Category Archives: News and Events

Good Bye to the Hammers

It’s with heavy hearts that we bid farewell to Mal Hammer and his lovely wife Larissa Jefferson.

Larissa has had a three year posting with the Aussie Embassy and in that time they have become great friends to us all. Mal got straight into his Divemaster course three years back and has been around to help out at almost every major diving event involving international schools and some of our larger American groups. Larissa came down to see us when she wasn’t busy, usually with a load of great mates! She completed Rescue, EFR and many dives to boot! Now their time is over we just can’t believe it’s gone so quick.

We wish you all the best in your new adventure in Canberra and hope you won’t forget us!

HUGYCUP Awards night

Asia Divers hosted the HUGYCUP photo and video competition from the 22nd of February until the 17th of April 2015. During that time we got to meet lots of amazingly talented photographers and videographers who were all here for the competition.  The amount of big cameras around here during that time was quite the sight! Over the past few months the judges have had their hands full judging all the photos in the many different categories. The end results were displayed and announced last Saturday in Belguim.

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Allan and Hugycup organizer Danny Van Belle at the HUGYCUP awards night.

Allan also presented an award to Danny In Appreciation of the HUGYCUP 2015, “In Grateful Recognition of the Enduring Commitment to Promoting Underwater Photography and Diver Awareness. “

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Over 30000 euro in prizes we’re given out at the awards night when the winners were announced and Allan was there to see it all. You can see all the winning photos on the official Hugycup website.

See: http://2014.hugycup.com/

Thank you to Danny Van Belle for organizing this event, and a big thanks to all of the participants who took part in the HUGYCUP at Asia Divers this year. Congratulations to all the winners, you all got some very spectacular photos! It was a great experience for all of us here at Asia Divers and El Galleon to be part of this.

Animals on the beach

sep15c3A long time tradition at Asia Divers/El Galleon…the return of the Animals!  For the past couple weeks the Animals have been in full force celebrating birthdays, diving, enjoying all of what PG has to offer and making new Cardinals…sometimes. The diving has been superb and they’ve enjoyed a few thresher shark sightings on top of all that. Here is Terry, Rene, Alli, John, and Mark all ready for the 10:30 dive. You’ll note that there are a few missingJ

Post DRT show visit to El Gal/Asia Divers

sep15c1It’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.

Look who’s on the beach

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.

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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!

Tech Asia this past weekend

08d2Over 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….

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Asia Divers new compressor

08c9 Asia Divers just got a new compressor and as you can see it takes a lot of manpower just to get it to our place. Once it arrived in Sabang it took all afternoon just to get it to our place…inch by inch….

08c10Our new baby came from the distributors of LW Germany. It’s the Model LW 570ES with the upgraded filtration system  and holds the same technical specifications with an air output of 570 Ltr/min. That means if  both compressors are running they give a combined output of 1,140 Ltr / mins which equals to filling 10 tanks from 50 bar in 15 mins…WOW!! The unit is fitted with VFD so able to adjust rotation speed output to match the nitrox machine and at same time able to save on electrical power.