back from barili

been hectic the past week because of travel. from thursday to saturday went southwest to barili to do reef monitoring in the marine sanctuary there. was in charge of the budget and logistics for our group of 16 people (with me as the only girl) from 2 NGOs. left for davao sunday morning. squeezed in buying a laptop wednesday night. so really, i've been running on a tight schedule.

the skies were sunny as we left the city, but after lunch, when we were about to do our first dive, it suddenly rained. but of course, we couldn't change the schedule even though visibility was likely to be bad. so we still did our monitoring, which was partly a training on how to do a fish visual census (yes, we count fish) and a point-intercept transect for the substrate.

because it was low tide, we had to do a shore entry, which means walking down to the sea and then swimming to the dive site in full gear. unfortunately, the rocks there were sharp and the waves were strong, so i not only got scratches on my new fins, i got interesting cuts on my knees, calves, feet and hands, too. i was the worst casualty because 1) i didn't wear a wetsuit, as usual and 2) i wasn't wearing booties. i have this thing for being as natural as possible when in nature, so i don't like being weighed down by so much gear (i mean hey, the tank and the regulator and the weights are heavy enough).

so for our dive the next day, we took a boat. all the men had to help in carrying the boat to the water, which was fortunately nearer to shore because the tide was high. but we were so heavy with almost 10 people in our team plus our gear that the boat almost got overturned. we had problems getting the motor started again, too, after that incident because the water had reached the engine. AND we forgot our transect line. so we had to float awhile in the middle of the sea as we waited for the other group to finish using their transect line.

our third dive that afternoon was even worse. because the tide was low again, we had to do another shore entry. this time because i didn't want to put my fins at risk , i walked all the way with my bare feet. the waves were bigger, because we were farther out to sea. i imagine our heads must've looked like dots floating in the waves to the people at the beach. and since we were using half-empty tanks, we were lighter, which meant we needed extra weights to sink to the bottom. since i didn't add more weights to my belt, i had problems going down and even had to surface at one point because i just kept floating up. my buddy had to give me one of his weights, and he had to fill a net bag he was carrying with rocks so he himself wouldn't float up. visibility was terrible, too, because it was raining and there was a current. there were times i could only see as far as my arm's length. thank God i had all these guys assisting me with my gear so i wouldn't hurt myself more than necessary.

but all in all, it was fun. coral cover was good (mostly branching), and even though the fish were small (just mostly damsels, fair basslets and wrasses with some baby butterflyfish and angelfish), it felt great to look around and know the names (mostly) of what we were seeing (especially knowing the difference between a coral and a sponge). on our last dive, we even spotted a small scorpionfish, too, pretending to be a rock or dead leaf.

the first night we sang cebuano ballads under the full moon with some community members who could REALLY play the guitar. and on the second night, we got to talking about doing a night dive on the next full moon, which happens to be a week after my birthday and (possibly) a four-day weekend. so i'm crossing my fingers for that.