The End

   

Well that's it. I've had an amazing time. Met a group of great people. Learned some things. 26 dives over 8 days, 23 hours and 18 minutes under water, and thousands of photos later ( a handful of which are good) I'm back to reality after a great deal of fun. I saw so many wonderful critters and such great beauty - including 2 of my ultimate wishlist critters - frogfish and pygmy seahorse.

Unfortunately I didn't see a flamboyant cuttlefish first hand which is a little disappointing, but pleased to say that some in our group did. Dennis, who spotted this one, kindly shared one of his photos which I present below. I am pleased to know they were there, even if I didn't spot them.

 

I can highly recommend Dive and More for an u/w photography workshop. From months prior to the trip Ran and Danielle were generous with their advice and assistance, and even sourced and brought along some camera parts for me that I couldn't get in time in Australia. When one of our group flooded his camera, Ran loaned him a camera and housing to continue his exploring. When I put my batteries in my strobe the wrong way around without realising ( 😖 duh!) Ran put his video light onto my rig so I could continue taking photos with some light. Generous and always focused on our experience.

They do other things as well - Dive and Food, Dive and Yoga and so on. Really great operation, with a good balance of theoretical and practical instruction. We had 4 group tutorials and a one on one session each, while Ran also monitored our progress in water and reminded us at regular intervals that we should ask for his assistance if we were having issues at any time. They were also well supported by travel agents Fly and Sea, who did a great job of managing logistics and arrangements.

  

The diving at Puerto Galera, Sabang Beach and Verde Island is awesome. The local people are lovely. Atlantis Dive Resorts and Liveaboards was just superb. All of the staff were wonderful, attempting at all times to cater for diverse interests and preferences. The little details make all the difference. 3 of our group reached their 100 dives (x1) and 200 dives (x2) milestones while on the trip, and were presented with personalised Atlantis caps embossed with their names and their milestone.

I miss the genuine smiles and daily greetings of Mayra, James, Aris, Vonna, Hazel, Ray, Jasper, Camille, Ruby and the rest of the team at the resort.

The team were also very resourceful - as you can see by the solution to one of our boats breaking down on one of the dives. Helpful to have your rowing fins handy! Thanks for the photos Ashley.

Special shout out to Ruel, Fred and Aris of course, and all the guys in the dive shop who ferried us around, sorted out our gear, passed and took  from us our assorted cameras and gear to make our lives easy.

A fabulous trip. I will be back.

Colourful dives

On Tuesday some of us went back to Verde Island. I found it to be even more beautiful on this occasion, and we got the chance to dive at the Washing Machine as well this time. As you can probably guess, the site is known as such due to currents which create the effect of being in a washing machine. However, no currents for us.

Beautiful, easy, shallow dive with absolutely stunning life. I didn't take my camera as it was low on battery so enjoyed just diving, with my favourite sighting a gorgeous box fish. Feeling a bit ripped off on the washing machine experience, Kay and Ran tried to replicate it with a bit of self imposed tumbling at the end of the dive while we did our safety stop. Shame I didn't have my camera for that.

We went to Hole in the Wall on Wednesday which was also stunning. Shallow but quite a strong current. A lovely dive. I practiced my wide angle photography on these dives. I have mixed up a selection of photos here from these sites, and maybe from Fantasea too.

My wide angle improved over the course of the trip, in particular my lighting and settings, although not so much my composition and angle from which I captured most of these. Oh well, looks like I'll have to go diving some more for practice! In any case, these should give a sense of the variety and spectacular colours we were treated to on so many of our reef dives.

Crustaceous dives

Things got very busy in the last few days so I didn't do a very good job of keeping up with the posts. We didn't end up back at nudi city because of conditions, but we did have a couple of reef and muck dives which produced an abundance of crabs and shrimp, so this post is in lieu of the one I anticipated to demo the abundance of slugs. Different critters, but same diversity theme.

The peeps and the place

Some photos I took, others I have pinched from our shared folder, taken by others as per watermarks. Thanks Danielle and Ran for making the access so easy and to Ran and David for allowing me use of their photos.

Atlantis Dive Resort, leading with the 50 Bar and dive shop onto the beach and
straight into the dive boats 

the group

our awesome local guides Ruel and Fred who looked after us
with first class service, with the support of many more crew

dive briefing

my buddy Caroline, font of knowledge and taker of a mean wide angle photo

Ran, of Dive and More, our fearless leader and Sensei, who is more than likely
to sneak up on you with your camera firmly in his grasp to say 'look at this shot 
you took on that dive!' or 'see this, do you know what you did wrong there?'

the delightful Ruel, who's service was 2nd to none, especially for my last dive
where he acted as my personal guide, being the only one who wanted to dive
muck not reef

some of the gorgeous, friendly staff at the Atlantis Dive Resort whose service
was personal and attentive always - fabulous, hard working team

skipper and crew member of the Iruka, our vessel to the fabulous Verde Island

The weekend

On Saturday we went to Verde Island, renowned for great diving and it lived up to its reputation. Absolutely spectacular, and unfortunately for everyone who wasn't there I am still rubbish at wide angle and that's how I was set up, so you get minimal photos that don't in any way do The Drop Off site justice. It is also an amazing macro site but alas not recorded by me.

Tons of fish big and small, a very relaxed turtle, nudibranchs as far as the eye could see, barrel sponges teeming with little wormy things, spectacular corals of all varieties. It was marvelous and I've included just a couple of pretty ordinary photos to give you some kind of sense but nothing like the real experience.

Yesterday I continued trying to improve my wide angle skills. Slight and progressive improvement, still not great. We started at a wreck, which was lovely but way too crowded. Not my preferred dive at 30m which is always short, with the boat only 30m long and about 5 groups of divers crawling all over it. Nonetheless, I am very glad we did it because we saw 2 frog fish, one of my wish list critters.


One was positioned so I didn't get anything like a reasonable photo of it, the other also weirdly positioned, sort of upside down, but a bit more open. Being on a super wide angle lens it was not the best set up but I zoomed in as much as possible and at least saw them both, and recorded one in some fashion. I share this with you below, because who can resist a total weirdo?

We then did an afternoon and a night dive on Fantasea which as always was stunning. Loads to see, although I was trying out my buddy's magnified lens mask on the arvo dive and stupidly didn't take my own along just in case. I spent the whole dive responding to everybody's attempts to communicate with `I can`t see a thing`, and randomly pointing my camera at stuff and hoping for the best. Luckily the turtle below was good and Ran, guide and photographer extraordinaire, noticed I had my strobe set wrong and fixed it for me before this shot.



The night dive was wonderful, just a couple of photos below. A few others got some fabulous squid and cuttlefish, and my buddy got a couple of amazing shots of a moray eel catching and eating a damsel fish. She says she'll send me a copy so I share it.

I woke up at 3.30 this morning feeling the lack of massages yesterday and the day before, so I am heading back to Ruby today to fix me right up. We are doing the first site we did when I was underweighted and didn`t use my camera, which I`m excited about because it`s nudi city. Then a muck dive which is also a favourite of mine, so I am really looking forward to today's dives.