Diving Apo Reef - The Ona Experience

The Ona Experience

After four days at Coron, I continued diving on board the Ona Experience for another four days.

Arrived Le Sereneta Restaurant where the ships docked, checked in with the Mexican owner, Yamil and met up with the other guests from all over the world. There were altogether only 8 of us (guests) who came from Australia, Zurich, France, Israel, Norway, Spain and Singapore.

It was a big boat which cater for 16 divers so all of us had a cabin to ourselves happily. However, the boat did not sail until the next morning due to an engine problem and there was no water to use. We were quite disappointed and felt cheated of losing a day and the loss of dives in Apo Reef. All of us were obviously anticipating diving the world's second largest contiguous coral reef system and largest in the Philippines.

The Diving

Apo Reef is located on the western waters of Occidental Mindoro Province in the Mindoro Strait. There are three islands with Apo Island being the largest where you can see beach goers, snorkelers and picnickers.

The diving was a bit over-exaggerated on many websites. Maybe our operator was not professional enough. We dive in the blue on most of our dives searching for Threshers, sharks etc. Most of the time we descend right to 30 m at least and swim in blue and ran out half our tank. There was no nitrox available and all the search and waiting for a congregation of sharks had wasted our air. We did see a huge shark, and giant tuna when we looked down to about 50 m (we were at about 30 m) with good visibility.

On some of the reef dives, we saw a few the normal size white tips and black tips, turtles and the common topical fishes. The night dives and the Karma wreck was the best dive site we dove. There were the uncommon sea slugs, nudibranch and jellyfishes and beautiful coral on the wreck blew me away.

More pictures can be viewed here

Enjoy my movie ...

Movie : Diving Wrecks of Coron & Apo Reef

Diving Coron, Palawan

View from Al Faro

Coron & Busuanga Bay

The wrecks in Coron Bay, and surrounding shores of Busuanga, are some of the finest dives sites in the Philippines today. Knowing a little about the history of these wrecks, and how they got there, will enhance your enjoyment and appreciation of the diving once you are in the water.

I am not a big fan of wrecks but just wanted to experience diving into history and penetration into the inside of big ships, ensure comfortable manoeuvring in the dark and narrow paths while maintaining buoyancy and capturing some silhouettes. None of the pictures taken inside the wreck was up to standard to post publicly but some short video clips were processed in my diving movie for memory's sake. 

Most of the wrecks were filled with hard and soft corals on the outside. Some with big school of yelow snappers and fusiliers surrounding the wrecks. There were big jellyfish during some of the dives and few nudibranch, sweetlips, lionfish. batfish and scorpionfish.

Visibility was so bad, the best was 10m and the worst at 5m. So it is better to stick close to your dive guide or bring a compass so you will not get lost in the murky waters.

Did I enjoy it? Well ... not for the scenery but the adventure excites me.

Kayangan Lake was quite an experience. As we approach the lake, the view was breathtaking. It is made of of rock formation with the lake in between. We had to climb some steps to get over and a steep stairs to get into the lake, in full equipment holding the fins and camera rig in my hands. A mix of cold and warm water made the dive interesting and that was all. There were almost no fishes except for a bunch of catfish  and shrimps.  The other ladies were enjoying the weightless feeling doing somersaults as the water got colder. 

Kayangan Lake