Day One
It is 25 Dec 2018 and in Moalboal, Cebu, the Philippines, it’s 29 degrees Centigrade in the air and 28 degrees in the water – just super!
I’m back once again to one of my favourite dive sites, by now I think I’ve been here at least 10 times.
As always we are staying at Quo Vadis, a fantastic dive resort, with maybe one of the best house reefs, literally walking distance just outside the resort.
The rooms here are very nice, clean and of quite high quality in my opinion. There is a restaurant and a separate bar which also serves some dishes. The food is absolutely fine and we usually have the buffet breakfast there but tend to out for lunch and/or dinner to get a change of scenery and try some of the many other good places. ,Overally the resort is very friendly, and safe, and the staff is very accommodating and happily help you with almost everting you ask for, except the weather I tried, it didn’t work ;-)-
And then there is the resort dive center – what can I say, just super in just about everything – custumers’ wishes are the staffs law. It is just fascinating and fantastic that they can run the dive center like that. – Guys – what can I say – Thank you so much for the good and amazing work all of you do to all of us your customers. And when I say all dive center staff let me be sure to include them all – the reception staff, the dive instructors and dive masters, the guys on the boat who tirelessly get our BCDs and tanks on to the boat and back every day and also to the guy who has been there since the beginning making sure our tanks are adequately filled.
And here is the for the best offer of 2019, I know the year is only a week old but this is amazing and I hope you will be able to make the most of it : I can help you shave 6% of the price of the accommodation at Quo Vadis if you book your holiday through the link below
Just be sure to mention Patrik Scubaartfoto in the Message Box. So how were the dives this time? Lets take a look

First dive
The dive site is called Umbrella
visibility: 15meters
dive score: 8
Camera/Equipment: Nikon 105mm macro lenses
Umbrella got its name from the small underwater islands around there that look likes umbrellas.
The site also has a small airplane at around 20m depth and thelast time here I saw seahorses at 30 meters, but I could not find any today. However, I did see three different species of nudibranch, Clownfish and small shrimps
Strangely enough I also had a problem with my mask which was fogging the entire dive… haven’t had that problem before. Oh well.

Second dive
Dive site: Tongo
dive score: 7
Camera/Equipment: Nikon 105mm macro lenses
This is a beautiful wall dive. We saw three turtles, small coral shrimps, clownfish , scorpion fish and Neil fish

Third dive
Dive site: Kasay, wall dive
dive score: 9
Camera/Equipment: Nikon 105mm macro lenses
I saw three small Pygme seahorses at 23 meters depth, plenty of beautiful corals, shrimps, Clownfish, a school of squids , 3 turtles and one big black Frogfish.

Dive 4
Dive site: Sardines
Score: 10
Camera/Equipmnet: Video Camera Nikon 10-20mm wide lenses
There is only one word – WOW! How is it possible this dive can be so amazing every time I’m here? I must have done this dive 25 times now and I am equally astounded, fascinated and impressed. First you see nothing and then a bit more of nothing and then thousands and thousands of sardines swim together. The sardines change their direction all a the same time or with the fastest reaction times all the time at the same moment.
If you want to see for yourself, take a look at my videos from this dive site. You can find htem here on YouTube name: scubaartfoto. Insert link?
Dive 5
Dive site: Pescador Island
Visibility: 20meters
dive score: 10
Camera/Equipment: Using 60mm macro lenses
We also went back to Pescador Island again. You can see Pescador from the resort and the boat ride is about 20 minutes from the resort. Also this dive site is amazing.
It is a relatively small island and you can get dropped off at both sides and will then follow the current more or less around the entire island. It is lovely soft coral against the walls, and at the west side on the Island did you got a small plateau at around 5 m depth just the perfect place for your safety stop towards the end of your dive
This time we saw frogfish, scorpionfish, leave fish, 1 turtle, Nudibranch, Clownfish, Angelfish,

Dive 6
Dive site: Lo-lo
Dive score: 10
Camera/Equipment: Using Nikon 60mm lenses
This is a wall dive and again one of my favourite dive sites .
We went with a small crew towards the North and we saw small shrimps, lots of turtles, also one of my favourites as you well know by now 😊, Frogfish, Clownfish and Angelfish

Dive 7
Dive site: Tumble
dive score: 8
Camera/Equipment:
Nice wall dive with lots of small schools of fish, nudibranch, sea snake, octopus, squids

Dive 8
Dive site: Kasya Wall dive
Dive score: 9
Camera/Equipment:
Lots of greats sights here, turtles, clownfish, bubble coral, shrimps, pygmy seahorses and I spend 22 min just with them in order to try to get so many good photos as possible. You will have seen some of them on my Insta account.

Dive 9
Dive site: Pescador
Dive score: 10
Camera/Equipment: using 8-15mm fisheye lenses
As I know these sites quite well, I sometimes plan accordingly. For this particular dive my goal was to focus my photos on the fantastic soft corals and some clown fish as well.

Dive 10
Dive site: Sardines
Visibility 10meters
dive score 10
Camera/Equipment: Nikon D850 / 8-15mm fisheye lenses
I’m just saying. You must go there if you don’t have been there already.
See my video at YouTube scubaartfoto

Dive 11/12
Dive site: Oslob, Cebu
This is where the whalesharks are. Over the years this site has become a lot more organized and disciplined. Only a limited number of divers are allowed in at anyone time. We left very early in the morning and it took us about 1,5 hours to get there.
During our first dive this day, there were only about 10 divers in the water. During our second there were maybe 20 in total. I can’t really complain about that. Previous times there have been more and I am not sure whether we were lucky or they have tightened it all up further.
But, it was at least 500-600 snorkelers at the surface instead. That may sounds like a lot and of course it is a lot but there were still space and the sun could trickle down to us so not too much of a problem for us divers. Just odd to see so many.
This was my 4th time there and I think maybe the best dives here with the whalesharks because there were such a small number of divers. Think about that if you are going – try to avoid the rush hour.
First time I was there, maybe 6-7 years ago, there were divers everywhere and the divers did what they wanted, like getting very close to the sharks or even touching them. I was little bit sad over what I saw back then.Now there are strict guidelines on what divers can and cannot do and how the dives should be etc. That is really good. These sharks are so big, yet gentle, you are privileged to be around them (just as you are diving generally of course) – we are there as guests.
During our dives we saw between 6-8 whale sharks. It was a bit difficult to see exactly how many because of the low visibility, but there were no waves and almost no clouds so the sun was really helping.
As part of the guidelines, you are not allowed to use any articifical lights or strobes in the water, so the sun was very welcome for my video and photos 😊.

Dive 13
Night dive at the house reef Quovadis dive resort
Dive score: 9
Camera/Equipment:
We started the dive at sunset which is 5:30 pm.
My first mission on this dive was take some photos of the Mandarin fish and when they do it.I have tried this mission before and just succeeded one time previously and that was last summer.This time it took me around 20 min before I got it .
After that did we see lots of different crabs and shrimps, Lazerfish, hawk fish, clownfish, turtle and Milky Seas (Mareel) effect which is a light phenomenon that occurs in the salt water with certain Algae types, which emits lights in the water.
One way to see if they are any in the water is just turn off your torch under water and waving with your arms and hands in front of you. If you see fantastic lightgreen lights in front of you, then you’ve got it 😊.

Dive 14
Dive site Pescador Island
dive score 9
Camera/Equipment:
First, we dived to a place called the Church. It is a small cave at some 20-35 meters depth.
I usually find some Nudibranch here but not this time. But I saw them later and on a more shallow places towards the end of the dive.
During this dive we also saw some frog fish, from yellow small ones to a quite big gray one. Scorpion fish, sea snake, moray eel, Clownfish, Angelfish, Pufferfish, gobies, Lion fish and one Twin spot Lionfish, which was a real beauty.

So that my friends was a travel log from this last trip. I hoped you liked it. Howver, if you have thoughts, comments or suggestions for my future blog posts, please don’t hesitate to let me know. And also please remember to claim your 6% discount at your Quo Vadis booking.