PART TWO: TUBBATAHA BELOW WATER
Amazing sunsets aside, nobody ventures that far off to Tubbataha Reef for what’s up there in the air. The main attractions lie beneath the waves and include a fantastic tropical marine biodiversity found in very few places around the globe.
With that in mind, we took on the role of Jane and went down to the jungle below, looking for Tarzan.
3…2…1… GO!
The first thing you feel is the water sipping through your wetsuit. Warm, 30 degrees lightly salted Ocean water – nothing like the cold highly-saline aqua of the Red Sea. Good.
Next is the visibility. Wow! 50 meters at least, could be a bit more, actually. Then you look down onto the endless colorful rug of flat and soft coral on the bottom, just a few meters below. Perfect!
Quick adjustment to depressurize the ears, and deeper we dive.
Tubbataha is considered to be The Philippines best diving location and was listed as one of the best dive sites in the world, according to CNN Travel. The reason has much to do with the reef location in the north side of the Coral Triangle, an area roughly covering the Philippines archipelago, Eastern Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, and more specifically in the middle of the Sulu Sea far from inhabitants of the nearest populated islands. This had helped preserved its marine resources from over-exploitation over the years.
Indeed, getting there is quite complicated. It took me the best of three days. For more details on how to reach this remote corner of the world, please check part 1 of this post.
Overall Tubbataha is center of marine biodiversity containing 75% of the coral species and 40% of the world’s reef fish. UNESCO named it World Heritage Site for its unique example of marine biodiversity. That’s gotta be Impressive.
It is.
Turtles, sharks, and walls
We dive through the forest of soft and flat corals at a depth of about 10 meters until we reach its edge. Beyond the tip lies the abyss. Trying to see the 100-meter drop straight to the bottom below, is impossible. Viewing the pack of 5 hammerhead sharks at a depth of about 60 meters, however, is.
Catching!
The coral walls around the Tubbataha lagoon are extraordinary. They can only be matched with the underwater cliffs off the coast of the northern Red Sea, some 7,000Km to the west.
Hey! There’s a turtle!!! Hey, there’s another one! And another…and another. Another turtle. OK, I get the point, what next? It’s incredible how quickly one can get spoiled. Apparently, you CAN get enough of a good thing. After seeing the twelfth turtle, Getting excited of the thirteenth is quite a stretch. By the time we get to our fourth day of diving in the Tubbataha, they become unnoticeable. Just another creature in the background.
What about sharks? You can pretty much copy-paste the above. We saw sharks in every single dive and occasionally a dozen or more in a single plunge. White Tip, Nurse Reef, Black Tip, and Grey Reef sharks, we saw them all. And not just sharks, Tunas, Barracudas, Schools of Jacks, and Giant Trevallies are all part of the grand display.
We spent 5 full days diving 19 times in the three main atoll reefs of Tubbataha, and still no sign of the grand prize.
Meeting Tarzan
“Everyone overboard NOW!” Yells the dive master. We jump into the blue instantly. No time to dress up. Every man (and woman) to himself. I happen to have a mask, suit, and a GoPro. The water 2Km outside of the reef, where the main sheep is moored, is exceptionally bright an clear. It need not be. 5 meters ahead and swimming straight at me is the world largest fish – a giant 10-12 meters Whale Shark.
Yep, you read it correctly, a 12-meter SHARK calmly narrowing the gap between us. What shall I do?!
I guess the only thing you can do in such a situation is to take a deep breath, activate your action camera and hope for the best. Whale Shark, so it happens, are benign creatures, feeding on tiny Krill and shrimp – not on humans. Lucky that.
As taken by my GoPro
The giant is getting close to me. So close I can almost touch it (touching is in fact forbidden according to the rules of the reserve). It lingers with us excited humans for about 5 minutes that seem like an hour, it then returns to the deep. Why it came? Why it chose to stay? Was it a fish curiosity? Was it used to being fed? I don’t know (but suspect the latter, although we did not).
I do know I met Tarzan and lived to tell about it. That in itself has to account for something. Don’t you agree?
