TUBBATAHA

Recently I just went out on a chartered dive trip to the UNESCO site Tubbataha Reefs for a whirlwind five days of nothing but diving. We did more diving in those five days than we have in our entire time in the Philippines!! We also broke our deepest depth as well….can you guess how deep we went? I have a list of sea life that I want to see while diving and I am happy to say that I am able to cross off Manta Ray on that list and also got a bonus Marble Ray and Cowtail Ray. I was talking with the owner of the charter boat and the dive master who took us out and they explained what a, “washing machine” is. The owner, Dino told me of this one time where he went away from the reef wall and suddenly noticed that when he exhaled the bubbles got pulled down instead of going up to the surface like normal. He then looked at his depth gauge and saw that he was getting pulled down fast. He ultimately went down to I think 70 meters in just a few seconds while desperately filling his BC and trying to swim out of the, “washing machine.” He was able to get out relatively quickly and then shot to the surface with his full BC all the while exhaling and trying to purge his BC. He said that he didn’t have any problems because he was pulled down so quickly and then shot to the surface so fast so he didn’t become saturated with nitrogen. Crazy right! He also told me this story only a week or so before we were going to head out! In reality the washing machines are rare and not even worth mentioning in general so no real worries. He got caught in one because he had drifted some ways out from the reef looking for Tiger or Hammerhead Sharks. BTW the boat we went on was called the M/Y Sakura and I have to say it is an amazing boat with an amazing owner, crew and dive master. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and did little else but dive, sleep, eat and read with a great night of Texas hold’em!!