Every diver has that special destination, a place that enthrals the senses from the very first visit. For underwater photographer Scott Bennett, Dauin is one of those places. Situated on the island of Negros, in the Visayas region of the Philippines, Dauin is a diving powerhouse, offering a sublime mixture of muck diving and coral reefs.
Tiny juvenile clown frogfish, House Reef, Dauin
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When I first arrived back in 2001, Dauin was one of the Philippines’ best-kept diving secrets, often overlooked in favour of more popular locations such as Puerto Galera or Anilao. Not anymore! In the ensuing decades, it has gained renown as one of the country’s diving hotspots. Personally, however, Dauin is special for two additional reasons. It is the place I decided to pursue underwater photography, and was the subject of my very first diving article (in this very magazine, to boot).
First, a bit of back story. In 2002, I was fortunate to spend ten months in Manila for my job. I had decided to learn underwater photography, and as luck would have it, an expat friend was offering an introductory underwater photography course.
It featured a weekend classroom session followed by another on location in Anilao for hands-on experience. The equipment consisted of two set-ups: my friend’s brand-new digital camera (with a whopping 5MP sensor) and his old Nikonos V rangefinder. Participants would have the opportunity to shoot wide-angle using both systems. To put it mildly, things did not go well. The digital images all featured sharp images of fish tails (thanks to the camera shutter lag), while everything I shot with the Nikonos was out of focus. Thoroughly frustrated, my photographic pursuits appeared to be in ruins.
Weeks later, I found myself in Dauin for a weekend of diving. I was surprised to discover the resort I stayed at had a Nikonos V for rent, but this one was set up for macro. Intrigued, I decided to give it a whirl. As the Nikonos did not have autofocus or TTL metering, focus was achieved via a metal frame on twin metal rods attached to the macro lens. With the focus, aperture and flash manually pre-set, the subject is positioned within the frame, and voilà! Or so I was told. With a variety of subjects, including crabs, shrimp, nudibranchs and clownfish, I photographed to my heart’s content, not really knowing what to expect.
Upon reviewing my developed slides, I was stunned. The subjects were sharp and well exposed. “My goodness, I took these?” I mused. From that moment on, it was a done deal. I had to keep going. Two years later, I returned with a housed autofocus SLR film camera to write my very first dive article.
Getting there
Since that time, I had only paid a brief visit to Dauin, prior to a Visayas liveaboard trip, so a proper stay was long overdue. This time, I would be there six days, but there was a downside. My Cebu Pacific flight from Manila to Dumaguete departed at 5:10 a.m., necessitating an ungodly wake-up call at 3:00 a.m. Thank goodness the airport was close!
Fortunately, the flight was only 90 minutes and went without a hitch. A word of advice for those travelling with lots of gear. Checked baggage weight on domestic flights in the Philippines is 20kg, but you can book extra weight at time of purchase. Even so, I had to pack frugally. Ah, the joys of being an underwater photographer.
Before leaving home, I had arranged an airport transfer from Dumaguete to Dauin with Sea Explorers, and thanks to minimal Sunday traffic, I arrived at the operator’s Pura Vida resort in under 30 minutes. Compared to Manila’s bustle, Dauin was an oasis of calm. This was my third visit to Pura Vida, and it was wonderful to be back. When I arrived back in 2004 to write my article, the resort was newly opened. Now, it had recently celebrated its 20th anniversary. Where had the time gone?
After checking into my comfortable, thatched-roof cottage, I headed to the dining room. Although I had arrived too late for the morning dive, I was just in time for breakfast. Straight away, I could see some changes since my previous visit. The resort had expanded greatly, adding additional accommodation, as well as a second pool and a huge new dining room.
Diving
After a tasty, traditional Filipino breakfast of eggs, longanisa sausage and garlic rice, I went over to the dive centre for the usual paperwork and gear fitting. The dive centre had expanded, too, with additional classrooms and an air-conditioned camera room with individual stations and plenty of outlets for battery charging. I claimed a spot and promptly brought all my gear down for assembly. Once everything was finished, I took up residence in a beachside lounge chair and dozed off, dreaming of all the amazing critters the week would reveal.
Divers visiting Dauin will be spoiled for choice, with plenty of different options available. There are more than 15 dive sites in the vicinity, with additional sites at Apo Island and Siquijor Island accessible as day trips from the resort. As Dauin lies outside the typhoon belt, diving is possible year-round, although the best time is from November to June. My visit was in March, and diving conditions proved optimal, despite some bouts of wind. Water temperatures ranged from 28–30°C. Being a thick-skinned Canadian, my 2mm wetsuit proved more than adequate, even during the chillier night dives.
After a day of leisure, the afternoon dive could not come soon enough. While gearing up, it was great to see many of the dive staff from my previous visits were still here. I was then introduced to Oliver Buenavista, my dive guide for the week. Friendly and enthusiastic, he may have been old enough to be my grandson (ouch) but quickly revealed himself to be a critter-spotting guru!
House Reef. It did not take long to find that out, as our first site was the Pura Vida House Reef, a shore dive only metres from the dive shop. Entering the water, areas of seagrass filled the shallows, before giving way to a slope of volcanic sand. Although the site extends down to 27m, we did not make it that far.
Minutes in, Oliver found his first critter, and it was one of my all-time favourites. Revealed in his torch beam was a flamboyant cuttlefish, feeding on a shrimp. Its tentacles flared outwards, revealing a creamy underside accented by red tips, resembling a delicate tropical orchid. In seconds, the shrimp was gone and the cuttlefish resumed foraging along the bottom. I could not wait to see what other macro wonders lay ahead.
I quickly had my answer. Boldly striped with black and yellow, a fangtooth blenny gaped from a sponge, as porcelain crabs and glass shrimp sheltered on anemones. Nudibranchs were abundant too, including Caloria indica, Goniobranchus fidelis, and best of all, a “Shawn the Sheep” sacoglossan sea slug (but more on that later). I really did not want to get out of the water.
Luca Sanctuary. Fortunately, I did not have to wait long for the night dive, which, in actuality, was more of a dusk dive. I had enough time for a coffee and snack at the beach bar before it was time to gear up again. Once again, we would be doing a shore dive, but this one was at Luca Sanctuary, a bit further down the beach. This site features some artificial reef structures, including a sailboat hull at 20m, and a number of concrete-coated steel frame structures at approximately 12m.
The dive started off with bubble coral shrimp, lizardfish and zebra lionfish, but then my torch beam illuminated something that made me yelp into my regulator. It was a blue-ringed octopus, only the second one I had ever seen. Better still? I found it all by myself! It took some frantic gesturing and muffled hollering to get Oliver’s attention, but he finally saw me and finned over. We spent the ensuing 15 minutes with this most compliant of cephalopods, and I photographed to my heart’s content.
I would have been satisfied with the blue-ringed octopus, but Oliver had a final surprise in store. Heading back to shore, he found a tiny bobtail squid resting on the bottom in a metre of water. With low air, I was bobbing like a cork, and only managed to fire off a trio of images. Happily, three proved to be my lucky number. Photographing three of my favourite critters on day one was too good to be true. Talk about an auspicious start!
Even at dinner, I could not help myself. I just had to look at the day’s images. This quickly turned into my daily routine: dinner, backup of images, battery-charging and bed (along with a bowl of ube ice cream, of course). Seriously, a few extra hours in the day would have been most welcome!
Critter havens
Day two took us to a trio of sites a little further afield. Black Diamond, Talisay and San Miguel were all classic Dauin sites, featuring a mixture of sand interspersed with patches of coral and sponges.
Black Diamond. At this dive site, a white clown frogfish got the ball rolling, along with a blue and yellow ribbon eel and a variety of molluscs. Strikingly patterned with red and white, a trio of harlequin ghost pipefish hovered alongside a sponge shrouded with brittle stars. I was thrilled to see another flamboyant cuttlefish, this one in full-on hunting mode. Following its progress, I was thrilled to see its blue tongue, called a radula, shoot out to spear its prey. Although the cuttlefish missed, my camera did not!
Talisay. The critters here seemed to diminish in size. Wedged in a tiny nook between the curved ridges of a coral was a tiny eggshell shrimp, its translucent body patterned with delicate red and white spots, contrasting with the large white area on its back.
A pygmy pipehorse was practically invisible amongst the vegetation, making photography a challenge to get enough of it in focus. Smaller still was a brown pygmy squid, dwarfed by blades of seagrass. It was my 10x dipotre to the rescue, but even with increased magnification, it remained distressingly small in frame. However, there was one critter that defeated me. Oliver pointed out a hairy shrimp, a critter so small I could barely even see it, let alone find it in my viewfinder.
Ornate Elysia and Caloria indica nudibranchs patrolled the sand, while a juvenile cockatoo waspfish, its tiny body undulating from side to side in the gentle current, was so small, I swam right by it until Oliver pointed it out.
San Miguel. Our afternoon dive at San Miguel proved equally enthralling. Right off the bat, Oliver discovered one of macro photography’s Holy Grails: a “Shawn the Sheep” nudibranch (Costasiella kuroshimae). Usually found grazing on algae, these little guys are as charismatic as they come. Boasting black-tipped rhinophores resembling sheep ears, a plump body covered in soft, green spikes called cerata and tiny dots for eyes, these endearing critters look like something out of a cartoon.
Once I knew where to look, they proved quite easy to find. Photographing them was another matter. Even with a 10x close-up dioptre, getting a front-to-back, sharp image was a challenge. One even had a skeleton shrimp perched alongside it, something I did not even see on location.
Moving along, we found a painted frogfish, a blue ribbon eel, various gobies and a school of juvenile barracuda, while an expansive sandy area was home to razorfish and a large colony of garden snake eels. After such an amazing day, a change of strobe batteries was a necessity after three dives. This is not a place where one wishes to run out of battery life.
House Reef, revisited. A final dive at the Pura Vida House Reef continued to dazzle. A yellow fan coral housed a colony of tiny, transparent shrimp, while fangtooth blennies, decorator crabs, robust ghost pipefish (another day, another colour), a crocodile flathead and red dwarf lionfish continued the critter parade. The highlight was another hunting cuttlefish, attempting to spear its prey. I could not believe my luck. I had never photographed this behaviour before, but to photograph it twice in the same day, with two different species, was beyond words!
Ensconced within vegetation, porcupinefish slumbered, while a juvenile lionfish added a splash of colour and texture to the dark sand. Another cuttlefish had a hitchhiker: a tiny goby, resting on its back. Cool stuff indeed!
Apo Island
After two days of intense macro, I was eager for some wide-angle, and nearby Apo Island was happy to oblige. Situated about a 30-minute banca ride southwest of Pura Vida, Apo is one of the Visayas’ premier dive destinations. Small and rugged, the island is a thriving marine reserve, renowned for its superb hard-coral gardens and exhilarating drift dives.
Granted full protection in 1995, Apo is one of the Philippines’ most successful marine reserves and is managed by the local island community. Approximately a dozen dive sites encircle the island, with mooring buoys helping to prevent reef damage from frequent boat traffic.
The resort usually offers several day trips a week, and I was fortunate; one was scheduled in the middle of my visit. Shortly after departure, it was already time to gear up and have our briefing.
Chapel Point. Our first stop was Chapel Point, named after the nearby local church. Plunging in revealed a world entirely different from Dauin’s sandy slopes. Here, we found steep walls and overhangs shrouded with vibrant sponges and soft corals. Proliferations of Acropora, lettuce, brain, table and elkhorn corals provided shelter for butterflyfish, damselfish and squirrelfish, while anthias, yellowfin goatfish, triggerfish and parrotfish swarmed about.
The sudden appearance of a banded sea krait resulted in a melee of photographers eager for a shot. An orange bubble-tip anemone provided a splash of colour, accented further by a pair of resident spinecheek anemonefish. Several hawksbill sea turtles swam past but remained maddeningly out of camera range.
A curious sight were the streams of carbon dioxide bubbles erupting from the seabed, driven by ongoing geothermal activity beneath the island. During the safety stop, I enjoyed shooting compositions of corals framing views of our banca directly, as shimmering bands of sunlight pierced the blue.
Rock Point West. With surface conditions worsening, we did a second dive at Chapel Point before venturing to our final site at Rock Point West. Situated at the island’s southern tip, the site featured dramatic rock formations with steep slopes and a profusion of coral gardens. The hard corals at the safety stop proved especially photogenic, offering plenty of compositions to keep my shutter clicking.
Siquijor Island
The following day, the wide-angle wonders kept coming. An hour-long banca ride away, across the channel, was Siquijor Island. I had the opportunity to dive here on a previous visit with a Visayas liveaboard, so I was eager for another opportunity.
This day was all about wall drift dives, with vertiginous drops and abundant marine life. Paliton Wall featured impressive gorgonian and fan corals of yellow, orange and magenta, while overhangs sheltered intricate tangles of sponges and schools of striped catfish and yellow sweepers. Maite was home to robust hard coral gardens and massive barrel sponges, while Tambisan Wall had a bit of everything. At 25m, visibility was superb, allowing for endless photo opportunities.
Night dive. Still eager for more, I concluded the day with a night dive at Luca Sanctuary. A completely different cast of characters had arrived, with red being the theme of the evening. A red crocodile snake eel, a reddish-orange robust ghost pipefish, a red humpback scorpionfish and a couple of shrimp species (one of them red) created dynamic contrast against the black volcanic sand. In the shallows near the shore, a mantis shrimp peered skywards from its burrow, while a marbled snake eel allowed a close approach for photos, as my air and buoyancy were nearly spent.
Drone photography
The following morning, I got up extra early to see the sunrise. The winds had finally subsided and I was able to get my drone airborne. From above, the views were even more spectacular. Golden brown in the morning light, beaches of volcanic sand fringed the shore, quiet reminders of an ancient eruption.
Just visible to the south, the silhouette of Apo Island broke the horizon, while behind the resort, the emerald slopes of 1,903m Mt Talinis had already disappeared beneath a white blanket of cloud. In stark contrast to Manila, the only traffic was a contingent of joggers heading up the beach. There was only one thing that could improve such an idyllic scene: a cup of coffee. Fortunately, the dining room was only a short stroll away!
Macro photography
With some wide-angle images under my belt, it was back to macro for my final two days. Most sites were ones I had not done before, proving that, no matter how many times you visit, there are always new places to explore.
La Torre is named after the large steel structure (the tower) at a depth of about 24m, which has become an impressive artificial reef swarming with marine life. A juvenile white-eyed moray peered from a crevice, as a myriad of reef fish swarmed the perimeter. Squat lobsters nestled amongst the tendrils of feather stars, while nudibranchs and flatworms added additional splashes of colour. A cardinalfish with a mouthful of eggs appeared, but a photograph proved elusive.
Moving to the shallows for the safety stop, a seagrass meadow revealed several common seahorses ensconced within the greenery. And, true to form, they always turned away as I moved closer for a photograph.
ATM. At this dive site, the sand was grey rather than black, interspersed with clusters of sponges and corals. Gobies shared burrows with partner shrimp, while the corals attracted an abundance of species, including Oriental and ribboned sweetlips, scribbled filefish, bearded scorpionfish, Moorish idols and a foraging banded sea krait. An eye on a dark shape betrayed the presence of a black frogfish, perched on a coral outcrop. Alas, it sucked up all the light from my strobes, the outcome a featureless black blob.
Dauin South was all about the frogfish. A tiny, white painted frogfish sat right out in the open on the sand, allowing me to photograph it from every angle. Nearby was an even smaller juvenile painted frogfish, smaller than my baby fingernail. The BBC filmed a segment on frogfish for its Planet Earth III series in Dauin, and stated that of the 33 known species, 29 can be found here. How amazing is that?
Oh, and there were other interesting critters, too, including a trio of green robust ghost pipefish and a Stiliger ornatus, a sap-sucking sea slug that is strikingly patterned with yellow and blue. Oliver motioned me over to a cluster of algae, revealing a small goby guarding a cluster of eggs. I never cease to be amazed as to how he finds these things!
House Reef night dive. A final night dive at the House Reef proved a fitting conclusion. Subjects included a Miller’s nembrotha nudibranch zooming across the substrate (in nudibranch terms, at least), a juvenile clown frogfish, black harlequin ghost pipefish and a Donald Duck shrimp blending perfectly atop an orange sponge. A snowflake moray peered from a sponge, while a sharpnose snake eel gazed skywards from the sand, completely unfazed by our presence.
Masaplod South. Sadly, with the dreaded 24-hour no-fly period looming, I was only able to squeeze in a solitary dive on my final diving day. At Masaplod South, a broadclub cuttlefish, flatworms, a candy crab and a perfectly posed yellow leaf scorpionfish capped off an incredible week of photography.
Final thoughts
Despite all of my previous visits, Dauin still has the power to enthral. For the macro photographer, the sheer number of critters on display is almost overwhelming. I could have spent the entire week diving the house reef alone. Five diving days simply were not enough, as there were dive sites that I did not even get to visit, and this is not even counting Apo Island’s numerous dive sites. Combined with the outstanding service offered by Pura Vida and its wonderful staff, it was truly sad to say goodbye. I will just have to come back. After all, there are another 25 species of frogfish to find! ■
References: fishbase.org, marinespecies.org, wikipedia.org
