Tubbataha reef- a disappointment

Well, someone forgot to tell all the large pelagic that we are going there.

We arrived at Tubbataha on the morning of 9th May after 12 hours overnight on the Apo Explorer. There were 16 of us, 10 from Malaysia and the other 6 from Singapore. We had very high hopes that this is the area to dive esp after a 45 minutes check out dive at Malayan wreck, my best check out dive todate.

Malayan wreck sits atop the reef at only 5 meters and the same wreck is a home to about 100 bumpheads which were just leaving home when we dived in at 8am. The visibility was around 35 meters with no current. We then swam towards the wall which drops to about 70 meters. Swimming at depths of 36 meters on our first dive was amazing. It is exactly like the Barracuda point at Sipadan minus the school of barracudas. There were sharks all over and it soon became clear to us that the reef is a nursery and kindergarden to reef sharks. Looking out into the blue, we saw only one thing...blue water. No large pelagic was swimming past us. Something amiss, I thought.

The following dives were all mostly similar, wall dives and beautiful reef that were mainly covered with hard corals or sandy bottom. There were few soft corals and hence, not many anemones and macro like nudibranches. We were really disappointed.

As we were using Nitrox most of the time, we were diving very close to our MOD ( maximum operating depth before oxygen turned toxic ) becos of the great visibility ( maybe that is why there is no pelagic...they are camera shy ). I did most of my first day dives with air as i wanted to explore the deep end and went down to 56 meters to see some juvenile barracudas.

Our dive on 9th May was on Full Moon and despite this, there were no current, the sea as calm as a dead woman, and no large pelagic. No Mantas, no rays, no whale sharks, hammerheads, etc etc. The conditions were perfect but no big stuff.

In most of our dives, we could hear dynamite exploding some 50 miles away. It was common to hear 2 to 3 explosions on each dive. Maybe these scare away the big fishes. Unless the filipino government takes some drastic actions, no fishes will dare come into filipino waters.

Tubbataha reef is beautiful and it definitely beats places like the Great Barrier Reef in terms of marine life and there are corals ( many barrel corals ) of enormous sizes. It is definitely a breeding ground for turtles, sharks, Napoleon wrasses, octopus and reef fishes. Maybe it was parent days off when we were there.

The renown washing dive site was also a disappointment. Someone switched off the power and no noticeable current were felt. Imagine..we had brought reef hooks, gloves, mini anchors etc etc.
Some brought down some dirty linen.

We visited the Ranger's station that houses around 10 Rangers that patrol the area to keep out fisherman and pirates . It also double up as a T-shirt sales center.

Our group of 10 Malaysian makes use of the nights drinking away the beer that cost USD1 per can and the two bottles of liquor that we brought. The other 6 Singapore divers kept to themselves mostly except on the last night when they decide to have fun with us.

The manager of the boat, Colin who is a Canadian is great and very attentive to our needs. The crew on board the Apo Explorer who we were told only earns less than RM150 a month, are friendly and good at their work. The Malaysian gang were so taken by the services and each of us gave USD40 to the crew as tips. Sad to say, the Singaporean group only gave a fraction of this.