TripAdvisor Certificate of Excellence
It’s been a fun week hosting a group from the dive show in Manila. Thanks to Zeny Pallugna and Erwin Silva from the Philippines Department of Tourism who got this organized and spent the time getting to know us better. Our other guests included Catherine Mcdermott and David Valaika from Indian Valley Scuba, Steffanie Beinl and Christine Hartl from www.unterwasser.de and Tim Ho who shot this photo and some other amazing photos while he was here. We’re glad that we we’re able to show you Puerto Galera’s wonderful diving.
Wonderful to have John Lippmann, DAN Asia-Pacific’s Founder, Chairman, Director of Research with us for a few days. John was in town to attend a dive show in Manila and popped down here prior to the show. He gave a very interesting presentation to the local diving community on dangerous marine animals, emergency evacuations: case examples and challenges posed by remote locations and oxygen first aid.
While Sabine, Mal, and Ferde were submerged with Alli, John enjoyed a nice time snorkeling around Dungon and seeing all the beautiful corals and fishes. You don’t need to go deep to see lots here!
Palau
Asia Divers trip of the Year still has 1 spot left (female) on the Palau Tropical Dancer. Sister-ship to Palau Aggressor ensures it’s a comfortable boat and with the perfect dive deck, diving doesn’t get easier than on this boat. We will board the boat in the afternoon on November 1 and disembark in the morning of November 8, which gives us 5 ½ days of brilliant diving among Sharks and other big pelagic animals. Truly a trip you want to come back to do again and again. This is your chance to do your trip of the year! Contact tommy@asiadivers.com if you’re interested.
GALAPAGOS 2016, July 28 to August 4 on Galapagos Aggressor III,
If you haven’t done it, this is the trip you want to be on as we will be right in the Whaleshark season and it’s awesome. If you have done it before then still this is the trip you want to be on as we will be right in the Whaleshark season and it’s awesome, smile. The schedule shows we will have 6 dives on Wolf Island and 6 dives at Darwin Island, this might be your best 12 dives ever done !
Price for the week on the boat US$ 5,795 per person. Confirmation to Tommy at tommy@asiadivers.com before 25th of October.
Look what one of Andy’s students bumped into in the Canyons! Photos by Peter Wu.
It’s been a fun time again having Peter Zheng back with another group of excited students. This time there were 9 students doing OW, AOW and some doing nitrox as well, plus six fun-divers. Peter was a very busy man! Alli and Troy tagged along to help out with the group and keep things running smooth. Congratulations to all the new divers and thanks to Peter for coming back! 
Celebration time for Peter’s group. 
What to do when the rain makes us have to finish dinner inside the restaurant?? Do some table dancing of course!
Congratulations to Fang Pei Chen who at the young age of 65 earned his OW and AOW certification!
Markku is contemplating the next few minutes of his life as the “stairway to Hell” has been prepared for him.
Art Kotula and Markku Tapani Saari climbed the “Stairway to Hell” and got their victory t-shirts.
Fun times in and out of the water with Kjell, Pete, Troy, Alli, Markku & Eva. Here giving a big Congratultions to Nick Carpenter for getting his Rescue cert and to Chigusa Shimada for getting her Advanced and Nitrox certifications. Well done!
Look who’s back in the water! It started with a “mooring check” dive and a couple days later Allan was off to the Canyons with Steve Ford and Troy!
Over two evenings Tech Asia put on four talks some fascinating explorations and dive projects that are taking place both worldwide and locally.
Steve Cox, one of Tech Asia’s original divers and now senior exploration diver in legendary Woodville Karst Plan Project, spoke about his efforts in Chips Hole, a Florida cave initially explored by the late Sheck Exley – one of diving’s true pioneers. More recently under the WKPP Chips has become the project on which Steve Cox and his buddy Blake Wilson have taken the lead, and have stretched this difficult system to around 16,000 ft or 5,000m of explored passage in their quest to connect it to the nearby and much deeper Leon Sinks System.
Casey Mckinlay, our special guest of the weekend and Project Director of the WKPP, discussed and illustrated his dives in another project in which he participates, the Sian Ka’an Biosphere, a UNESCO World Heritage site in Tulum, Mexico, which is being explored under a special permit issued to the MCEP – Mexico Cave Exploration Project, and also recounted a project several years ago which video documented the wreck of the cruiser USS Atlanta, sunk in 1942 in 130m of water in the Solomon Islands
Lastly we turned to home waters. Steve and Dave Ross delivered a short history of the events and discoveries of our own Asian Karst Exploration Project, operating in Samar, Philippines, where after several years of effort we believe we have discovered some of the most significant underwater caves in all of SE Asia…
All of this was coupled with two days of demo diving available on Suex scooters, for whom Casey is in charge of Global Business development. The fun of using these made the grey rainy weather irrelevant as people toured the Canyons and Verde Island with these tremendous pieces of essential dive gear 😉
Many thanks to Steve Cox for instigating the event, Casey for joining us, Miko Zulueta – our local distributor – for supporting the event, Michael Puz for extra scooters, and everyone that came along and joined in. The team now heads south for more cave exploration in Samar….
It was great to have Gavin Murphy and Wayne Prictor diving with us and Tech Asia this past week. Wayne got a chance to complete his 400th dive and celebrated in the Point Bar with a few bevies.