Leonard Pe, the author (photo by Rhonson Ng)

We haven’t found what we were looking for on the first dive, so we decided to do a second dive. This time we went to a nearby sandbar, oh man, the current there was shall we say nasty.. strong enough to push you around if you’re not holding unto something. It was tiring but fun at the same time.. my first drift diving!

While drifting by, we found a green turtle resting. Took a few shots before going on. A few moments still, another surprise awaits us.. a school of Jacks, lots and lots of them passing barely in front of us. It was a WOW! Probably a thousand individuals swimming around.

Our search for the napoleon wrasse was cut short since the current was so strong, our tanks only lasted for half the usual time but nevertheless  these two dives were one of the best dive experiences I had yet.

My thanks to Joel Sarenas, our dive master, for showing us around and Rhonson for my underwater portrait.

School of Jacks

Rhonson Ng in action

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When we entered the water, I was stunned by the destruction these waves caused underneath the surface. A lot of table corals in the area have been uprooted from its base and been turned upside down. The visibility was really crappy, my dive buddy Dennis was just about 10 feet away from me and all I can see are the tip of his fins, the rest were just green murky water. Who can blame mother nature, its just her way of wreaking havoc and rebuilding the earth. We’ll just see a few years from now how this area would recover.

But nevertheless we stayed long enough to finish our air tanks and surprisingly we found more large fishes in schools than the last time we dove here. We’ve also encountered this huge stone fish perching on the edge of the Tinoto Wall.

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It was a cloudy day and there were still many particles floating in the water, visibility was still crappy in a sense. It was the first time, I’ve reached 80 feet. There seems to be a thermocline but it was manageable. We surveyed about a hundred meters of the Tinoto wall, I’ve seen more large fishes this time. A solitary sweetlips seem to like to hang out in an underwater cave, a huge grouper swam by but immediately vanished into the depths.

On the second dive that day, I’ve found my first Napoleon Wrasse … oh man it was huge! It seems to swim in circles, going up and down the wall. After a while we went up to 20ft, there was a parrot fish with a large forehead, he just swims around. Just past this dude, we then reached the area of the 3 sweetlips which I missed to photograph when my batteries died on my previous dive. This time, I got what I wanted, a close up shot of  a sweetlips.

For a newbie like me, these 2 dives were great, I enjoyed it. And for last but not the least, I am now a certified PADI Open Water Diver!

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Just in front of the Lemlunay Dive Resort is the Tinoto Wall, about 10 meters from the entry point is a deep drop to the abyss, literally speaking,all you can see when you look down below is a deep blue void.Aparently, clinging on the Tinoto wall are a variety of corals and fishes. I found several clownfishes, also known as Nemo, a croaking puffer or a toby fish and other reef fishes. I’ve been fortunate enough that Felino, a friend of mine, lend me an Olympuz c3030 with an underwater casing, a 3.0 mp camera, not a high-end gadget but fairly decent enough to capture a few good shots.

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