Dynamite Fishing -- the Shame!

Today's dives were remarkable for my first-hand experience of dynamite fishing. I've read about, I've seen it on NatGeo, and now I finally felt it and experienced it for myself. Imagine diving 10m below the surface and you see this shadow of a boat overhead and not a few minutes more, you heard a loud bang and feel the shockwaves rippling against your skin, and fishes dying everywhere.

some of the fishes were dead, some were still gasping trying to revive, while the rest were swimming around in a daze and bleeding from their guts or orifices. I felt hunted and angry. I didn't hear the subsequent explosions, but my fellow divers said there were a few more.

This is so crazy ... having learnt how to kill each other the past century with great efficiency, we're now moving to rape mother earth with the same shameless efficiency. The locals are oblivious to their natural heritage they're destroying, and I felt so helpless. To make things worse, there was actually a "ranger" sitting on the island (gato Island) who didn't do squat! just watching the locals blow their heritage to bits and life, oh life, to smithereens. How unhappy we make our creator.

The Malapascua Shark

So here I am, at Malapascua, in the middle of the Philippines, diving at the Monad Shoals which sink 300m into the bottom of the edge of the Pacific, amidst a school of hammerhead sharks and thresher sharks (and possibly manta rays) and the visibility was AWFUL. We couldn't see beyond 5m. then suddenly the visibility improved, like a winter draught, and shadows became more real, lines more clear, and this beast of a thresher shark came up from the deep to greet us trembling divers ... two more followed. Awesome.

But the downside of it ... Ruth isn't here with me =( .... but in some ways I am glad she isn't because I'm not sure how she would handle the cold, the nitrox tanks, the deep dives, and the "horrors" of seeing 3-4m long sharks swimming around her...

that was yesterday. Today, the vis continued to be bad, and we saw more shadows, but hey, at least we saw 3 threshers... =) ...

the food here at the Malapascuan Exotic Island Resort is not terribly good, but it ain't terrible. Sure miss Ruth's cooking ...

More on the trip when I actually get back.