On the western frontier of the Philippines there is an island called Busuanga: the site of our next port of call. Our destination was a small town called Coron, where some 65 years ago the US Navy 3rd Fleet sank 12 Imperial Japanese supply ships anchored in what they thought was safe harbor in Coron Bay. What is now left of the carnage is some world class shipwreck diving: another first time adventure for us.
Kogyo Maru 
Our first dive was to the Kogyo Maru: a Japanese freighter ship that was carrying construction materials and aircraft spare parts to build an airstrip somewhere in the South Pacific. This 6353 Ton ship was 129 meters long and 18 meters wide, and now lays on its starboard side in 34 meters of water. Descending down the mooring line to top of the ship is an eerie experience: The water is murky with low visibility, so you can’t really see the ship until you are about 15 feet away from it. It’s hard not to subconsciously feel the weight of the water above you… no doubt aided by the knowledge that 39 seamen lost their lives at this very spot. Following our divemaster Toto (yes that’s his name), we found a large cargo door to swim through and access cargo hold 2. Here we were able to make out a lot of the construction materials including cement bags (now stone), rolls of chain-link fencing, and a fully intact bulldozer sitting on its side. Swimming back up to the top (port side), the ship is hardly recognizable as corals and schools of angel fish have made themselves at home here. One cool phenomenon is the air volcanoes that are punctuated amongst the corals… continuously erupting bubbles left behind by the divers that swim through the ship!
Tangat 
Later in the afternoon we visited our 2nd site called Tangat, named after the nearby island where this ship was sunk. This was another freighter, 122 meters long sitting in 30 meters of water. She’s sitting pretty much upright, so it’s a bit easier to see and recognize the different parts of the ship. Swimming through the holds, this time we saw other cargo items like oil drums and rolls of electrical wire… all a bit more recognizable as there seemed to be more light penetrating the ship.
Akitsushima 
The next morning we headed to our 3rd wreck dive site: the Akitsushima. This is one of the few actual war ships that sunk in the area, and is classified as a sea-plane tender ship. This 4724 ton ship was 118 meters long and 16 meters wide and is now sitting on her port side in roughly 35 meters of water. This dive was great in that water visibility that day was actually fairly good, so we could get a better sense of the scale of the ship. Swimming around the exterior of the ship, there is quite a bit to see: anti-aircraft guns still pointed skyward, empty gun turret mounts, unexploded(!) bomb shells, bullets, and the enormous crane structure that still juts out sideways from the ship (the actual sea plane that it serviced was blown to smithereens). Swimming through the ship is amazing, as you can pretty much swim the entire length of the ship with little obstruction. Here, we encountered the larger-than-life Andrew for the first time (more below). While swimming through one of the central holds, I see this guy pop up below me… obviously lost. He looks left, then right, then up-down - basically all around… proceeds to give me the shrugging shoulders gesture, then heads off for the nearest porthole out of the ship. The funny part was seeing the divemasters shrugging their shoulders at each other trying to figure out who’s group he was with. Ahh Andrew… always going his own way.
Taiei Maru 
Second dive of the day and 4th wreck dive in the area was the Taiei Maru: an oil tanker ship. This was definitely the biggest ship that we saw at 10,000 tons and 137 meters of length. She sits on her starboard side in around 25-30 meters of water. This dive was a bit of a nail biter, as we had some equipment issues plague us for most of the dive. We started off at the stern of the ship where there is a very small entrance hole through what used to be the propeller shaft. Ana and I were the last ones to try and enter the hole, and by the time we tried to go through, the divers in front of us had kicked up a lot of sediment within the passage: zero visibility. To make matters worse, Ana’s flashlight had decided to go out at that very moment leaving her in a bit of a panicked state. Trying to make my own way into the propeller shaft, all I saw was Ana backing out and swimming far away from the ship… she wanted nothing to do with that entry. So now I was in a bit of a pickle… Ana was slowly drifting away from me in the current, and the visibility wasn’t great so I was about to loose sight of her. I looked into the shaft, but already couldn’t see the divemaster or group’s lights ahead. I looked at my watch to see how long we had been down, but immediately realized that I had forgotten to set the timer. I looked at my depth gauge and saw it pegged at 20 meters which was definitely wrong… I was much deeper than that. So I was loosing Ana, had already lost the divemaster, and had no idea how deep I was and how long I had been underwater. Yikes! I was beginning to get in a bit of a panicked state myself. Fortunately, we were still outside of the ship. First step: don’t loose Ana! I got her attention, motioned her to swim back to me, and told her she was ok. She looked a bit uneasy still, but seemed to be doing just fine. Next I went back to the entry shaft and began to signal with my (still working) flashlight the side-to-side not ok signal. With any luck the divemaster would notice the two of us missing and come back to see what’s up. Which thankfully he did. He led us back to about mid-ship where the other two divers were waiting for us and we continued our dive… this time to a larger entryway and hold of the ship. This hold was way cool as it was about 3 stories high. Floating in the middle of this had a vertigo effect as you couldn’t really see the bottom or sides of the hull without a strong flashlight. As I exited the hold through a top porthole, I saw that Ana and the divemaster were having an energetic back and forth discussion pointing and looking at her air gauge. The next thing I know, they start swimming rather quickly back to the mooring line of the ship. When I catch up with them (a bit out of breath from swimming up current), I see that Ana’s air supply is below 50 bar… below the point that is considered out of air! I guess that she had been breathing rapidly the whole time after her initial scare, and had consumed much more air than normal. Now, running low on air is dangerous, but not unrecoverable. There are a couple of minutes of air left at 50 bar, and many backup safety mechanisms in place including my own secondary air supply. This did not stop me from full fledged panic anyway and soon I found myself hyperventilating: it took all of my focus just to control my own breathing. Not good. Back on the boat I think that Ana was even more calm than I was.
Not being satisfied with missing part of the dive and having my own little panic attack, I decided to go on this dive for a second time: this time on my own. My conditions on my own were not much better than Ana’s as I gave my working flashlight to my dive buddy… but at least all of my other gear was set and ready. Swimming through the propeller shaft was pretty scary as I could barely see my dive buddy’s light in front of me. Most of my swimming was by feel: reaching my hands out in front of me and feeling for obstacles ahead. After about 5 meters the tunnel opened up into a small hold in the middle of the ship: the engine room I think. You could still see some of the machine parts laying around. Below us was a small man-sized hole that led to an extremely dark chamber that I had no intention of going to: better left to divers with more bravado than me. Exiting the chamber was pretty exciting because the way out was actually up through a series of cargo holds that were blown apart by bomb blasts.
The Peeps 
It’s amazing just how many people we met on our stay out here. There’s Tom and Mel from Australia, who we went diving with and met on the bus ride from the airport… There’s Rich and Christine from Virginia, who we we also went diving with… Aya, Arata: our friends from Japan who we spent New Years Eve with. Andrew, the talkative US expat now running a newspaper in Hong Kong, his wife Phoenix and his good friend Vincent who could bargain the dentures away from an old toothless woman… There’s Romain, the crazy base-jumping Frenchman and his Filipina companion Lois who met him couchsurfing in France. And that’s just the names I can remember: there were many, many more friendly faces that we encountered and met up with for drinks. All in all, Coron might have been the best stop that we had on this entire trip because of it’s laid back demeanor, great scenery, and cool people that we met along the way: locals and travelers alike. Plus, we finally found some lumpia from a woman selling them on the street. Man, I love lumpia!
Here is a map link to Coron in the Philippines: Click Here.
…and here are the photos (and videos) of our stay:
http://picasaweb.google.com/richmosko/Coron
http://picasaweb.google.com/richmosko/Manila
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