Dive Review of Atlantis Azores in
Philippines/Tubbataha then Donsol

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Atlantis Azores, May, 2010, by Frederick R. Turoff, PA, US ( Top Contributor 35 reports with 15 Helpful votes). Report 5584.
No photos available at this time
Ratings and Overall Comments 1 (worst) - 5 (best):
Accommodations		Food
Service and Attitude		Environmental Sensitivity
Dive Operation		Shore Diving	N/A
Snorkeling	N/A
Overall Rating
Value for $$
Beginners
Advanced
Comments	The Atlantis Azores is a well-run boat with a caring and detailed crew. Captains Paul and Randy have a fine crew who all went to every effort to make our week fruitful. Dive masters Paul, Ambo and Jess did their best to find us interesting creatures to view and photograph. Departing from Puerto Princesa on Palawan, it’s maybe a 10-11 hour overnight boat ride to Tubbataha Reef park. After a checkout at some relatively easy sites, the action picked up the following days. The first day we did 5 dives, then had a group decision to reduce this to 4 dives per day to allow more down time between dives. Snacks met us a 6a, first dive at 7a, then breakfast, second dive at 10a, lunch, third dive at 2p, snacks, twilight/night dive at 5:30p, then dinner. Breakfast and lunch were served family –style while dinner was served individually. Chef Norman made constantly excellent food with portions to feed bigger eaters than I am. A woman passenger and I convinced him to split one meal between the two of us, which worked out fine. Each dinner had several choices of meat/fish/poultry along with rice and vegetables. All were yummy. Our compliment of passengers numbered 6, so we had the best of all worlds on a 16-passenger boat, as each of us four singles were offered a single room. Only our couple stayed together. We always dove together and had many life forms pointed out by the dive guides. I noticed there were not as many nudibranchs as I might have expected, maybe one or two per dive average. However, we saw numerous gray reef and white tip sharks plus one large nurse shark. Only one manta cruised by that week, and one lone eagle ray stayed in the distance. However, the water was as warm as I’ve been in, generally 87 degrees with a tolerance of +1 to -3 from that measurement due to some currents we met. And speaking of currents, most dives were calm but occasionally were had swift rides that moved us around the reef. Sea life was plentiful. We ran into schools of bigeye barracuda and jacks, turtles, the biggest barrel sponges I’ve seen, a large hill top covered with staghorn corals looking like a mid-America field of wheat. Octopus sightings were common, with individuals willing to play and display. Many Napoleon wrasse were seen but stayed away generally. Large titan triggerfish kept us wary of entering their nesting areas, as they will attack and have strong teeth. Occasionally tiny critters were found, such as commensile shrimp on fans and stars, pygmy seahorses and juvenile fish and lobsters. We found a large Triton’s Trumpet snail with a beautiful shell in the act of devouring a blue star. I had electronic troubles on this trip to drive me nuts. On our third day of diving, my Canon 20D camera stopped working, so I couldn’t use my housing or strobes. I had a small Olympus with a housing along as well and had to rent a slave strobe from the boat to take pix. This slave didn’t have a fiber optic sensor to tell the slave when my flash went off, so it didn’t work in sunlit waters, but worked in darker-background areas. Still, not the plan I went there with. Also, my old Orca Phoenix computer died the next day, but fortunately I had brought spares along. I think for future trips I’ll get a second Canon 20D body from E-bay to bring as a spare, just in case. The Atlantis organization proved to be well-run on land as well. We were met at our hotels for transport to MNL airport to get to the boat. On the way back, three went to Puerto Galera, one stayed in Manilla, while the other went to Atlantis Dumaguete. I chose to do a two-day trip to Donsol to snorkel with whale sharks before continuing to Puerto Galera. An Atlantis member met me in MLN and took gear I would not need – diving apparatus, [broken] camera box with strobes – and returned it to me after that jaunt when I was provided transport to Atlantis Puerto Galera for a few days, where I had a reunion with the three Azores divers. This way I avoided overweight charges on the CEBU airlines I flew to and from Legazpi. It was an hour drive from that airport to Giddy’s in Donsol, Sorsogon. They had arranged a whale shark encounter trip for me the next morning, so we met in the lobby at 7a and got on the boat at 8a. I lucked out here, expecting to share a boat with 5-6 others, but shared it with a recent U of PA grad working for WWF on a whale shark ID project. During the next 2.5 hours we had 8 encounters with whale sharks in plankton-filled water (the non-allowed strobes would not have been effective in such conditions). Other boats and passengers were there, too. The sharks were generally 15-20 feet deep and generally that size, so getting down to their level and waiting for them to show (appear out of the gloom) was a skin diver’s challenge. I did manage to get in position a few times and got some photos, but was not able to get below any shark for an upward shot. Later that evening I took a boat ride on the nearby river to see the firefly show. Their fireflies are only just over 1cm, with males flashing 2 sec at a time while females flash 5 sec at a time. Once in a while we came upon the type of mangrove that produced blooms that attract these fireflies by the thousands. Picture a tree with a light or two on each leaf, constantly flashing. We tied up under two such trees and enjoyed nature’s show for a while. The fireflies were easy to catch to see up close and then release. I’ll cover Atlantis Puerto Galera next.
Websites	Atlantis Azores
Reporter and Travel
Dive Experience	501-1000 dives
Where else diving	BVI, USVI, Saba, St. Lucia, Bonaire, Little Cayman, Cayman Brac, Costa Rica, Coco Island, Revillagigedos, Sea of Cortez, Palau, Yap, Red Sea, Sipadan, PNG, Indonesia
Closest Airport		Getting There
Dive Conditions
Weather	sunny, dry	Seas	calm, no currents
Water Temp	84-88°F / 29-31°C	Wetsuit Thickness	3
Water Visibility	60-100 Ft/ 18-30 M
Dive Policy
Dive own profile	yes
Enforced diving restrictions	return with 500 psi, no deeper than 130 ft
Liveaboard?	yes	Nitrox Available?	yes
What I Saw
Sharks	Lots	Mantas	1 or 2
Dolphins	None	Whale Sharks	None
Turtles	> 2	Whales	None
Ratings 1(worst) - 5 (best):
Corals		Tropical Fish
Small Critters		Large Fish
Large Pelagics
Underwater Photography 1 (worst) - 5 (best):
Subject Matter		Boat Facilities
Overall rating for UWP's		Shore Facilities	N/A
UW Photo Comments	large table in dive prep area with two levels for more storage, ample charging stations, dedicated rinse tank for cameras, no tank on inflatables but trips on them were short and crew cared for cameras well.

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Dive Review of Atlantis Azores in Philippines/Tubbataha then Donsol

Atlantis Azores, May, 2010,

Ratings and Overall Comments 1 (worst) - 5 (best):

Overall Rating

Reporter and Travel

Dive Conditions

Dive Policy

What I Saw

Ratings 1(worst) - 5 (best):

Underwater Photography 1 (worst) - 5 (best):

Dive Review of Atlantis Azores in
Philippines/Tubbataha then Donsol