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TWENTY FIVE After getting to the dock we were shown aboard the Liveaboard we would call home for the next 6 days. Called "Southern Cruise" she is over 100' long, can accomodate 60 divers comfortably. However, we were only 30 so many of the cabins were only 1/2 full. The 30 divers represented 3 geographical groups. Cebu, Davao and Cagayan De Oro. The Cebu group was the largest and the one I decided to dive with (at least in the beginnning). The cabin I stayed could sleep 6 yet we were only 3. Allan, his son and me. Allan's son reminded me of Lynn's son Joe. Perhaps one day Joe will come diving with me.
There was air-con and it was very comfortable. After dumping off our stuff, we all went to town to shop for items not available on board. Drinks other than water and snacks. I bought mostly sweet stuff like snickers bars, chocolate milk, chocolate chip cookies, m & m's, butter cakes, good stuff like that LOL.....Oh ok, I did buy some oatmeal and milk for breakfast. Now that's healthy isn't it.
Back at the boat by 3:00pm and left the dock by 5:00pm. It would be an overnight trip to the first dive location called Balesterra. June 6, 2006 - Arrived in Balesterra by 5:00am. Balesterra is basically a sandbar in the middle of nowhere. The island is surrounded by a coral reef running to about 30' deep and then dropping off with a huge wall going around the sandbar island and down to about 300+'. The ship has three 27' runabouts equipped with 40HP engines that could carry 8 divers and two boatmen each in relative comfort.
These boats would be our main transportation from the Southern Cruise to the various dive sites. Also, as there is current on many of these dives, they would be picking us up where ever we surfaced. Nice!!! Day One Diving Balesterra - Our first place to dive and we were in the water just an hour after arriving....6:00am. I went out with the Cebu group consisting of about 10 divers. Most of the diving here is off the huge walls and at tremendous depths of 180 feet plus. Given my medical issues I decided I'd might be pushing my luck going that deep so I had to stay around the 120' depth mark. Today I ended up doing 3 dives with the deepest being to 159 feet and on that dive, I did over 15 minutes of deco. No fun. One thing I didn't realize is in most of the Philippines the large fish have all but been fished (netted) or dynamited out of existence in shallow depths and now seek the safety of real depth or open water for survival. When I talk about depth I mean to over 200' and sometimes close to 300'. Now it turns out that the hunters I am with on this trip, dive to these depths on a regular basis. Oftentimes, they bounce dive to 250' to get a shot on a fish and then back up for deco. Most of the time during this trip they dove to about 180 - 220' and and stayed there stalking fish and then slowly up to where they might deco for 30 minutes to over an hour. Nevertheless, besides the differences in spearfishing practices, what is really impressive about this group of hunters I am with is they are incredibly experienced way beyond the majority of divers anywhere. In fact, I have never met any other divers who have better air management and grace and maturity diving. SIDEBAR - Now if it wasn't crazy enough diving to these depths, even more crazy are the fish they are diving for........For me and my dive buddies back home in Florida, most if not all of these fish would be considered garbage fish and of no interest to us from an eating perspective which is the goal of shooting a fish (to eat it). These include: Jacks, Barracuda, Bonita, and some of the larger tropical fish such as Parrot, etc. Our avoiding these fish in Florida is primarily due to the presence of siguatera worms whereas here in the Philippines they apparently don't have that problem. As a result they are very numerous in Florida and if anything, we generally kill them (barracudas) when they get in the way or pose a threat to us during our spearfishing for more favorable fish such as Snapper & Grouper. Now, I consider myself a pretty good diver but, in almost 4000 dives I have never gone over 185 feet and certainly not to chase fish. I Never saw any purpose as most dive sites or wrecks I've dived all over the world have generally been no deeper than 150 feet and even dives to this depth have been on very rare occasions. The thing that really sucks about diving these crazy depths are the decompression stops (to rid your body of excess nitrogen and avoid the bends) you have to endure depending on how much time you spent at depth. On trips like this where you might dive 3 - 4 times per day the actual diving time shrinks as the decompression time increases. This plays a real role when your dives are getting close to 200 feet. I'd like to give a short preface on spearfishing. Spearfishing is the hunting of live prey underwater much like hunting with a rifle on land. Spearfishing in it's purest form is done by freediving (without the use of scuba). However, most hunters in the USA including myself use scuba. Outside the USA hunting is done mostly by freediving. This has more to do with the expense and logistics of scuba diving rather than for the purty of the sport. Of course there are a few Countries who don't allow spearfishing on Scuba as they feel it is a decided advantage for the hunter. I would beg to disagree but that is for another disussion and time. Anyway, spearfishing guns are powered by large and thick rubber bands that are manually pulled back by the hunter and then slotted into a metal spear shaft with a sharp barb on the top end of the shaft. When released, these bands can propel the shaft quickly into a fish up to (depending on the gun) 30 feet away. As you can see from the photo below.
Now there are many spearguns on the market with the most popular being Riffe, AB Biller, JBL and Steve Alexander. They can range in price from $150.000 to over $1,000.00. Most are made of Wood like Teak, Paduk and Mahagony being used for the barrel. There are a number of factors which determine the right gun to be used:
1. The size/weight of the fish to be hunted - the larger
the fish the bigger (longer barrel and spear shaft) the gun is advised.
Guns range from about 36" to 72" so naturally a gun of
about 60" is more optimal for larger fish as well as
The thickness, number and pulling length of the bands which will
dictate the spears shooting speed, distance and force.
Bottom Line: As a rule smaller guns under 48" (2 bands and less) are for use on reefs and smaller fish under 50lbs while multi-band (3 or more) and gun shafts of 48" and larger can be used for both small and large fish hunting. Over 54" would be best for open water and very large fish. It it widely accepted that the Professional Hunters can be found in Open Water conditions using the biggest and most expensive guns with their targets being Pelagic fish like Tuna over 100lbs in size which require the use of these bigger guns. These hunters also use surface float balls so they don't lose their guns after a succcessful shot. However, most hunters including myself won't be found in open water but rather diving wrecks and reefs and using a wide array of guns depending on conditions. Schools out and this now this brings us to the Philippines and it being an abberration to typical spearfishing methods. June 7, - 2nd day in Balesterra.... I went diving this morning with the Japanese group. This group consists of three Japanese divers who live in Cebu. Now I thought things were bad enough in the Philippines with all the dynamiting and net fishing to fuck up the reefs but one other important ingredient was missing. Japanese (I hear Koreans are worse) spearfisherman. Now these guys are in a class by themselves. They will shoot anything that moves. And when they start bringing up speared fish that are smaller than my dick I know things are really bad. Did I forget to mention that I also had the pleasure of seeing massive parts of the reef here in Balesterra had been dynamited and consequently left in heaps of rubble. Yea, I know I am bitching and complaining again but this is the kind of things that inflames me as I hate to see this happen and nothing to be done about it. I do love it here in the Philippines but, at the same time I really detest the abject ignorance of so many of its people especially when they are only hurting themselves and people like me who want to see the Philippines become a part of the modern world with proper restraint and controls of the water environment. It's times like this I yearn to be back in North Miami Beach and the Florida Marine Patrol LOL. Tomorrow we head to another dive area about 150 miles north called Arena and Cavilli Island. Perhaps I can stop my bitching and whining then and shoot some fucking fish!!!. 2005
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