It is more fun in Zamboanguita

I wrote this weblog for the MCP site, but forgot to post it on our weblog. By now it is three weeks later, but the info is still correct.
We rephrase the national slogan of the Philippines which is used everywhere: it's more fun in the Philippines. The last two weeks we have been working together with our first three volunteers, hurray! At the moment we have a rescue course and we continue with data collection for our marine biology research, while we are exploring new dive sites in the meantime.
By now we have discovered some very suitable dive locations which can be used both for courses and research. We also had a look at the other site of the hill were we are living. From some lookout points we have a view on Tambobo bay in neighbouring Siaton, a nice small natural bay, which makes a perfect harbor.
After some climbing on rocks to enter the water, we discovered that if we had walked another 100 meters we would have had an easy beach access.  The coral looks very diverse and you can dive on a continuous reef for an hour. It seems we have found our perfect fun diving area with a white beach with palm trees nearby to relax afterwards. Palm trees remain dangerous at all times though. We had to wait a few minutes before we could enter with our car because people were harvesting coconuts. This  means that two guys climb into the trees and start dropping coconuts. You do want to wait because a coconut makes a nice dent in your car. One of the first things you learn here as a driver is to watch out for coconut palms when you park. Make sure your car is not under it!

One of the more difficult dive sites to reach with a car has now been explored as well. The first time we got stuck with our Kia Bongo in a bamboo fence. The road was very narrow and we thought we could just squeeze trough... Apparently not, because we didn't take into account that the fence wasn't actually straight. The lower part was bent outwards and one of the bamboo poles got stuck at the side of the car. Because a palm tree blocked our way out at the other site we had to maneuver back and forth with the bamboo scratching and scratching against the car. Eventually we got loose and now we have a big dent at the side of the car. We couldn't turn so we had to go to the dive site. The designated parking place was on the beach, were the car got stuck in the sand and we had to pull it out. Grumphh.
Today we returned to the same place but a 100 m to the south. This road to the beach was a much better option, even for people with limited driving skills in a big car since we managed to reach the dive site without car injuries. The dive was very very nice. The dive site is part of an MPA which has been enforced since 2009 and that shows in the size and occurrence of the fish. A lot of (big) groupers, parrotfish, sweetlips, a lot of snapper species and a lot of adult fish in general.

We have started with some pilot studies to figure out on which fish species we need to focus later. We started with looking at abundance of fish at family level in all the different dive sites, but it turned out that that idea was a bit too general. Most families occur at most dive sites. So we have gone down to species level. Since it is impossible to identify a lot of species at the same time, we are now focusing on butterflyfish and angelfish. Then you definitely see a difference between dive sites. In the meantime we learn a lot of new species as well. We take a camera with us on each dive and make pictures of a lot of fish. That is very useful. We thought we saw about 5 different species of snappers, but after identifying some pictures it seems we have about 9 species. If we discover a species and we have no clue what is it, even after flipping through several fish books, there is always id please, a facebook page were you post your picture and some additional data. Within 30 minutes you get a response of somebody who knows much more than us and that is usually correct.  Hopefully we increase our knowledge to an extent that instead of only posting pictures we are actually able to id pictures of others.

In the meantime construction work on the project site is going fast. The third hut for volunteers is almost ready, one of the staff huts is finished and the other will be done (hopefully) soon as well. The common area is looking better each day and the storage room in the kitchen is not a sleeping room anymore but can actually be used for groceries. The stupid mistakes workers sometimes make we take for granted (why cement and even paint a wall if the pipes for the water still need to be in the wall and make exactly the same mistake at the second hut... or why does it takes 3 efforts in 5 days to cement a bed at the right size so the mattress actually fits), because usually they are working really hard and do a good job. It all takes a bit longer, but in the end we will be having an awesome project site.