some sunshine, there are once again opportunities to go diving.  

There was also a suspension of diving following the unfortunate deaths of two divers last July (Diving Accident) but following a raft of new form filling and increased levels of bureaucracy the dive companies are operational again.

On board the dive boat Polaris

The company I use regularly for diving in Subic (Dive Shop Subic Bay) have moved from their previous mooring after it was destroyed by the recent typhoon - although a planned move was in the making due to blatant profiteering by the mooring company who decided to levy a Php1000 charge for each dive passenger using the jetty to board the dive boat, hence increasing the dive cost by over 30%. 

Dive Shop Subic Bay now have a mooring on the beach.  This means a short waist-deep wade out to the boat but if you're going diving, you're going to get wet anyway so it's no big deal.

North side of Subic Bay

We were out last Saturday, in somewhat overcast conditions but still very warm.  Our first dive was on the LST, which stands for Landing Ship Tank (follow the link for more information).  This is the deepest dive I've undertaken yet at around 34m (110ft) and diving at that depth did induce some pre-dive anxiety, although I seemed to have acquitted myself well as my air usage was very good for the dive.  

During the dive the visibility was very good and we saw plenty of Blue Spotted Rays, schools of Barracuda and huge Bat Fish (Bat Fish look like giant Angel Fish that you see in most aquaria) that just followed us around in groups of 4 or 5, staring at us.

Out second dive was in very shallow water on a reef at the end of Subic Bay Airport runway.  Up until recently this has been off limits but now, with the airport virtually non operational it seems that the reef has been opened up to divers.  It was nothing spectacular.  Some nice coral and colourful fish but not a huge amount of either.  We did see a sea snake, which was pretty impressive.

Only two dives that day and despite it being fairly overcast I ended the day looking like a Red Indian, as I was rather sunburnt (again).