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Posted by Lauren Smith on

A Wedding 29th May 2010

A Wedding

LOL – Lauren on Location – Calanggaman Island diving, a wedding, and the final dive at Monad Shoal.

On the 29th of May Gordon and I headed across to Calanggaman Island, a few hours South from Malapascua on a fun dive with Divelink. The first dive was an incredible wall dive, with huge soft corals and sponges, caves which pocket the wall and lots of reef fish as well as invertebrates to keep everyone happy.

Calanggaman Island

During the surface interval we pulled alongside the impressive sandspit at Calanggaman Island which gets exposed at low tide, and joined a wedding reception! Perhaps not the usual surface interval – but I wish it was! Nick & Flor Martorano were the perfect hosts and didn’t mind one bit that a bunch of diver’s some in wetsuits some in bikini’s had effectively crashed their wedding! To be fair it wasn’t as random as it sounds, Nick is good friends with Gary Cases (owner of Divelink) who was the best man and Nick & Flor had spent several days on Malapascua in the run up to the wedding where we were all introduced. By happy coincidence they live in Palau (where I am headed on the 9th of June) where Nick works as a dive instructor and underwater photographer/videographer (see www.oceanwonders.org) so hopefully we can catch up there.


The Bride and myself (probably the strangest wedding outfit I will ever wear!)

Following great food and a cheeky beer we completed a second dive (which the newly wedded couple joined us on) and then headed back to Malapascua, we had barely left Calanggaman when we were fortunate enough to see a whale (which is believed to be a sperm whale) at the surface then diving down raising its tail fluke in the air! Incredible!

A Sperm Whale

This week was my last diving Monad Shoal, and I was treated to a fantastic final display of Thresher sharks, Manta Rays, banded Sea Craite (Sea Snake) and spotted dolphins. Also a particular highlight for me was a Grey reef shark which came on to the cleaning station when I was conducting a fish census, I wouldn’t perhaps get so excited over a grey reef shark under normal circumstances, but although the grey reefs have been captured on an unmanned video camera no-one has seen them in person at Monad Shoal, so I was delighted with that unique sighting!

Well ‘Tempus fugit’ as they say… I can hardly believe that this weekend marks my last few days on Malapascua Island working for the Thresher Shark Research and Conservation Project, I will be going to Palau shortly and will continue the blog from there, from what I have learnt so far I cannot wait to dive there and hope for some more amazing experiences!

I would just like to thank everyone – staff and volunteers of the TSRCP for my time here which has been incredible, but of course the real star’s of the show, that have literally taken my breath away are all the inhabitants of Monad Shoal, with special mention to the Thresher Sharks and Manta Rays!

Can I pick a favourite? Staying true to form I would have to pick the Thresher Sharks…..

Posted by Lauren Smith on

An Update from Lauren May 2010

An Update from Lauren

LOL – Lauren on Location rounded off a fabulous week of diving at Monad Shoal with 2 dives at Gato Island (about 1 – 1 1/2 hrs boat ride N.W. of Malapascua Island) today, which was absolutely incredible, the visibility was particularly good especially on our first dive and the water was like glass.
Managed to see a number of White-tip reef sharks, hanging out under ledges and in caves which was incredible and of course my highlight, however the sheer abundance of soft coral cover was outstanding especially the pulsing coral which was absolutely mesmerizing and definitely had the ability to put me in a trance like state.

Gato Island – a view from the water

The second dive included a cave dive, which was excellent if not somewhat disorientating in the complete blackness, we also saw more white-tip’s including one free – swimming.

Whitetip reef shark

During the week I had enjoyed all sorts of macro life (such as octopus, squid, cuttlefish, scorpionfish, stonefish, lizard fish etc…) as well as 3 of the most impressive elasmobranch visitors to Monad shoal; Thresher Sharks, Devil Rays and Manta Rays.

I had missed the Manta Ray visits the previous week due to my ear infection and was beginning to get desperate for a sighting.

Manta Ray

As we descended for our final dive of the day, I began to make out abstract white shapes in the water; I was puzzled until I realized that the white patches were linked together and formed the absolutely massive body of a Manta Ray estimated at 5m (conservative!) across from wingtip to wingtip! The ability of this behemoth to move so gracefully underwater was fantastic, it held such a presence.

Posted by Lauren Smith on

Travelling and Training 11th April 2010

LOL – Lauren on Location – Lauren makes her way to Thresher Shark Research and Conservation Project (TSRCP), based on Malapascua Island, off the North East tip of Cebu, gets some on site dive training, explores a wreck and catches her first sight of a thresher shark.

After flying back from Legaspi to Manila and then from Manila to Cebu, I then boarded a Ceres Liner bus to Maya, the bus was fantastic (apart from the heat!), most people on the bus had cockerels in their bags which led to a chorus of crowing as we whizzed along the track, I had a lovely lady sit next to who must have thought I needed fattening up as she kept pulling out all sorts of food from her bag to give to me!


Leaving Cebu on route to Maya

The bus took 3 & 1/2 hrs which considering it can take 6hrs was pretty good going, at Maya I was picked up by the TSRCP crew and we headed over to Malapascua Island (this took around 30 mins).


At Maya ferry port, with Malapascua Island in the far distance.

On arrival on Malapascua I got settled in and loved my room and the artwork at the guesthouse!

The door to the bathroom!
One of the walls in the Guesthouse

The following day I had an island tour (courtesy of Nick – Science Officer and Helen – Education officer) and then I began dive training G.U.E. style, G.U.E. Global Underwater Explorers emerged out of a shared desire to safely explore and protect the underwater world and to improve the quality of education and research in all things aquatic. They utilize different diving techniques and styles than those taught conventionally, hence when used to diving in a certain way the training can be quite challenging.

However thanks to Medel’s (Expedition Leader) training capabilities I soon began to get the hang of it, all training is conducted at specific sights with sandy bottoms hence buoyancy issues can be resolved with no cost to the aquatic environment (even if you do end up face planting yourself). However I must report I am yet to fully conquer a technique known as the reverse fin, the object is as the term implies to go backwards, this is all well and good apart from my feet and butt having a tendency to rise up rather than go backwards, I can only imagine what I must look like underwater, indeed if the cleaner fish see me in that position they will probably think it is an elaborate invitation posture for them to come and clean me!
By the Wednesday (14th) I had completed by dive training and had even done a fun dive – a Japanese WWII wreck, the coral growth and species are incredible and the critters to be seen are both numerous and elaborate, most people dive this site at sunset to see the Mandarin fish, however I was extremely lucky to see both an adult and a juvenile mandarin fish on the dive around 3pm.
By the Thursday I was able to dive the site which I had come here for: Monad Shoal. We were on the boat by 6am and heading to Monad which is about 1/2hrs boat ride away, as we descended onto Monad I was shown the site by Medel and Felimar (Dive Master), just as we were preparing to begin an ascent (we had already seen numerous species of coral, lionfish, cuttlefish, blue spotted rays etc) a Pelagic Thresher Shark came into view, this is what I had come here to see, the shark did an initial pass and then came back, we got as low as we could to the bottom and let the shark do its thing, at one point it came in low and headed directly at us, incredible view so sleek and he practically shimmered underwater with his colouration, when it eventually swam off watching it’s tail disappear into the distance was incredible!
What a fantastic first encounter, I hope I have many more over the next 2 months…

LOL – Lauren on Location