Submission Dive Blog

PADI Instructor Jenny Ratcliffe gives her account of recent experiences as a dive volunteer in the Philippines:

“So how does a girl who didn’t do sciences at A ’ level or for a degree get a taste of real life, hands on marine biology and conservation work?  Well, you volunteer!  Not all ‘marine voluntourism’ experiences are equal, but when I found the Thresher Shark Research and Conservation Project (TSRCP) I knew it was perfect.  I was going to be a Field Research Assistant! The programme is run in the Philippines from the tiny island of Malapascua, off northern Cebu.  Formed by a group of UK based academics, led by Dr Simon Oliver, the project collects information about Thresher sharks and their behavioural interactions with sea mounts.  Sea mounts across the world’s oceans are used by whales and shark species as navigational landmarks, migrational stopping points, and fish-rich feeding grounds.  Whilst at these seamounts, many take advantage of a service that may not be available for hundreds of miles around, in the relative desert of the open ocean – being cleaned of parasites by the tiny ‘cleaner fish’, the Blue-Streaked Wrasse.  Monad Shoal is famed as a seamount which is visited consistently by the shy and elusive Thresher Shark.  So it looked like I was going to be seeing one or two then, as I was going to be out there for 5 weeks with the project…I couldn’t wait to get started!

When signing up for the project the team are very clear to emphasise that this is a science expedition, not a holiday!  The ‘working week’ runs Monday-Friday and you’re up at 5am to get ready, load the boat and head out to Monad Shoal.  Monad is a half hour boat ride out from Malapascua island, so the research boat stays out at the dive site all day.  Great on the flat calm, sunny days but not so good when a storm suddenly picks up out at sea and you are soaked through, with nowhere to shelter from the wind and rain for the two hour surface interval! Although thankfully not too common, there were days when the weather made it unsafe to go out at all or boat problems prevented us going out, and there were days when ear infections and colds stopped one or more of the team from joining the days’ diving. There are three dives per day to 24m depth, with the first dive always used to deploy the video camera and measure horizontal visibility at the camera site, followed by shark interaction observations.  The second dive is usually a transect survey and fish survey monitor and compare reef health and biodiversity over time at various sites around Monad Shoal; and on the third dive the video camera is retrieved and final in-water observations are made.  Surface intervals are used for getting data on numbers of dive boats and divers, surface conditions, vertical visibility and current measurements, then eating and chilling.  Diving a relatively deep site on air, day in day out, means that everyone takes dive safety very seriously.  Every dive is a no-decompression dive and has a two hour surface interval, every dive has a series of safety stops in addition to the standard 3 minutes at 5m), drinking is discouraged during the week, and everyone has to have at least one ‘dry’ day at the weekend for off-gassing and recovery time.

Returning to the island in the afternoon, the boat is off-loaded, kit cleaned and then it’s either off to prepare or deliver a lesson on some aspect of marine biology, ecology and conservation which is given twice a week at the local high school to classes of around 50 children each, or it’s off to the office to download the day’s video footage and record any specific interactions captured on camera, and data entry from the day’s recording slates.  If the video has captured a lot going on you can be staring at the screen right up until dinner time at 7.30pm! It’s all worth it though when a Thresher Shark suddenly glides into view and you get a close up of the shark circling around the cleaning station for up to 15 minutes at a time.

Thresher Sharks have always been a real favourite of mine – it’s just something about those ridiculously big soulful eyes and that long, graceful tail which is about the same length again as their bodies – much more ‘Bambi cute’ than ‘killer shark’!  When you’re in the water and you realise that you have been graced with their presence you can’t help but feel completely awestruck.  They’re there to get cleaned, and provided you keep low in the water, stay as still as possible and keep quiet they will do their best to ignore you.  One tank-bang or erratic movement up into the water column and they’re gone – they are really seriously timid sharks!  TSRCP do a rigorous in-water training programme with every volunteer to ensure that their diving skills and buoyancy are good enough to go to Monad.  Unfortunately one of the down sides of diving with the TSRCP is that not every diver at Monad is so well trained, and you get to see the sad lengths that some dive businesses out there will go to in order to deliver that elusive Thresher Shark sighting to their diving guests.  Although many of them talk the talk about the importance of good buoyancy and environmentally sound diving practice, once underwater it seems to be common practice for many of them to get their guests to kneel or even lie on the coral.  So every single day there are boat loads of divers – we’ve seen up to 40 on a single dive – damaging the coral.  There are vast swathes of coral rubble, where once there was healthy reef.  It is hard to describe how frustrating it is to watch so many divers doing something they must all know is wrong when hovering just inches off the reef would achieve the same goal without the damage.  What happened to the concept of divers and the dive industry as ambassadors and guardians of the oceans?!

Having said that, this is not the only threat to Monad Shoal and its Thresher Sharks.  As a site out to sea it is very hard for local marine patrols to effectively guard it, which puts it at continual threat from poor and unsustainable fishing practice.  Bottom trawling using huge metal chain nets dragged across the bottom would devastate Monad Shoal, wiping out biodiversity and all recognisable features such as soft coral growths and sea fans which cleaner fish rely on to act as visible markers to attract Thresher Sharks to their cleaning stations.  Even regular trawler nets that get snagged and abandoned on the site cause huge damage to vast areas of reef, entangling and drowning all kinds of marine life, and effectively smothering the coral to death under a layer of net and settling algae. Dynamite fishing remains a very common practice amongst local fisherman and the in-water booms and hisses of the explosions were a regular feature during the time I was there.  This method of fishing also kills anything in its path, and the TSRCP team have come across dead reef fish littered across the sea bed at Monad.  Fish that live near the bottom can still be found, but much of the water column at Monad Shoal is effectively devoid of life, other than the occasional jellyfish.  Having dived just weeks earlier at another seamount, Malaysia’s Sipadan, which is utterly alive with trevally, barracuda, sharks, turtles, and all shapes, colours and sizes of reef fish, the contrast is a stark reminder of the importance and benefit of enforceable marine protection areas.

Another major risk to not only Monad Shoal but also a lot of the other sites around Malapascua is the plague of Crown of Thorns starfish, which eat coral.  When reef health and fish biodiversity are as they should be, the starfish larvae are consumed and numbers are kept at manageable levels.  However, in areas of reef stressed by over fishing the numbers of Crown of Thorns starfish reproduce rapidly and numbers can rise unchecked.  As they consume live coral at a rate far faster than coral can grow, in epidemic numbers they can destroy a reef at horrifying speed.

Working with the TSRCP I was fortunate enough to get actively involved in ridding the reefs at Monad and other local sites of both trawler nets and Crown of Thorns starfish (COTs), and those were some of the most special dives I took part in.  Although I was out there to observe Thresher Sharks, to know that I was doing something to actively preserve their habitat felt like an incredible privilege.  However it is really important that the local dive and fishing industries start to take more of a responsible, long-term approach to managing and preserving these key sites.  If they don’t then there is a very real risk that neither of their businesses will be sustainable and that divers like us will lose this incredible opportunity to see these amazing creatures.  It was heartening to hear that not long after I left, one of the dive centres, in response to the massive numbers of COTs around Malapascua dive sites had offered local fishermen 1 peso per COT (100 pesos is about £1.50).  On the first day a staggering 15,000 COTs were brought in by the fishermen! Although the dive centre in question may well be starting to regret their generosity as the COTs continue to be bought to them, this is a really good example of the dive and fishing industries working together to their mutual benefit!

So there were highs and lows to the diving experiences, and as with all volunteering programmes it is up to you as the volunteer to make the most of every opportunity.  By my last day I would have dived nearly 70 dives, seen more Thresher Sharks than I could have hoped for, brought my diving and marine science skills on, and met a bunch of really wonderful people.  There were challenges of course – you stay in the project house in the local community and eating and living is very simple, and the days are long.  There were times when I could have cheerfully strangled the two cockerels that lived right outside my bedroom and started their crowing at 3am religiously!  But the opportunity to live amongst the local community, to contribute to the education of the next generation of islanders and instil in them a sense of passion and responsibility for their ocean resources, to sit on a beautiful beach on a day off watching the local children playing in the water as the sun sets, and then go back a few hours later to sit with local friends round a camp fire drinking the local fire-water rum and chatting…what’s not to love?!  And that’s without even mentioning the amazing Thresher Shark sightings!”