By David Sims, Professor of Marine Ecology, University of Southampton

Steven Spielberg’s Jaws opened across North America on June 20 1975, and immediately tapped into the primal human fear of being hunted by a huge, savvy predator.

Set on a fictional island off the coast of New England, the film depicts an epic battle between three men on a boat and an enormous great white shark. Jaws was hugely popular, grossing a record US$100 million in its first 59 days.

Young and already mad about sharks, I left the film wanting to know more about their behaviour and ecology. But films affect people in different ways, and the movie has since spawned what social scientists call “the Jaws effect”.

This contended that sharks became widely demonised as a result of the film’s depiction of them as relentless killers obsessed with attacking humans. Director Spielberg’s inspired use of fleeting glimpses of the shark’s fin knifing through the water, accompanied by the film’s sinister and unforgettable music, heightened those feelings. That’s how Jaws affected us. But 50 years on, how have shark populations fared?

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Both Spielberg and Peter Benchley, Jaws author and screenplay contributor, regretted the film’s influence on public perception of sharks. Indeed, Benchley became an advocate for shark conservation who enjoyed working with scientists (I was invited onto his radio show to discuss my research satellite-tracking basking sharks).

In the years following the film’s release, increasing numbers of sharks – including the movie’s great white – were reportedly killed in shark fishing tournaments that had risen in popularity.

Sharks grow slowly, take a long time to reach sexual maturity and have relatively few offspring. This makes many species vulnerable to overfishing. Fishing at this level removes too many sharks from the population too quickly, such that the remaining sharks cannot replace them fast enough, and the population declines. A recorded decline can be relatively large if the starting population size is already small, like that of top predators such as the great white shark.

Several data sources, including rod-and-reel and longline fishing, indicate a significant decline in the abundance of white sharks in the 1970s and 1980s along the US east coast where the film is set. The Jaws effect in action?

Actually, rapid declines were not limited to US waters. White shark catches in bather protection nets off the southeast coast of Australia recorded a similarly large decrease in the mid-1970s. And this particular source suggests white shark populations had begun declining from the mid-1950s, 20 years before Jaws.

Additional factors, such as commercial overfishing, were obviously at play. The film’s influence probably exacerbated white shark declines that were already happening.

Globally, the white shark has been assessed as vulnerable by conservationists, with a decreasing population trend. Fortunately, there are signs of recovery.

National protection measures for white sharks were implemented in the 1990s where these animals were formerly abundant, like the US, South Africa and Australia, and worldwide protections came a few years later.

Since the 1990s there have been apparent increases in abundance off the US east coast (when populations are so small and data so sparse, a short-term increase may not be a lasting trend). Welcome signs that measures, such as prohibiting catches in 1997, are having a positive effect following decades of over-exploitation. But this species is still vulnerable to incidental capture, so protection measures must be maintained and enforced to sustain any recoveries.

The Jaws effect was not limited to great white sharks. Many other large sharks were captured and killed in shark fishing tournaments that became more common following the film. Unfortunately, the killing continues in remaining US tournaments today.

But over the past few decades the overwhelming cause of large shark declines globally, particularly in the open ocean far from shore, has been the expansion of industrial-scale commercial fisheries targeting sharks for their fins and meat.

It was estimated in 2024 that fishing vessels are killing around 100 million sharks a year – a number that rose during the last decade. Nearly a third of shark species are now threatened with extinction.

It was estimated in 2021 that the global abundance of shark and ray species which prowl the open ocean (such as the oceanic whitetip or shortfin mako) has declined by an average of 71% since 1970 due to rocketing fishing pressure on the high seas (areas beyond national jurisdictions).

My own research analysing shark satellite tracks in collaboration with over 150 shark scientists showed that 24% of the space used by these sharks each month on average falls under the footprint of surface longline fisheries. These include vessels that can deploy lines 100km-long carrying 1,000 baited hooks for up to 24 hours. We found the overlap was even greater, about 75%, for commercially valuable species such as the blue shark.

More sharks die in these overlap hotspots than in adjacent areas, according to more recent research.

Demystifying Jaws

Are there any signs of recovery for these species under existing management measures? For many oceanic sharks, the answer is still no.

At present, measures in place (if any) on the high seas are insufficient to safeguard populations. There is very little or no protection of shark activity hotspots. And some of the measures, such as shark finning bans, have been shown to be ineffective.

My colleagues and I revealed that catches of internationally protected species are sometimes 90 times greater than official reports.

So there is still a very long way to go to rebuild global shark populations.

Jaws helped promote a negative image of sharks that has no basis in reality. Rather, shark behaviour appears as complex in some cases as that of birds and mammals.

Tracking sharks revealed they can migrate thousands of kilometres to feed in specific remote habitats, before returning to the very same place they left months before. Some prefer to hang out with familiar individuals, and sharks even form persistent social networks. Giant basking sharks take part in speed-dating-like behaviour when they form courtship swimming circles at the end of summer.

The serial killer image has probably made it harder to convince people to sympathise with the plight of sharks. Jaws came at a time when very little was known about sharks, so fiction filled the void.

But there are now more shark scientists thanks to Jaws. Demystifying these creatures has been the first step to their potential recovery.

David Sims is Professor of Marine Ecology at the University of Southampton. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

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The granite topography of Thailand’s Similan Islands gives writer and photographer Mark B Hatter plenty to work with during a journey on board the Thailand Aggressor

Words and pictures by Mark B Hatter

Occasionally, a rookie mistake can result in a positive outcome. Such was my situation on our final dive aboard the Thailand Aggressor as we approached the end of our cruise in the Andaman Sea, off the western coast of Thailand.

Everything seemed perfect on this final morning in the Similan Islands, capping off a wonderful week. The sea was smooth and super clear, and the early morning sun, hazy behind a thin layer of high clouds, would likely provide excellent sunburst photographic opportunities.

As a bonus, our boat was the only vessel at the dive site.

We’d visited Christmas Point earlier in the cruise and I was looking forward to again shooting the wildlife in and around the massive granite boulders strewn around the site.

The smooth rocks are signature surface and underwater topography features of the Similan Islands. Settling onto the sandy floor at 20 metres, between two massive granite boulders, I attempted to test fire my camera to validate aperture and shutter speed settings. The lack of a response was puzzling and unsettling. Up until now, I’d had no issues with my kit.

After a quick sequence of checks, the ‘err’ message on the camera’s LCD was soberingly clear: I had left the memory card out of the camera after downloading my last series of images the night before. Something I would have realised, had I completed my gear check before climbing into the dinghy.

We’d already dived Christmas Point early in the cruise but, nevertheless, this mistake would still cost me…

Or so I thought.

THE SIMILAN ISLANDS’ GRANITE PARADISE

The Similan Islands and associated sea mounts run up the west coast of Thailand. They are mainly composed of ‘intrusive granitoids’, rocks that formed between 250 and 150 million years ago as a result of plate tectonics that allowed magma to bubble up from deep within the Earth’s core to form protrusions and small mountains.

Aeons of weathering and erosion have left the islands smoothly contoured, creating a unique topography which is extremely
popular with tourists and divers.

There are 11 ko (the Thai word for ‘island’) in the Similan Archipelago, all of which are under Thailand’s protection as a national park. While each ko has a formal name, for the sake of simplicity they are more commonly known locally as Islands 1 through to 12.

During our seven-day cruise we visited dive sites along most of them, along with those at Ko Surin and Richelieu Rock.

We began our journey with an introductory dive at a shallow site called Anita’s Reef, between Islands 5 and 6, where classic coral bommies rise up from a shallow sandy plain.

The morning light was perfect for capturing colourful anthias and damselfish streaming over stony coral formations. I love shooting into the sun when it’s low on the horizon, and the conditions at Anita’s were ideal that day for cool sunbursts as backdrops against bommies that were teaming with life.

Our next dive, at Elephant Head Rock, between Islands 6 and 7, was a surprisingly different experience. This site, dominated by massive granite boulders, offers classic Similan diving. You might expect the boulders to be festooned with corals and sea fans – but actually most of the rocky surfaces are oddly devoid of encrusting life. Yet there are areas on every reef that offer an exception to the rule.

At these underwater oases, soft and stony corals, as well as massive sea fans, abound. This phenomenon of largely naked rock surface is apparently completely natural and not related to climate change or historical storm impacts – indeed, there are old growth tabling corals on the smooth granite, albeit few and far between.

Could it be that the windward facing sides of the islands, being more exposed seasonally, are less inclined to promote extensive coral or sea fan encrusting?

We also dived a number of sites which appeared to be within the seasonal lee of an island, and provide the conditions for much more typical massive coral bommies and linear reef structures to form.

At Ko Bon (Island 10), we got the best of both worlds. Having entered the water along a windward point, we let the current sweep us past the mostly barren rocky slopes, around a boulder-strewn point, to a protected lee-side shore where we found an astonishing developed coral reef.

Almost immediately, we encountered an enormous school of batfish hovering in the current, mid-water, which captivated half of our dive group.

I was drawn instead to shoot the massive shoals of golden and translucent sweepers, ever shape-shifting, like a single amorphous organism, in and around the stony coral structures.

MEETING THE ANDAMAN LOCALS

On the afternoon of our fifth day we left the Similan Islands for the five Surin Islands, an archipelago closer to the coast of Thailand but still within the Andaman Sea.

At Ko Surin Tai we made an afternoon sojourn to a village of Indigenous sea people called the Moken, a group also known as Sea Gypsies.

The Moken number in the hundreds, share everything communally and have their own language. As people of the sea, their mode of transportation is a longboat made of hardwood, colourfully painted and propelled by the most unusual engine I’ve ever seen, bearing a drive shaft at least 3m long that terminated in a double-bladed propeller.

After our visit to the Moken village we suited up for a sunset dive along the south shore of Surin Island. In the gloaming, my dive buddy and I were blown away by the underwater metropolis of stony coral, starting near the surface and sloping to around 20m.

The diversity was staggering and the coral was in surprisingly excellent health. Massive tabling corals, easily 2.5m in diameter, were complemented by forests of branching staghorn corals, lettuce corals and many other species of smaller plating corals.

Between the thickets of coral, an occasional magnificent anemone, replete with anemonefish, punctuated the dense seascape.

The dive was incredibl,e and it was only our inability to focus on subjects after twilight that ultimately drove us from the water. The surprising old-growth fringe reef at the south end of Surin Island left me perplexed about how this magnificent feat of nature could be evading the ever-encroaching threat of climate change.

Happily, at least for now, there are still places on the planet that are defying the odds of human-caused degradation.

DIVING RICHELIEU ROCK

The following morning we travelled before dawn to reach one of six mooring buoys off fabled Richelieu Rock, a massive underwater pinnacle barely reaching the surface between the Similan and Surin islands.

‘The Rock’ is one of the most popular dive sites on the planet, visited daily by dozens of boats and hundreds of divers – and for good reason.

As an isolated pinnacle in the open ocean, the Rock is swept by unimpeded currents that support an astounding abundance of life. Signature species include a myriad pastel-coloured carnation corals, giant sea fans and more magnificent anemones than I’ve ever seen in one place.

When the current is raging at Richelieu Rock, it’s the side receiving the brunt of the current where everything happens.

Shoals of glass fish are under continuous assault from schools of predator jackfish, long-nose emperor fish, groupers and snappers. Carnation corals covering every available surface swell in the tidal flow.

At the crown of the pinnacle, anemonefish in thousands of magnificent anemones fight to keep from being swept away from their hosts.

We make the penultimate dive of our trip at the Rock as the sun is going down. The day boats are gone and divers from the few other liveaboards still moored on fixed buoys have all left the water.

We have the place to ourselves in the waning light. Magnificent anemones often fold up into the shape of an onion at twilight. Seeing this phenomenon, with thousands of anemones in action at once, left me shooting continuously until it was time to go topside.

A NEW PERSPECTIVE

I had a lot of images to process after four dives at Richelieu, which might explain why I had forgotten to put my memory card back in the camera immediately after completing the download.

Thus it was that I found myself at Christmas Point completing my last dive yet unable to shoot any more. Rather than regretting my foolish error, though, I was ultimately glad of it.

I’d been shooting Similan’s granite-based reefs for the better part of a week, and it was only on that final dive, without the burden of searching for viable scenes to photograph, that my eyes and mind were opened to the surprising, spectacular underwater vista that is Thailand’s Andaman Sea

THAILAND AGGRESSOR

The Thailand Aggressor was recommissioned in October 2024, so facilities are excellent. Meals include Thai lunches and dinners, and western breakfasts.

The vessel offers two routes, season-dependent. I selected the North Andaman Sea voyage, which covers dive sites in the Similan Islands, Surin Islands and Richelieu Rock, and departs from Tap Lamu Pier, 60-90 minutes by road from Phuket International Airport.

The divemasters and cruise director gave wide latitude on every dive, something photographers will appreciate. As long as we were paired with a buddy and carried an SMB, we were free to dive each site as we liked.

We were offered five dives per day on three occasions.

For more information, visit www.aggressor.com

More great reads from our magazine

• Painting with Light – an interview with Catherine Holmes
• Artificial Intelligence – good or bad for underwater photography?
• Liveaboard safety – how divers can change it and when to walk away
• Luxury resort versus budget homestay in Raja Ampat
• The National Lobster Hatchery – giving lobsters a helping hand

Click here to take out a regular yearly subscription

The post Diving the Similan Islands with Aggressor Adventures appeared first on DIVE Magazine.

Todd Thimios has what many would believe to be the perfect job – he travels the world on private yachts, searching out the very best dive sites for his clients. His 20 years of luxury wandering has resulted in Ultimate Dive Sites – a glossy book listing his 50 favourites dotted around the globe. Here are three to whet your appetite…

Words and photographs by Todd Thimios

MILFORD SOUND, NEW ZEALAND

Dive below mountains and waterfalls into an environment you’d usually find 200 metres deeper

The South Island of New Zealand – Aotearoa, in the native Māori language – is world-renowned for its dramatic mountainous scenery, and there are few places more dramatic than the Milford Sound. For divers, black coral is the main attraction, but the Sound has much more to offer, and the magic begins with the drive in.

According to Māori legend, Aotearoa’s fjord lands were carved out by the demi-god Tu-te-raki-whanoa, who, upon reaching
Piopiotahi (Milford Sound), did his best work before ending his journey. Undoubtedly, this is one of the prettiest landscapes on Earth, but if you think Milford Sound is otherworldly, wait until you see what’s below the surface.

While technical diving and the discomfort of wearing a drysuit deters many divers, the fun of exploring the ethereal world beneath the fjords is absolutely worth the effort.

Known as New Zealand’s ‘coral capital’, some of the interesting coral trees that you’ll find here are those of red and black corals. Despite their name, black corals are actually white in appearance, thanks to millions of miniscule white polyps in a thin layer of tissue covering the coral’s black skeleton.

Finding these usually deep-water corals in shallow water is a novelty, made possible by the murky surface layer of freshwater run-off blocking out the sunlight. The existence of deep water animals surviving at shallower depths is called ‘deep water emergence’.

With nearly 6,800mm (267in) of annual rainfall, this is one of the wettest places on Earth. As the rain falls onto the mountains, it pulls nutrients from the forest floor down into the sea, creating a blanket effect on the water’s surface.

The result of this murky, tannin-stained water is an incredible marine environment that is starved of light – an ecosystem typical of 200m (656ft) depth is found within only a depth of 10–20m of water.

There’s an eerie feeling for the first few metres as you descend into the murkiness, but once you’ve reached the bottom of that freshwater blanket, the visibility and scenery opens up to dramatic walls hosting large branches of snow-white coral, stingrays, octopuses, nudibranchs, dog or carpet sharks, and clusters of crayfish, all enjoying the protection of the 690 hectare (1705 acre) Piopiotahi/ Milford Sound marine reserve.

If you’re lucky you may spot a New Zealand fur seal or some bottlenose dolphins. A day with local operator Descend Diving (currently taking a break from diving) will have you zipping through the Sound and out to the Tasman Sea, with scenic stops for waterfalls and wildlife spotting.

Two dives are offered and those without prior drysuit experience can pay extra to get training and a certification while on the tour.

With the dive boat setting off from the boat ramp at 9 am, I recommend that you stay close by, rather than driving the winding road (which is prone to rockfalls) in the dark.

There are chalets and a campground at Milford Sound Lodge (milfordlodge.com), but they book out far in advance. If you can’t stay there, the next option is the town of Te Anau, 118 km (73 miles) away; allow about an hour and a half for the drive as the 1.2 km Homer Tunnel can get congested sometimes.

If you’re driving a campervan, there are also some great, cheap Department of Conservation (DOC) campsites, which are positioned in scenic locations along the drive in (doc.govt.nz).

Best time to dive: October-April.

Gear: it’s cold and dark, so drysuit, gloves, hood, socks, thick undergarments and a good light.

Photography tip: Showcasing the landscape both above and below the surface was my main focus, so I felt that shooting wide was the best option. I used an 11-24mm zoo,m which yielded good results of both marine life and divers among Milford’s cold-water reefs. Ensure your strobes are reliable, as even though visibility can be good, it gets dark real fast.

SS COOLIDGE, ESPIRITU SANTO, VANUATU

Dive deep into an underwater museum of WWII relics mixed with 1940s opulence

Whether you’re a relative newbie to deep water diving or a seasoned deep-sea technical diving adventurer, the SS President Coolidge on Vanuatu’s stunning Espiritu Santo Island offers a fantastic wreck diving experience.

The SS Coolidge isn’t just any shipwreck, at 198m (650ft) long and roughly 22,000 tons (24,000 tonnes), it’s arguably one of the best wreck dives in the world, and you can walk straight off the beach to access it.

Once a luxury passenger liner with elegant cabins and plush restaurants and bars for more than 1,000 people, it was transformed into a troop carrier during World War II when 40,000 troops were stationed on the rapidly converted Espiritu Santo, making it the second largest American base in the Pacific.

It was here in 1942, while entering Santo’s harbour, that Coolidge collided with its own US mines. The ship’s sailing orders had omitted vital information about safe entry into the harbour, and with fears of Japanese submarines looming large, the captain attempted to navigate through the most obvious of channels.

A mine struck her in the engine room, followed by another near her stern. Over the next 90 minutes, 5,340 men from the ship got safely ashore, with only two lives lost. However, the captain’s attempts to beach and save the ship were shortlived.

Coolidge listed heavily on her port side, sank stern first, and slid down the slope into the channel. Today her stern sits in 72m of water and her bow in 20m, creating a sanctuary for deep wreck diving and one of the most unbelievable shore dives imaginable.

Gearing up on the beach, divers take a short walk to the tide line, and after swimming only 40-odd metres, the bow comes into view, marking the beginning of the colossal structure that is the wreck of the Coolidge.

Diving Coolidge is like entering a time capsule. Back in 1980, when Vanuatu gained independence from its French and British colonisers, it was declared that no artefacts would be allowed to be salvaged from the wreck. So today, with the ship still largely intact, divers can swim through its holds and decks, encountering an array of relics from guns, cannons and Jeeps, to helmets and personal supplies left behind by the troops.

Then there’s relics like ‘The Lady’ (a porcelain bas-relief and divers’ favourite), chandeliers, a mosaic tile fountain, elegant baths and grand staircases, which all add to the charm.

While Coolidge is a labyrinth of corridors, rooms and cargo holds, this shouldn’t deter new divers. To truly appreciate the ship’s magnitude and majesty, I recommend at least 10 to 15 dives. After all, she stretches almost 200m in length. But even with just a few dives you can get a taste of her grandeur.

For me, a return to Santo 20 years after I lived here allowed me to see how the wreck has fared over the years (particularly since Vanuatu gets its fair share of cyclones and earthquakes). While a few structures have collapsed (the promenade deck, mainly, and the swimming pool which popped out and fell to the ocean’s floor), overall, the wreck hadn’t changed much. It’s still solid and safe to explore, with the right guides.

Diving in Luganville was pioneered by the legendary Allan Power back in the ’80s. Allan operated a dive centre here right up to his death in 2018. He had made over 15,000 dives on the Coolidge and had taken more than 20,000 divers to the Lady alone.

His legacy is carried forward by Pacific Dive, situated within Luganville’s Espiritu Hotel, which runs daily dives. Its local Ni-Van staff take great pride in the Coolidge. They are incredible guides, accruing tens of thousands of dives between them on the wreck over the years (pacificdive.net).

Best time to dive: year-round, but the May-October dry season is best for sea conditions, temperature and visibility.

Gear: 3mm wetsuit over summer and 5 mm over the colder winter months.

Photography tip: Pack your favourite wide-angle lens and dive Coolidge several times to capture the bow and the full length of the ship when shooting her from outside. Inside, strobes are turned on to focus on the many different chambers and artefacts within.

MERGUI ARCHIPELAGO, MYANMAR

For decades sea gypsies have had this region all to themselves… until now

Off limits since World War II, the Mergui (pronounced mer-gwee) Archipelago in southern Myanmar (formerly Burma) opened to liveaboard dive boats in 1997 and, since then, word-of-mouth about the region has started to spread through the diving world.

Their relative isolation and history of being closed to tourists due to Burma’s military regime have helped them maintain their pristine and undeveloped state.

Known to the outside world by their British colonial name of Mergui (the indigenous name is Myeik), these 800-plus islands are scattered across 400km (248 miles) of the Andaman Sea, down the coastline of Myanmar.

Devoid of hotels and beach front bars, the jungle-clad islands, some of them still unnamed, are inhabited only by a few thousand Moken ‘sea gypsies’, the indigenous people of the Mergui Archipelago.

These semi-nomadic people have traditionally spent their days fishing or boat-building and are known for their incredible freediving abilities. For the Moken, the only tourists that they see are a small number of divers or adventure cruise ship passengers, passing through.

On our expedition, we set sail from Kawthaung (Myanmar’s southern gateway to the archipelago), though commercial liveaboards also depart from Ranong across the Thai border. Most of our trip was based around several well-known sites, with the rest of our trip visiting unknown sites for exploratory dives.

Our captain’s favourite dive was Black Rock, one of the Mergui’s most westerly islands. Standing solitary in the sea with a steep wall dropping down to over 100m (328ft), this pinnacle is a magnet for marine life, giant mantas, vast schools of barracuda, trevally, snapper and fusiliers clouding the waters.

Underwater, this limestone rock is covered in soft corals and anemones; the reef’s crannies and crevasses a haven for scorpionfish and other benthic critters.

At night, the dive site transforms as colourful corals bloom and nocturnal creatures emerge to feed in the nutrient-rich waters.

Another favourite spot was Western Rocky. The island is known for its sharks, including whitetips and blacktips, grey reef sharks and some large nurse sharks, which can be spotted inside a tunnel dive that cuts through the island’s core.

Just north of Western Rocky, a dive site aptly named Shark Cave is also good for spotting nurse sharks, plus whip rays, blotched stingrays and the odd whale shark, and then there are smaller cuties such as seahorses and anemonefish.

Perhaps the highlight of the trip, for me, was the huge gorgonian sea fans found in numerous locations, with a dive site named Fan Forest Pinnacle (also known as Rocky Peaks) being especially populous with wonderful gorgonians. To this day, I would say that the largest and most impressive gorgonian fans I’ve ever seen were in the Mergui Archipelago.

While the Mergui Archipelago has many amazing dive sites to explore, the visibility can be a bit all over the place. Cold-water currents bringing nutrients (commonly called ‘the green monster’) can rush through dive sites unexpectedly.

Some areas have been fished hard, while others have been decimated by dynamite fishing. Then, on some dive sites, ghost nets litter the reefs.

While the archipelago is just beginning to find its feet as a world-class destination for divers, it’s crucial that the government protects the region, not just for the future enjoyment of divers, but also for the Moken people who call it home and depend on these waters for their food, lifestyle and income.

The MV Smiling Seahorse has been running liveaboard dive trips to Mergui since 2012 and offers several scientific and exploratory itineraries. Trips on this small boat, which takes only 16 divers, depart from Ranong in Thailand (thesmilingseahorse.com).

Best time to dive: late October to mid-May for calm seas, blue skies, better visibility and a steady water temperature of 27°C (80°F), which aligns with the migratory patterns of large pelagics, including mantas and whale sharks (Feb–May is prime season for the big stuff).

Gear: 3mm wetsuit for water temperatures around 27°C (80°F) from late Oct to mid-May.

Photography tip: Mergui has a bit of everything: megafauna that needs a wide-angle lens, coral garden seascapes that suit a wide-angle zoom and incredible critters for your macro lens. If possible, pack it all, particularly your wide-angle.

More great reads from our magazine

• Painting with light – an interview with Catherine Holmes
• Artificial Intelligence – good or bad for underwater photography?
• Liveaboard safety – how divers can change it and when to walk away
• Luxury resort versus budget homestay in Raja Ampat
• DIVE’s Big Shot Portraits – THE WINNERS!

Click here to take out a regular yearly subscription

The post Searching for the best – an extract from Todd Thimios’ Ultimate Dive Sites appeared first on DIVE Magazine.

Writer and photographer Todd Aki compares back-to-back week-long dive trips to Raja Ampat, staying in a humble homestay, then at a luxury resort

Words and photographs by Todd Aki

Raja Ampat is unquestionably one of the best dive destinations in the world. It is also a very expensive place to dive, either by liveaboard or from a resort. But there is a third option: a homestay.

This little-known alternative can cost as little as a quarter of the price of the standard Raja accommodation options. It’s therefore a mighty tempting proposition. But does paying a budget price risk getting a budget experience?

To find out, I booked back-to-back stays in Raja, first in a resort and then at a homestay. Here’s what I discovered.

THE ROAD LESS TRAVELLED

The first glaring difference is getting to the accommodation. At Papua Explorers, the resort where I stayed, a resort representative met me at the airport and whisked me off to a hotel where I had a tasty breakfast buffet while waiting for other guests.

At noon, I was driven to the pier, where a nice resort boat took me directly to the resort, a little over an hour away. The whole transfer was effortless and relaxing.

This was not the case with the homestay. Upon exiting the airport, you need to find a taxi to take you to the public ferry. Next, you wait in line for a ferry ticket, then for some unexplained reason, wait in another line to redeem your ticket to get another ticket.

You then lug your luggage 50 metres to the ferry. If you are lucky, you will find a seat on the lower deck. If not, you’ll need to carry your luggage upstairs with you. I cheated and spent $3 (£2.30) for a porter as I was carrying nearly 50kg (110lbs) of dive and photo gear. It was the best three dollars I have ever spent.

After a two-hour ferry ride, you arrive on the island of Waisai and walk another 50m to get a permit to enter Raja. Your homestay boat will hopefully be waiting for you. It’s usually open top, narrow and loud. If there are any waves, it will be a bumpy ride. And bring a poncho, because if it rains or the ocean is rough, you will get soaked by ocean spray.

Depending on the location of your homestay, the boat ride could take 60-90 minutes.

CREATURE COMFORTS

Most resorts in Raja are well furnished and Papua Explorers was no exception. My spacious room had a hot water shower, a western flush toilet, a table and chair, and a covered veranda with a sofa. Air conditioning kept everything comfortable.

Right off the veranda were steps into the ocean, where on higher tides you could swim out to the dive centre or snorkel on the house reef.

The resort’s dining area was spacious, offering amazing food with plentiful choices for each meal, as well as delicious desserts.

My homestay, on the island of Arborek, was a very different affair. The room was tiny and very basic, with only a mattress on the floor and a small table with a fan, rather than air conditioning.

I paid a bit more than average for my homestay, so it was new and very clean, but the cracks between the wooden floorboards led straight to the ocean, so caution was required if I didn’t want my things to end up in the sea.

There was a plus side of this proximity to the water: from my bungalow, I could see baby sharks putting on a show at night, as well as a large school of bigeye scad and batfish.

Electricity is often only available at night. Once during my stay, the power went off for over a day, but luckily, my homestay had a generator. It was a mystery what hours they ran it, but fortunately, I was never caught without power.

In my homestay, there was no hot water. In fact, many Indonesian homestays have no running water at all. There is typically a communal shower or bathroom, in which you wash by dipping a ladle in a tub of water and pouring it over yourself.

Given the lack of air conditioning, the cold water was actually quite welcome. Toilets in many homestays are just as rudimentary: you flush by pouring water from a ladle into the pan.

As the owners of homestays often speak very limited English, there is no orientation, so you pick up what you need to know – meal times and the like – from fellow guests.

Food tends to be very basic: pastries for breakfast; for lunch and dinner it was either chicken or fish with rice and vegetables.

RESORT OR HOMESTAY: THE DIVING

Now for the most important thing: the diving. Upon arrival at Papua Explorers, the dive manager (just one of a plethora of managers looking after all aspects of the place) gave us a long briefing. They asked for dive certificates, we filled in several liability forms, and we were given an explanation of the logistics of diving at the resort.

We could do up to three dives each day, plus a twilight or night dive. We were told how to enter the water from the dive boat and how to get back on. If separated, we were to do a one-minute search and, if still separated, everyone would stop the dive and meet at the surface.

We were also told not to use strobes when shooting pygmy seahorses and manta rays – presumably in order not to cause them undue stress.

As you’d imagine with such good processes in place, the dive day ran like clockwork. I was fortunate to dive with the best guide I’ve ever had: she was always aware of her divers, was a great spotter and had such an infectious, happy personality you could not help but smile when you were around her.

My dive company on Arborek had a less rigorous approach. They did not offer an orientation, ask for certification cards, or give me any forms to fill out.

They did two morning dives a day and sometimes an afternoon dive, and offered a night dive only once during my six-day trip.

We were told to meet at 7:30 am, but the dive boat almost never left until 8:30 am. When it was time to leave, the boat’s engine caused problems every single day.

On one occasion, they did an engine swap from another boat, but as we headed out, that engine stopped working too so we went back to shore to get it fixed.

To be fair to the company, even with all these issues, all the scheduled dives took place.

One day I lost the group while shooting a particularly beautiful subject – I just continued my dive solo, surfacing at the agreed-upon time with no one seemingly concerned.

Maybe they recognised that I was a competent diver and decided it was safe to let me do my own thing.

Ultimately, my experience of diving at the resort and homestay were pretty similar. I dived all the famous dive sites and had a great time.

Both places have fantastic house reefs, with different strengths depending on your preferences. Papua Explorers has great macro critters – my fabulous guide found me a blue-ringed octopus on almost every night dive.

But Arborek was my personal favourite, boasting glorious hard and soft coral gardens, schools of fish, big and small, as well as rarer treasures such as flasher wrasses and even a regal tang.

A MATTER OF TASTE

Arborek is a very small island, meaning you can’t help but bump into kids playing with homemade toys or adults doing daily chores. After a day or two, I felt like a part of the community, and really valued this element of my trip.

A special mention needs to be made of Githa, the owner of the dive shop on Arborek, along with her husband. She is a driving force in protecting Arborek’s reefs, involved in conservation efforts such as restoring the hard coral, as well as helping improve the lives of local residents, especially women.

Papua Explorers, on the other hand, is similar to other resorts, where guests are expected to stay on resort property. You can hike to a nearby village, but you’ll need to make special arrangements to do so.

The booking process was easy for both trips. With Papua Explorers, you make a deposit by wiring money, and then pay the balance before arrival – $3,152 all-inclusive for seven days’ diving in my case.

You’ll also fill out some forms and send over pictures of your passport and dive certifications ahead of your trip.

Organising the homestay was actually even easier – stayrajaampat.com is an amazingly comprehensive website.

It lists homestays by location and includes thorough descriptions and helpful, accurate reviews. It has a great FAQ section explaining everything you need to know.

Most importantly, the website handles payments. You pay the entire amount upfront – $1,070 for my week’s stay and
diving on Arborek – and can use a credit card.

Typically, your only correspondence with the owners of the homestay is an exchange of WhatsApp messages when you have boarded the ferry so they can meet you at Waisai.

What is the final verdict– homestay or resort? As with most things in life, you get what you pay for. If you want to be pampered and have a smoothly oiled scuba diving experience, go with a resort.

If you want to save money, are happy to be flexible, value getting to know the local people, and don’t mind roughing it a bit, a homestay might just be your ideal next dive trip.

Todd stayed at Papua Explorers Resort and Raja Ampat Sunset Homestay

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Every year, Aggressor Adventures’ Philippines Aggressor makes a transition voyage between Cebu in the Visayas to Tubbataha National Park. Mark B Hatter and his camera hopped on board to enjoy diving the Philippines’ immensely diverse reefs.

Words and photos by Mark B Hatter

It’s taken 36 hours of continuous flying to reach Cebu, on the opposite side of the globe and 180 degrees out from my regular circadian rhythm. I should be fatigued to the bone, but I’m too amped up to sleep because tomorrow, my dive buddy Kevin and I will board the Philippines Aggressor liveaboard for its annual 10-day transition cruise from Cebu to Tubbataha.

We board the beautifully appointed and spacious vessel the following afternoon, make crew and guest introductions, complete requisite boat briefings and assemble our dive gear and camera kits at our appointed stations on the dive deck.

In the evening I enjoy a cold beer and a pastel sunset highlighting the Mactan–Mandaue Bridge and Cebu’s metropolitan skyline from the liveaboard’s upper deck, and start thinking through the photo-opportunities this trip – the Tubbataha/Visayas Transition itinerary – might present, from whale sharks to nudibranchs and sweetlips to anemonefish, should our fortune be good.

I finish my beer and my thoughts just as the Philippines Aggressor’s engines rumble to life. Suddenly, the fatigue of flip-flopped time zones finally hits me, and I head to my cabin to sleep.

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The Visayas

The Visayas are the islands that form the central part of the Philippines archipelago, situated between Luzon to the north and Mindanao to the south.

There are seven large and several hundred smaller islands subdivided into four regions – the Western Visayas, Negros Island Region, Eastern Visayas and the Central Visayas in which Cebu and Bohol are located.

The geophysical presentation of the Visayas is a defining feature of the islands’ underwater topography and how it translates to dive site diversity.

The Pacific Ocean pushes and pulls huge volumes of water through deep trenches between adjacent islands, creating a Venturi effect which generates swift currents and nutrient-rich upwellings.

These features give the Visayas some of the most prolific biodiversity and dive site variability within the Coral Triangle, from precipitous walls and dense stony coral forests to verdant grass flats and black sand muck sites sheltered from the currents in island lees, meaning each dive on board the Philippines Aggressor offers something different and unique.

Our first dive the next day is at Cabilao Island for an early morning dive at Lighthouse. The sun is barely over the horizon as we roll into the 26°C water and ride the strong current down its steep wall to a tapestry of lengthy wire corals and elephant ear sponges projecting from the wall’s vertical face.

After 50 minutes, the current slackens just enough that I can shoot dozens of golden-colored Anthias, nose to the current, against a city of similarly coloured fire corals lining the rocky reef’s crown, until it’s time to swim to the channel for our safety stop.

After a hearty breakfast, we dive a site off the small island of Pangalo named Gorgonian Wall. The waterscape is dominated by red and pink carnation coral and more oddly-shaped sponges, rather than the gorgonians we anticipated based on the site’s name.

One of the advantages of the Philippines’ Coral Triangle biodiversity is its potential for discovery; like Forrest Gump once said about his box of chocolates: ‘you never know what you’re going to get’!

So it was with Gorgonian Wall when I happened upon a pair of copperband butterflyfish – only my third encounter with these spectacular creatures in decades of Indo-Pacific diving.

The variety of diving and parade of biodiversity continued the next day at Napaling Point, on the south side of Bohol. The site seemed to combine all of the previous day’s attributes while adding even more: vertical walls carved with overhangs and crevices, dramatically framed by giant sea fans.

The crown of the reef at the top of the wall was no less dramatic; as we moved toward our safety stop, the thickets of staghorn corals, accentuated with shoals of colourful fish, were stunning!

One of the coolest dives in the Visayas is Oslob off the south end of Cebu. Here, the local economy shifted many years ago from fishing for sustenance to feeding fish for tourism.

Whale sharks are abundant in the Visayas’ waters, and at Oslob, they have been conditioned by fishermen to feed every morning on krill ladled into the water for snorkelling tourists.

Scuba diving with the sharks is also permitted, and so the Philippines Aggressor makes this one of the signature dives on its Visayas circuit – a great opportunity for divers while at the same time contributing to the local economy.

The whirlwind tour of dive sites continues over the next two days, each of them akin to another act in a three-ring circus. At Dakit Dakit off Pamilacan Island, we sailed with the current past schools of horse-eye jackfish and giant magnificent anemones anchored on red, yellow and orange coloured bommies.

At Spanish Tower, we encountered a bubble-blowing turtle, and at Kalipayan Wall, we switched to shooting macro to capture nudibranchs, moray eels and tiny bubble coral shrimp.

By the end of the fourth day we’d taken in the National Marine Parks at Sumilon Island and Apo Island while squeezing in two muck dives off the south end of Negros Island.

Our luck was good and our ‘chocolate box’ of discoveries just kept piling up; from ghost pipefish and tiger shrimp at Thalata House Reef to giant lettuce corals, sea snakes and an underwater vista displaying every colour of the rainbow at Apo Island’s Coconut Point.

On the evening of the fourth day, the Philippines Aggressor begins the two-day transition to Tubbataha with a stopover at the halfway point, Cagayancillo Island, for a day’s diving at Subway and Landing Strip.

The visibility at both sites is outstanding and the vertical walls here provide yet another different set of examples of the Philippines’ biodiversity.

Giant sea fans and scores of angelfish typified our Subway experience while red, pink and yellow wire gorgonians surrounded by shoals of pyramid butterflyfish showcased Landing Strip.

Tubbataha

At 38 metres in length with an 8.5-metre beam, the steel-hulled Philippines Aggressor made smooth sailing of the passage from Cagayancillo to Tubbataha, a UNESCO World Heritage Site consisting of three atolls situated 8.5 degrees north of the equator in the middle of the Sulu Sea.

The three atolls – North Atoll, South Atoll and Jessie Beazley Reef – are classic atolls, with reef formations beginning near the surface and sloping to around 20 metres before dropping vertically to deeper than 300 metres.

The reef tops are covered in thickets of stony and leather coral, and the perpendicular walls at each atoll’s signature dive sites feature some spectacular overhangs, ledges and caverns.

The wind had picked up by the time we were prepping for our first dive on North Atoll at the Malayan Wreck, but with buoy-marked sites encircling the atoll, it’s always possible to dive in its lee, away from any wind or swell coming from the opposite direction.

The Malayan Wreck is a fishing vessel which smashed onto the northwest side of North Atoll during a typhoon in the 1970s. We rolled into the water just after sunrise to be greeted with spectacular visibility of more than 30m and surgeonfish, butterflyfish and angelfish milling around the wreck and a school of large sweetlips claiming the wreck’s interior.

The currents at Tubbataha are legendary and as fickle as the monsoon’s transition. They can change speed and direction rapidly depending on the tide and the dive site’s topography.

Divers are easily separated by the current, and as photographers, Kevin and I found ourselves separated from the group after loitering for a shot, but competent dive buddies with SMBs are given wide latitude by the Philippines Aggressors’ crew.

Indeed, we found ourselves leaving the walls early on dives to exploit the best wide-angle opportunities on Tubattaha’s reef tops, where good fortune materialised first in the form of a school of spawning orange-shouldered surgeonfish, then in a diver-friendly school of pod of bumphead parrotfish after we reached the reef top.

I am particularly partial to shooting panoramic coral vistas, and Tubbataha did not disappoint. At every dive site, the reef top leather and stony coral forests were vibrant, healthy and loaded with colourful fishes from moorish idols, bannerfish and pairs of butterflyfish to dense clouds of Chromis damselfish and several species of anthias.

While my favourite reef-top dives were at Black Rock, Ranger Station and Delsan Wreck, Kevin and I did not disregard the wall diving altogether, which presented us with wonderful photographic opportunities.

We descended the reef at the aptly-named Wall Street and delighted at the multicoloured crinoids perched on sponges and wire corals, while midway through the dive, a shoal of swirling bannerfish added a perfect counterpoint to the anchored wall animals.

Wall Street’s wall, however, was eclipsed by the compound vertical surfaces at Jessie Beazley reef, sliced with gaping crevices, massive overhangs and huge ledges that provide a latticework of surfaces for massive sea fans, pastel-colored carnation corals, three-metre-long wire corals and enormous barrel sponges that were, literally, too big to photograph. It is mind-blowing!

Eventually, the journey must reach its conclusion, and at the end of the ninth day, we rode a monsoon-driven following sea back to Puerto Princesa on the island of Palawan where my good fortune conitnued – thanks to my flight being delayed I was able to fit in two dive at muck sites just outside of Puerto Princesa before the Philippines Aggressor docked.

The muck dives off Palawan gave me a therapeutic come-down from eight days of sugar-high imagery captured at arguably the best diving sites the Philippines has to offer. Indeed, the journey from the Visayas to Tubbataha on the Philippines Aggressor is an adventure for everyone’s bucket list.

But don’t take it from me, check out the images and then decide!

Philippines Aggressor: need to know

The Philippines Aggressor (and the Philippines Aggressor II) offer 10-day charters encompassing the Visayas and Tubbataha twice a season in March and June.

Between the transition trips, each yacht runs weekly cruises in either the Visayas or Tubbataha, depending on the season. The crew is friendly, incredibly experienced and gives each guest the best Philippines experience they can muster.

Aggressor Adventures maintains a high standard for liveaboard performance, and the Philippines Aggressor exceeds that standard on every level, from spacious cabins with private bathrooms to scrumptious local and western cuisine. The company mantra is Dive, Eat, Sleep, Repeat, and the crew of the Philippines Aggressor knows how to execute this mantra well!

For more information visit www.aggressor.com/destination/philippines

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