I arrived around 1:30 pm and met Gina at the resort. She said she could arrange a night dive if I was interested. Of course I was.
I was the only guest who was going out on that night. They sent Carlo to be the dive master and two other young guys to drive the boat. We went to Anilao Pier, a well-known dive site that I had read a lot about it but didn’t know that I was actually this close to it.
The site is just a open sandy flat right next to the ‘pier’, which had disappeared a few year ago. It’s a shallow muck dive and I felt that the three-member crew was an overkill. But I figured this was probably how the dive business should be running here. It’s all boat and all with companion of a dive master. Carlo told me he recently spotted a fishing net under water, which had killed lots of critters. He also warned me about the trash – I told him that I was used to dive in very ‘dirty’ water. The diving was half what I expected and half what I didn’t. I know Anilao is full of small critters but what I didn’t know was that there were so many. I was going one after another. Before I could even get my strobes right, Carlo would signal me for another one.
He started by pointing out a big nudibranch on a half shell. The nudibranch was a Pteraeolidia ianthina, or dragon nudibranch
But most of the nudibranchs are extremely tiny. I was not familiar with the species and Carlo kept on pointing new ones to me. This was a Gymnodoris citrina on the sand.
Talking about tiny sizes, this unidentified aeolid is a true miniature. I had a difficult time to photograph it.
We found a squid hunting on cardinal fish. When we approached, the squid spit out the fish and fled. Carlo used the half fish and lured out a Bobbit worm. I was excited to see one.
A few creatures are considered less common. For example, the hairy shrimp with eggs was a cool finding. The shrimp blended so well with the algae and I didn’t see the eggs until I had the picture on my computer screen.
We also saw a flounder fish, which was half pinkish and half grey.
I also spotted this sea slug, which I saw somewhere in the books. I missed quite a few nudibranchs either because they were just too small, or semi-transparent, which could not show up nicely in the pictures.
On the sandy bottom we also saw a few bobtail squid.
Another highlight of the dive was a pygmy pipefish. I saw this creature in the book before. So when Carlo pointed it out to me, I was excited.
After a little while, Carlo signaled me to surface. I still had 1600 but we have been in for 76 minutes. I don’t want to leave, but there seemed no other option. Diving does have a culture here and my home style obviously does not apply to the local schedule. We surfaced.
To get to know a place like Anilao is not trivial and I didn’t expect I would ‘know’ it after a few dives. But tonight’s dive definitely gave me a taste of how rich the underwater world was here in Anilao.
