Discover Turtle Mapping

Headless tree.

I woke up at 6:30 AM and could hear a marching band playing outside my room on the beach. It was the start of fiesta in Sabang. For breakfast, I made pancakes from the rest of my pancake mix. At around 9 AM, I led another Discover Scuba session with a Dutch couple, Saskia and Peter, and a Scuba Review for an elderly American, Mike. The first thing I did was talk them through a Discover Scuba flip chart which explained the basics of diving and then went into the pool to do some skills.

Workers burying a dead tree in the beach and other debris.

Mike was quite slow with things and needed a little extra help. Alli and Grace helped Mike out seperately while I worked with Saskia and Peter on their Discover Scuba. I eventually found out that it was Saskia and Peter’s honeymoon which made the class even more special. I was lucky that both Saskia and Peter were very comfortable underwater. Peter was having a little trouble equalizing even after repeated attempts. I told him that he would have to dive shallower in the open water because of that. I don’t think he liked that idea so he tried even harder to equalize. Eventually, he said he could do it.

After the pool session, we all went to gear up to do an open water Discover Scuba dive at Sabang Point. I buddied up with Peter to descend slowly with him and watch his equalization while Alli and Grace led the dive and watched over Mike. On the boat, Saskia mentioned she was hoping to see a turtle; I’ve never seen a turtle the whole time I’ve dived in Puerto Galera. Of course, I didn’t want to say that to disappoint her.

Everyone seemed really good underwater. Saskia’s dad came along to take pictures of her and Peter. Peter didn’t have problems equalizing underwater. Alli, who was leading the dive, pointed at something about 5 meters away. I think I actually heard her scream which is hard to do underwater. There was a sea turtle swimming near us! It was amazing to see while it swam towards us with grace (no pun intended). Later in the dive, there was a large school of black tangs that swarmed to a rock and started eating away at it. They must have been eating the algae on the rock. I’ve never seen them do this before. For a shallow introduction dive, this was amazing.

Around 2:30 PM, Grace and I dived Sabang Wreck so she could map the ground contour. I don’t mind these training dives because I don’t have to do much other than lead it and watch over Grace who is an experienced diver. I know she won’t panic and bolt to the surface or have buoyancy problems. Also, one nice thing is these dives are free for me because it’s part of my internship.

All you can eat salad at the El Galleon Thursday BBQ. Yum.

Later in the evening at around 5 PM I dropped off Bob’s daily dose of Valium. He seems to be doing good as he’s able to walk around normally and do things. Shortly after, I went home to clean up and then went out to the Point bar for their Thursday BBQ dinner. I just had two beers and a BBQ pork chop. I was really tired so I went home early and fell asleep watching TV at around 9 PM.

- jason