diving sarangani bay & tunas galore

finally! my blogger's block (if there's such a thing) has been nudged a tad with my recent (work related) trip to the deep south. hopefully, i keep this up and that the adventures keep on coming.

it's sad that mindanao is generally given the reputation of being unsafe, with endless gunfighting & clashes among the military and the insurgents. in truth these are in areas far from the cities and are isolated cases, and general santos, famously known as tuna capital of the philippines and more recently manny pacquiao's hometown was as quiet and lazy as any other far-flung province can be. but unlike most provinces, general santos had really nice, wide roads.

beautiful roads of gensan constructed via USAID

since i was there for work, i stayed the first few days at the east asia royale hotel, one of the few starred hotels in the city. it was just along the highway and was within walking distance of a couple of malls - gaisano & kcc. i made it a point however to squeeze in an adventure or two in pacquiao country. but there really isn't much to do in the city. most of the sights are a few or several hours away like the dole plantations, lake sebu, t'boli tribe and i only had a day to spare.

even before flying out to gensan, i'd already decided that i would check out the diving at sarangani bay, so i researched on the internet and found a shop to dive with. the only dive shop in the city was tuna city dive center, which was located in the cambridge farm resort owned and operated by chris dearne a british expatriate who has lived in gensan for 20 years & his filipina wife elle. and since i was diving with them, i just decided to stay at the farm on my last night.

because my flight back to manila was the next day, i only had time to do two dives because i had to observe the 24 hour no air travel rule. i started my dive with a shore entry at the tampuan/tinoto wall. it was during this dive that i met john heitz another american expatriate who has made general santos his home, and believe it or not he speaks better bisaya than i do ( i speak really good bisaya mind you!). he also speaks other dialects and even the tboli native language. john would be my savior in my other gensan adventure.

the tinoto wall actually stretches 10 kilometers along sarangani bay, and area where we did our shore entry was around 30 minutes away from the city and was owned by john. it was a small piece of beach front property with a small hut and a couple of picnic tables. the wall drop off is quite deep - around 1500-4000 meters deep - according to locals. although the bay is seldom visited by typhoons, they still get strong waves and winds which causes damage to the corals. john was quite sad that i had to see the wall in not so perfect condition since a lot of the table corals have been damaged and overturned by the strong waves the past several days. he said if i had come a couple of weeks earlier it would have been much more beautiful.

for my second dive, we drove a few minutes away to southpoint divers resort and took a dive boat from their house pier to dive another part of the wall, this time near the sandbar. the resort was quite nice, situated in a cliff and with a nice view of the bay, perfect for divers, but may be boring for non-divers since there is nothing else to do and no facilities to keep them entertained.

i had a good couple of dives in sarangani bay. visibility was not that great but i was able to see several sea turtles, a small school of jacks and humungous humphead wrasses, props to my dm dennis! i would have loved to encounter a school of tuna, since this was tuna capital of the philippines anyways, but i learned that the tuna fishing grounds are about 4 days away from shore.

school of jacks

humphead wrasse

with dennis my DM

i was actually lucky in choosing my dive shop, because, chris is good friends with john and both expats are stalwarts of diving in general santos. as i was doing research for this blog, i found out that they spearheaded coastal clean-ups, building artificial reefs and basically promoting environmental protection. my dm dennis even told a story about john volunteering to pay divers P3, from his own pocket, for each crown of thorn they remove from the corals in area of tinoto wall where his property was. they ended up collecting over 6,000 c.o.t. and there were no sign of them during my dive.

dome-shaped artificial reefs

elle, bobby & chris of tuna city dive center/cambridge farm & resort

i would have loved to do more dives but i didn't want to risk breaking the 24 hour no-fly rule and end up getting bends on the plane. on the drive back to the city, i was rewarded with a picturesque view of sarangani bay.

another thing i really wanted to experience in general santos was their fish market and i asked about this when i first arrived. however i was discouraged to go because you would need a lot of permit to go in and take pictures, need to be in proper attire and need to have some kind of official business in the fish port in order to enter! so much for promoting tourism!

but with a stroke of luck, i found my ticket inside the fish port. my savior john! john's day job was to export tuna to the US so he is at the fish port everyday to oversee the purchase of tuna that come in from the fishing boats, clean them and pack them for shipment. so for my last day in gensan, i woke up before the break of dawn and had my cameras ready and headed to the port accompanied by bobby, the all-around-man of cambridge farm.

camera-shy john

although i told the guards of the port that i was a guest of john, i still had a hard time going in, john's assistant had to come out and get me and bring me a pair of boots because you cannot enter the port in any kind of footwear but white boots and sleeveless shirts were not allowed. the guard also said that picture taking was not allowed without a signed permit from a port official. i just said okay, just so i could get in, but i will take my pictures no matter what.

the hassle was all worth it, i got to see the huge tunas, the 16kilo tunas were the 'small ones' and hundred-plus kilo tunas were an ordinary sight. in my first hour i took stolen shots of the activity in the port with my G9 but after awhile i was able to take pictures openly with my dslr even though it was a challenge to stay out of the way of the people who were doing business at the port.

i hung around the fish port for about 4 hours, just watching tuna after tuna come in, experiencing the bidding of tunas among purchasers, checking the meat quality, weighing of the tunas, cleaning and packing for export. it was an interesting sight and even if i smelled like fish, i went back to the hotel happy and flew back to manila fulfilled.