Asia Divers & El Galleon Dive Resort Blog | Puerto Galera, Philippines

Diving, News and Events

Long Live the ‘Monday News’ & Underwater Photography Workshop

Posted on May 9, 2019 by Asia Divers

09
May

“The Monday News” is a great way to keep up to date on what’s been going on at Asia Divers and El Galleon Dive Resort. Before Facebook, Instagram, blogs and all other social media came into play, this was how we let our previous guests and friends know who’s been doing what and what new and exciting things were coming up.

We still get people giving us comments like

“I just love coming into work on an ugly Monday morning through a massive snowfall, and icy roads and than seeing your newsletter!”

Even with all the new social media options and technology there is still a group of people out there who enjoy seeing it every Monday….so we keep it going!

Every month we change the cover photo and this month’s cover pic is a stunning nudi branch taken by Sue Goodman. Sue has been living here for several years and has been taking some really beautiful and creative photos. She really captures the beauty of Puerto Galera’s marine biodiversity within her photography.

If you would like to get signed up for the Monday news just complete the form below:

Awesome dive conditions continuing on this week with lots of sunny calm days, warm water and thresher sightings are still happening!

What’s been happening this week at Asia Divers

It’s been a superb time having these guys here with us this past week. Iain Caldwell, Sarah Holmes, Danaka Shaver and Kim Nguyen got to see the best of P.G. and have some good fun and laughs along the way. Congratulations to Danaka for completing her PADI Advanced Open Water and Nitrox courses.

It’s been such an amazing time teaching Jack Jones, Benjamin Mansfield and Aspley Stevens to dive this week and of course to have Jack’s dad Ian Jones join in on all the dives. I’m so proud of all the hard work they did to get this accomplishment. Most especially to Jack who at eleven years old has completed the same course that an adult has to do and kept up with the big boys all week! Big congratulations to our new “mermen”!

Now this looks a bit dangerous….Ben and Aspley on the start of their T-shirt collection. The Point Bar is a great place to wind down or wind up at the end of the day.

Congratulations Jerumel Deveza on your PADI Open Water Diver qualification! The result of some intense few days and lots of determination…. Enjoy the underwater world now awaiting you as a qualified diver!!

It’s not too late to sign up for our Underwater Photography workshop happening June 16-23, 2019

Less is More ~ Negative space is a welcome element in photography. It does not matter whether it is a wide angle scene or a close-up macro image. Composition is the key when working with negative space. Learn about this and much more with Phil Rudin and Beth Watson.

Photo workshop will include:

Hands-on in water mentoring with short slideshow presentations throughout the week
Learn about lighting, composition, camera settings, equipment and much more
Learn macro and wide angle techniques using fisheye and rectilinear lenses
Daily photo critiques, Lightroom and Photoshop editing techniques
Learn creative lighting and advanced photography techniques
Full details about the course can be found here:

Contact admin@asiadivers.com if you have any questions or would like to make a reservation.

E-IDC update

Another PADI Freediver is born…

Congratulations to Romain for achieving the PADI Freediver certification! Romain has been snorkeling and skin diving before but now wanted to get training in Freediving and came out with great achievements, for example a static breath hold time of 3:35min after an initial 2min in the pool. Fantastic! And on our open water dives we were surrounded by wide mouth mackerel, rainbow runners and schools of fuseliers…

That’s all for this week folks, visit us again next week for the latest news from Asia Divers and El Galleon Dive Resort

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Diving

Diving with Thresher Sharks in Puerto Galera – Video

Posted on May 6, 2019 by Asia Divers

06
May

Scuba Divers in Puerto Galera were treated to a spate of Thresher Shark visits recently.

What an incredible experience being able to dive with these majestic creatures!

Diving

PADI Scuba Diving Courses for Kids

Posted on May 6, 2019 by Asia Divers

06
May

Family diving at Asia Divers & El Galleon Dive Resort

PADI Scuba Diving courses for kids and grown ups at Asia Divers & El Galleon Dive Resort in Puerto Galera, Philippines.

Jack age 11 and his cousin Aspley 18 in action on their first dive as newly qualified PADI Open Water Divers. Asia Divers/El Galleon is the perfect choice for a tropical family diving holiday.

Diving, Environment, News and Events

Summer is here and we have the skies to prove it!

Posted on May 1, 2019May 1, 2019 by Asia Divers

01
May

It’s that time of year when the sky is showing us her amazing colours in the evening. Elly shot these photos last night in the Point Bar while many others were also running out to catch the fire in the sky! Summer time in Puerto Galera is awesome.

Email us to arrange your escape to paradise: admin@asiadivers.com

Or send us a message on the contact page

Join the Blackwater Diving revolution at Asia Divers

Join us for the “greatest migration on earth, which happens every night, right in front of you!”

Find out all about Blackwater diving with Asia Divers on the Blackwater Diving page

What’s been happening at Asia Divers this week?

Asia Divers and El Galleon Resort are proud to be recognized for our environmental practices by Project SEAyasat and Save Philippine Seas!

Congratulations to Alan Lo who completed his PADI Open Water and Advanced Open Water this week. Seeing him in the water you can tell how comfortable he is already!

philippines scuba diving at asia divers in Puerto Galera — Very nice to have father (Jacky Lo) and son (Alan) diving together this week.

Charolotte and Zaid did a refresher when they first arrived to get back into the diving swing and sure enough it got them all excited to continue on with doing the PADI Advanced Open Water course.

Paul Stripp and Paul Mounsey had a blast on their Diver Propulsion Vehicle (DPV) course with Jamie.

E-IDC update

PADI Instructors learning Freediving…

PADI Instructor Magnus Peterson and his daughter Veronica teamed up to explore the underwater world on one breath with the PADI Freediver Course. And in short amount of time they doubled and tripled their initial breath hold to an astonishing 3:07 and 2:13 min static. In the open water both went beyond the required 10m depth easily on second dive and practiced rescue scenarios specific to freediving.

See a short video clip about their adventures here on our YouTube channel

Did you know…?!

The PADI Freediver certification also counts as one of five Specialties for your PADI MSD – Master Scuba Diver certification.

That’s all the news from Asia Divers for this week folks, see you next week!

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Diving, Environment, News and Events

Objectif Atlantide Event Week at Asia Divers

Posted on April 25, 2019 by Asia Divers

25
Apr

What an exciting week it has been with the Objectif Atlantide event happening here. It was something completely new for us to have and there was a lot of buzz and excitement around the resort as the participants we’re trying to win the game.

Here are the first 3 teams of the 2019 underwater survey of objective Atlantis in the Philippines:

Team Scubaland for the first place, team Spirit of Diving for second place, and team The Bubble Heads for third place. The result between team 1 AND 2 is played in a pocket handkerchief

All the teams discovered the underwater environment of the Puerto Galera region while having a lot of fun solving a police riddle. A very big congratulations to Aurélie Pineau and Pauline Thomas who have won for the second year in a row.

We were thrilled to have two of the world’s renowned French Freedivers here with us for Objectif Atlantide Philippines 2019, Alice Modolo and Arthur Guerin Boëri.

Alice Modolo partnered with Giullaume Nery in his popular video “Naughty Boy” and Arthur Guerin Boëri is world record holder in Dynamic – amazing 300 meters!!

Check out these amazing videos. Photo by Kamel Benabid

“Naughty Boy”

“Arthur’s Record”

Maybe you’re all getting excited about Freediving like we are?!

Contact us to learn about becoming a certified PADI Freediver . You can see all the details on our Freediver Courses page

What else has been happening at Asia Divers?

Congratulations to Katherine Patawaran from the Philippine Department of Tourism who tried scuba diving for the first time. She had a wonderful experience seeing why so many folks love to dive in Puerto Galera and enjoyed the company of her colleague, Celstine Sy.

DPV Diving

Welcome to Peter Delmonte and Lynette Morris from PNG who had a hoot with the scoot!

PADI Diver Propulsion Vehicle certification…done!

Sandy Chan is super excited to dive in PG along with her friend’s Lwok Po Chu, Lau Nga Yan and Amethyst and do her Advanced Open Water course!

Awesome to have team Japan here: Hiroko, Yukiko and Tommy for a few days break from Manila- and all of them kept pretty busy.

Hiroko managed to complete her Emergency First Responder course, as well as the challenging Rescue Diver certification – well done!!

Yukiko and Tommy completed the PADI EAN Nitrox course in Japanese with us – and all went to Verde Island to celebrate their achievements, meeting turtles, large sweetlips, snappers, sea snakes, a velvety frogfish and the usual thousands of reef fishes.

That’s all for this week folks, see you next week for more news from Asia Divers

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News and Events

Objectif Atlantide Underwater Investigation kicks off!

Posted on April 18, 2019 by Asia Divers

18
Apr

Objectif Atlantide is kicking off at El Galleon right now. The organizers are preparing the welcome sign for the participants, media and Department of Tourism officials. (With Daniel Meouchy , Mélanie Sergent, and Patrick Louisy). We’ll be posting in Facebook and Instagram for updates this week along with more in next week’s newsletter.

The underwater police investigation is a week of fun investigation, cerebral gymnastics and naturalistic scrutiny, as well as emotion, discovery and fun. Two world champion Freedivers are also going to participate in the event along with the scuba divers. Very exciting times ahead!

Back in Black(water)

We are back into the black again last week with a group of four guests who decided to try it out for the first time….and they loved it! This is an amazing experience that is just so different from anything else. Lots of weird and wonderful creatures that you won’t see during a regular night dive. Just ask us about details.

Here are a couple more awesome photos from Scott “Gutsy” Tuason.

blackwater diving larval lizard fish puerto galera — Larval Lizardfish

blackwater diving larval cleaner shrimp puerto galera — Larval Cleaner Shrimp

Discovering Scuba on a company outing

During the long weekend of 6th, 7th and 8th of April, Asia Divers was delighted to welcome a team of ten colleagues from OSM Maritime Group (Manila) and Rederiet Stenersen AS (Norway). This close-knit, fun team chose El Galleon and Asia Divers as their resort of choice, introduced to us by Asia Diver’s own freelance Instructor, Matt, who knows the group professionally in Manila.

We were thrilled to host their annual team building and ‘Roadmap’ for 2019. On Saturday afternoon, the whole group rented an Asia Divers boat for an evening of snorkeling at Coral Garden. Then, after a busy two days in the Asia Divers conference facilities, it was time for some Discover Scuba Diving on Monday 8th April. Matt, along with Pete, Alli and Cody (Asia Divers trained Divemaster and member of the resort team), headed out to Sabang Bay with 6 of the group. The diving was brilliant, visibility great and, as a result of the Discover Scuba Diving experience, 5 members of the team have decided to take their PADI Open Water Course with Asia Divers! We couldn’t be more pleased to see this group return to us again in the near future for their Open Water certifications!

What’s been happening at Asia Divers?

Look who’s back! Taken by Andy Xie this week. Yes!!

A very proud moment for Andy to dive with his son Richard, Granddaughter Cazandra and grandson William who got to supervise the whole thing from the boat with his mom, Conny. Congratulations to Cazandra who became a PADI Open Water Diver and now three generations of the Norman family are scuba divers!

ADEX Singapore 2019

Allan, Rhuby and Sabine had a busy but productive time at ADEX this year meeting up with lots of old and new friends and really enjoying their time of course! Looking forward to seeing some new faces here from Singapore soon.

That’s all for now folks, catch up with us again for more news and updates next week!

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Diving, News and Events

The Blackwater Diving adventures continue!

Posted on April 10, 2019 by Asia Divers

10
Apr

The week of diving begins for Kamala Shadduck and her group from SingleDivers.com. SingleDivers.com is the world’s only provider of group trips designed for single or “married but buddyless” divers.

They are a travel company NOT a dating site “Our Hookups are to Tanks”. We’re very happy to have Kamala back with us again!

Back in Black!

We all had those amazing two Blackwater dives with Scott “Gutsy” Tuason, Vanessa Vergara and Bryan Nazareno from Squires Bingham Sports and learned lots about how to do them, set up the dives, and what sort of really cool creatures we might be able to see.

It really did blow us all away with what there is out there in the black. We now have all of the equipment needed to do them and are trained on how to look after our divers who are doing them, so give us a shout if you want try it out!

Check out these cool photos taken on the dives by Gutsy

Comb Jellyfish with Larvacean — Comb Jelly with Larvacean inside

Pelagic sea snake blackwater diving — Pelagic sea snake

Pelagic squid on blackwater dive — Pelagic Squid

If you want to see some more amazing Blackwater photos by Gutsy, Mike Bartick and several other amazing blackwater photographers check out “BLACK IS THE NEW BLUE (Vol 2)”. It will be launched at ADEX and books are available for sale at Squires Bingham Sports BGC Taguig.

What’s been happening at Asia Divers

Congratulations to Chuck Dreyfus for earning this very special T-shirt! 2500 dives is a huge amount of dives and a lot of them have been here with us.

Alli did a “Discover Scuba” with Laila and Sherly who both work for El Galleon/Asia Divers. Both ladies enjoyed the experience very much and would love to do it again. It’s important for us to get as many of our staff trying diving so they can appreciate why people come half way around the world to dive in Puerto Galera.

Thanks to Matt and Cody who came along on the dive to help out and take photos and to Ariana for joining in for the dive. It was a great time for all!

Tommy on Tour

Tommy and Leary are doing their annual school holiday trip (father and son bonding). After having spent two days in Perth to do the final work on the bike and get some maps for the planning of the trip they set off last Friday morning together with Tommy’s friend Crew Chief Mark who is looking after Tommy’s bike in Perth.

Exploring the southwest of the West Australia state with all the forest and small towns. Feeding Kangaroos and Emu’s, climbing a 53 meter tall Karri tree and wandering around amongst the treetops in Valley of the Giants. Met up with Allan Nash’s brother, Graham in Albany last Saturday. Tommy and Leary joined Graham to Esperance while Mark went home to Perth to face a week at the office.

E-IDC update

Alma Jane Night Dive for Carsten’s 300th dive

Congratulations to Carsten on his 300th Dive!!! And we picked a special place for it: Alma Jane at Night !

What a great dive- so much to see and also a lot of fun with the lights out pop dance quiz during ascent.

That’s all for this week folks! Catch up with us next week for another installment of the Asia Divers Blog

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Diving, News and Events

Asia Divers Plunges into the Black!

Posted on April 5, 2019April 5, 2019 by Asia Divers

05
Apr

What an awesome two nights we had as we all ventured out for our first experiences into Backwater diving. Scott “Gutsy” Tuason, Vanessa Vergara and Bryan Nazareno from Squires Bingham Sports were here to show us the ropes and get us all set up for this venture into the dark side.

It was an entirely new cast of characters coming to life, all very mysterious but exciting really. Suspended in the pitch black we hovered over a depth of 160 meters in the Verde Island Passage awaiting for the show to begin. Sensational, alien-like creatures of the deep rose to the surface to feed and breed.

Our first two back-to- back blackwater dives did not disappoint us. Along with lots of weird and wonderful jellys, squids, salps we got to see a paper nautilus and a pelagic sea snake. This photo of a paper nautilus is by Arthur Nash. He took this on his second ever black water dive using an Olympus TG-3 with no strobe.

blackwater diving in Puerto Galera with Asia Divers — Paper Nautilus by Arthur Nash

Asia Divers team getting Blackwater trained. With Ruben, Alli, Maria, Pete, Sabine, Gutsy, Elly, Bryan, Arthur and Vanessa.

“Old Gits Tour” 2019

“Old Gits Tour” 2019 kicked off this past week with the usual fun and adventures, although we we’re missing a few of them this year. Happy birthday to Brian King and to the missing Jim Morten. The time was filled with diving, eating, drinking, golfing and lots of good laughs along the way.

Whats been happening at Asia Divers

Congratulations to Andy Xie who was awarded this Certificate of Recognition for Excellence from PADI Examiner Rommy Cheung. All of us here at Asia Divers are very proud of you Andy!

Congratulations to Dustin Gold who completed his AOW, Nitrox and DPV courses with Pete this week. Now they are off with Art for a nice celebration dive to Odies!

Jana and Glenn’s short but intense weekend visit. Congratulations to Jana and Glenn for becoming DSMB specialists with Sabine in preparation for their Tubbataha liveaboard adventure in May!! What a great way to fine-tune skills and equipment ahead of a great dive trip away. It was lots of fun on a short weekend from Manila. They’ll be back for more….

E-IDC update

Yay ! Still 100% first time pass rate on PADI IEs… Congrats Carsten !!

Congratulations to all new PADI Instructors – and of course especially to Carsten for a job well done!!! We are all very proud of you. Carsten was even specifically mentioned during the closing ceremony as a great role model for skills performed in neutral buoyancy!

Thanks to the Asia Divers family for the support and especially to Arthur, George, Mae and Sarah for playing incredible students and victims. Time to party at the Point Bar…

That’s all for this week from Asia Divers, follow us to catch up with next week’s Scuba news from Asia Divers

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News and Events

It’s Show Time! ADEX Singapore & DRT Shanghai

Posted on March 27, 2019March 28, 2019 by Asia Divers

27
Mar

ADEX Singapore / DRT Shanghai…its show time!

Allan, Rhuby and Sabine will be attending ADEX in Singapore. This year’s show is dedicated to Ocean plastic free future. April 11-14, 2019 at the Suntec Singapore Convention & Exhibition Centre. If you’re in the area, please drop by and see them at the TOURISM PROMOTIONS BOARD PHILIPPINES Booth Number: J01-J10 and look for El Galleon/Asia Divers stand in the booth.

Another show happening on the same weekend is the DRT Show in Shanghai. Sam Collett will be there at the Shanghai Everbright Convention & Exhibition Center at the Tech Asia stand in the TOURISM PROMOTIONS BOARD PHILIPPINES Booth. He’ll also have some nice dive packages with him for Asia Divers. Please drop by if you’re around.

Diving Express Hong Kong living in up in Puerto Galera

Thanks Mango Lo (Diving Express Hong Kong) for organising this group of 13 to stay and dive with us, lots of laughs and fun last week and great night with hot pot at El Galleon!

Diving Express Hong Kong el galleon resort

Peak Performance Buoyancy – Mermaid style

Underwater somersaults, buoyancy games, finning like a mermaid and generally just having a lot of fun underwater was exactly what Jackie Hughes needed on her relaxing long weekend trip over from Manila. She successfully completed her PPB course with Sabine and now really feels like a little mermaid. We even have an underwater sign for it now…

The PADI Peak Performance buoyancy course is a great way to get back in to diving or just fine tune your in water position. For more details please follow the link.

In-between a PPB course, a couple DPV dives and relaxing, Jackie had a chance to take this awesome photo. Check out the full moon rising with the Point Bar and our dive shop below. What a cool photo!

Puerto Galera has had some amazingly colourful sunsets recently….it’s that time of the year again! Nice to see Andy Xie out with his camera.

Great to see Glenn and Sheila back with us again and for Glenn to earn a well deserved 400 dive t-shirt in which most of those dives have been with us! There we’re a few nervous moments for us when we discovered we didn’t have the right size shirt in stock, but a miracle happened just in time. We hope to see Sheila get hers next time…

That’s all for this week folks. See you next week!

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News and Events

Environmental Protection, Asia Divers at OZTek, eIDC Update and more!

Posted on March 21, 2019March 21, 2019 by Asia Divers

21
Mar

It was great to have Igor Savelyev back with us with a fun and lovely group from Russia. Hope to see you guys again soon! With Aleksandr Deriglazov, Denis Krykhtin, Diana Voronina, Dmitry Remezov, Igor Grigoryev, Igor Savelyev, Maria Pozhogina, Oleg Gladchenko, Oleg Karaichev, Sergey Konovalov, Vadim Novikov, Yulia Remezov

Bruce Harling has taken the plunge and jumped into the PADI Open Water course with Pete. Starting off with a “Discover Scuba” he decided to keep on going and get the cert. Congratulations Bruce, you’ve just opened the door to some new amazing travel experiences and destinations! Alli is supper happy to have a member of her clan to dive with too…

discover scuba diving sabang puerto galera philippines — **Ilya** from Russia did his **Discover Scuba Diving** 2 days ago and got so hooked that he now dives every day since accompanied by his Dad, Igor. He’s very good underwater, already dives like a certified diver!

Asia Divers & EL Galleon Resort featured for Environmental Protection efforts

Check out the article about our environmental efforts in latest issue of Active Boating & Watersports Starts on page 24.

OZTek 2019

Allan and Dave we’re at the OZTekdive show in Sydney this weekend meeting up with many of our guests and agents. Look who dropped by… Carole and Leon!

Allan had a chance to see Mel from Divers Alert Network at OZTek. Asia Divers can arrange DAN short term insurance for you upon arrival at our resort. Have a look here for more information on insurance options:

New Freediver T-shirt included in PADI Freediver course

Our funky Freediving polo shirt is now in stock . It’s included when you do certain the PADI Freediver Specialty course with us. The “Freddies Specialties” polos are made from high quality material and have some very creative artwork designed by a local artist. On the front is the small “Freddies Specialties “ logo and on the back is the design for the course . You can also purchase these polos in the dive shop, but the best way to get one is to come here and do the specialties with us!

PADI Freediver Course

E-IDC update
Look who is back for the IDC…

Today we are starting the March IDC and welcome Carsten back to Asia Divers.

It will only take 8 days and we will be ready for the PADI Exams on 26/27th. So mark your calendars for the party on 27th…

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News from El Galleon Dive Resort & Asia Divers, Puerto Galera

What’s been happening this week at Asia Divers

It’s not too late to sign up for our Underwater Photography workshop happening June 16-23, 2019

Photo workshop will include:

E-IDC update

That’s all for this week folks, visit us again next week for the latest news from Asia Divers and El Galleon Dive Resort

Family diving at Asia Divers & El Galleon Dive Resort

Join the Blackwater Diving revolution at Asia Divers

What’s been happening at Asia Divers this week?

E-IDC update

That’s all the news from Asia Divers for this week folks, see you next week!

What else has been happening at Asia Divers?

DPV Diving

That’s all for this week folks, see you next week for more news from Asia Divers

Back in Black(water)

Discovering Scuba on a company outing

What’s been happening at Asia Divers?

ADEX Singapore 2019

That’s all for now folks, catch up with us again for more news and updates next week!

Back in Black!

What’s been happening at Asia Divers

Tommy on Tour

E-IDC update

That’s all for this week folks! Catch up with us next week for another installment of the Asia Divers Blog

“Old Gits Tour” 2019

Whats been happening at Asia Divers

E-IDC update

That’s all for this week from Asia Divers, follow us to catch up with next week’s Scuba news from Asia Divers

ADEX Singapore / DRT Shanghai…its show time!

Diving Express Hong Kong living in up in Puerto Galera

Peak Performance Buoyancy – Mermaid style

Asia Divers & EL Galleon Resort featured for Environmental Protection efforts

OZTek 2019

New Freediver T-shirt included in PADI Freediver course

E-IDC update Look who is back for the IDC…

E-IDC update
Look who is back for the IDC…