Colorful Characters (And I Don't Mean the Fishes)

Photo credit: Junjie Kho

1. I once found myself diving with a yoga instructor who wore white like a trademark and who, it was whispered around the deck, tutored presidents and CEOs. I wondered then why this supposed master at breathing was exhaling bubbles at shallow intervals, consuming air faster than the rest of us.

She was excitable, barreling through other divers for a closer look at say, a pawikan (sea turtle) or marble ray, disturbing it away to the group’s exasperation. For a practitioner of body awareness, I noted with some fascination, this woman did not seem to know how to position herself unobtrusively around marine life.

2. I also ended up diving with a deaf-mute underwater photographer who initially had trouble connecting with people (most shied away from the perceived extra effort of trying to make sense of his gesticulations). Underwater, however, where everyone was muted anyway, he was a master at the hand signals, truly in his element, the most animated and “talkative” in the group.

Dangling the promise of an underwater photo-souvenir, he confidently herded (with energetic wrist flicks) divers this way and that for the best backdrop of schooling barracudas—although I noticed, he didn’t always press the camera button!

3. While on our knees and lined up in a row on Monad Shoal in Malapascua (waiting, waiting for a manta to glide in), we were semi-aware of one local divemaster swimming to and fro from behind our backs—methodically picking up one octopus (back-up regulator) after another, seemingly examining it, test-breathing from it, even hand-signaling O.K.

Later, he confessed that he was already about to backroll when he discovered that his tank had only 1,500 psi. This being the second dive, and with all the other tanks awarded to guests, he decided to just go with it and, when he already needed to, just start “testing” other divers’ air. Ingenious.

4. On a dive in Apo Reef, three divers, including our most regular divemaster, brought down one newly bought underwater camera housing each to TEST against possible leaking-under-pressure.

Midway into the dive, what else would choose to reveal itself but a magnificent hammerhead shark!

No one in the group had ever seen one before. Tanks were banged like crazy. Arms punched overhead. Muffled screams. And they could've kicked themselves over the fact that all three camera housings contained only…drumroll please…paper.

5. We were doing Tubbataha out on the Sulu Seas for the entire last week of May when blue skies turned grey. With the onslaught of wind and rain, our charter boat pitched and rolled. I chose to stay up on deck because I figured looking out on the horizon helped with possible dizziness better than being cooped up in my cabin.

Soon enough however, one guy couldn’t help but hurl his lunch over the rail (look out down below!). Then, like a wave, up to four people followed suit with their own gagging-and-heaving. It was not a pretty sight.

So, with all that going on, no one noticed early enough that one of the chase boats tethered to the side of our “mother boat” was being tossed by swells—hard enough for it to slip under and then turn over! Unfortunately, in that very chase boat were the BCs, regs, and other gear of a group of divers supposedly scheduled to head out (before the weather turned).

Everyone was suddenly on one side of our boat, watching the submerged chase boat as it further receded under. At least two guys hurriedly suited up in a valiant effort to rescue the gear but by then these were sunk to impossible depths.

The pity for this group who lost their gear (and consequently, the chance to go out on the last few precious dives of the trip) was quite palpable.

Then came the announcement: the company’s dive shop back in Manila will outfit these guys with top-of-the-line replacements for everything they lost—down to every reel, slate or whatever equipment declared hooked to their BCs when these went down.

Human nature being what it is, pity quickly turned to envy, and there was actual talk of maybe tossing one’s own battered gear (include the rusty dive knife! and the flooded torch!) overboard “in sympathy” too.

6. In Ticao Bowl, Masbate while diving for mantas, we noticed that this outrigger boat seemed to be shadowing us. The fisherman looked like he was just going about his usual business. Most of the time, he lay on his boat, probably waiting for a tug on his lines or movement in his net.

As we chatted in between dives, one of the crew noticed activity, just beneath the water's surface, at a short distance. The local divemaster excitedly said that it could be a manta.

The fisherman and his banca suddenly leapt to life, quickly motoring off to that area. We actually saw him threw a harpoon into the water. We screamed. One of the divers, shouting obscenities throughout, pulled out a gun and fired shots in the air (which was scary in itself; he turned out to be a local law enforcer). We were relieved to see the fisherman pull the harpoon out of the water with nothing stuck at the end.

That this fisherman (from another town, the local DM was sure) trailed us knowing that we were here for the mantas (that divers unwittingly bring danger to what we love) was a sobering realization!

7. Finally, imagine us, four females just surfaced from Monad Shoal, waiting by the side of the outrigger boat for our turn to climb up the ladder. Every now and then, we'd plant our masked faces back into the water to locate just where a jellyfish was in reference to us. We were of course convinced that it kept getting nearer. There were screams. Fins were getting to ssed back into the boat. There was a mad scramble up.

Non-divers still rib us on the idea that on that very trip, we "bravely" sought out

and found our toothy thresher sharks but went jelly on the knees and girly-girly over this small creature that really, was at the mercy of where the currents took it.

But then again, someone who I thought was my friend had to point out (a parallel contradiction): they already know that I don't mind, say, rapelling over the side of a ship (an adventure race dare) but I have to be escorted across Manila's streets!