Alice and I have had a virus in our computer, we have lost all our contacts and emails ;-((. Therfore we kindly ask all of you, to send us an email to us, please also inform the people you know who know us, regarding this matter.
E-mail: info@abwonderdive.com
We hope for your help and support.

Christmas news.

We have some new activities on the program for 2010.

In the months from February till May, we will offer guided trips to Donsol, where we will go snorkeling with the beautiful whale sharks. This will be planned extra for you, as a start or end of your holiday if you are interested. You will get more information on our website.

We, Alice and Björn, are planning an exclusive repeater trip to the Maldives in the period of September/October 2010. We will arrange a 7 days trip and a 14 days trip on a live aboard, where we will dive the highlights of the Maldives.

There is space for 16 – 20 persons on the live aboard boat. We need to fill and pre book the boat, to be able to make our own private trip. Therefore we are asking you, if you would have interest in joining us in this kind of trip. Please let us know by our e-mail address: info@abwonderdive.com

Further information about dates and prices will follow on our website and direct to you by mail.

Best regards from the ABWonderdive team,

Alice and Bjørn.

The yellow fan gorgonian coral by ‘Boulders’ is full of small pygmy seahorses. You better bring your magnifying glass to be able to see them. The mandarin fishes on our house reef are happy breeding, so love is in the air these days.
The mandarin dive is a perfect way to start your night diving experience and gain credits toward the Advanced Open Water Certificate. We make theory in the afternoon; get ready for the briefing and jump in the water just by dusk. You still have enough light to orientate and slowly get used to the darkness. Then the show goes on! You have many different nocturnal species crawling and swimming around by the reef. Of course the Mandarin fishes are one of the highlights, but other critters like flamboyant cuttlefish, crayfish in all sorts and juvenile batfish are to be seen as well.

More happy divers in the sea! We would like to congratulate our newly certified Open Water and Advanced Open Water divers:

Cogratulations to Gabriela Gregorius (Brazilian) and Anna Coverdale (Australian) for finishing Open Water Course the 9th of Nobember. Both of them are living in China and made a quick visit here, but they are definately not done diving!

Congratulation to Ralf Ullrich, Denise Heyde, Birgit Gebhardt and Michel Lesik finishing Advanced Open Water on the 6th of November. All four from a group of Germans who were here for two weeks. Now they can proudly join the club of their friends who were already Advanced divers.

Best regards from the ABWonderdive team by
Alice and Bjorn Askholm

Regatta seen from Small Lalaguna Bay the 1st of November

Hello everybody!
Here in Small Lalaguna everything is going well, the weather is beautiful, the fishes are jumping and the sky is blue.

On the 31st of October we celebrated Halloween in the dive center. We had a variety of different creative outfits, which meant that we (in some cases) did not even recognize each other. We had some funny games going on, a bit of dancing and of course Bar Marlon’s delicious cocktails, which we could not resist!!! More pictures from our party.

The Philippines could be under your Christmas tree, either as a gift or even better; you could actually be here and celebrate Christmas together with us. Please write us an email, if you would like to arrange a holiday to our dive center.

The ABWonderdive team is looking forward to greeting you welcome and take part in making your holiday a great and unforgettable experience.

Best regards from
Alice and Bjørn Askholm

We would like to inform you following regarding the flooding in Northern Luzon.
The airport in Manila is further south of the flooded areas and is not affected; the flights are coming in as normal.
We are based on Mindoro Island, which is 500 km. south of the flooded areas and we have only experienced the outskirts from the tropical storms. This means we have been able to continue diving in our area and still do.

We are looking forward to greet you welcome here in Small Lalaguna Beach.

Friday the 25th of Sebtember the dive centers of Puerta Galera joined forces to clean up! In front of the ‘San Antonio’ School children and divers collected garbage.

There are several reasons that rubbish end up in our oceans – but the largest factor is humans! Only through education we can prevent it to get worse and maybe even make our oceans cleaner for the future. What is already there can sometimes be removed. Every year in sebtember dive centers all over the world are arranging beach clean-ups inspired by PADI, who has a programme for the event called project AWARE. Read more aobut this on www.padi.com

The philospohy behind this years clean-up in Puerta Galera was to include the more than 100 children from a school to spread the knowledge. Our guests got the dive free of charge and had a lot of fun.

BUILD IT AND THEY WILL COME: PYRAMID REEF

In the 3rd dynasty of the Pharaohs (27th century BC), in Egypt, pyramids started to be used as the intended repositories of the dead “to aid the king in the transition between his earthly functions and the position which he was to assume amongst the gods after death” (W. Stevenson Smith); pyramids of distant antiquity have been found in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, India, Thailand, Mexico, South America, U.S.A., Ukraine, Bosnia, Cuba and various Pacific islands and almost all are believed to have had a similar purpose — to offer sanctuary for the  soul and to become the starting point for rebirth into a new dimension. Now, in the 21st century AD, in Puerto Galera, ABwonderdive is using similar pyramid structures as places of transition and rebirth of a different sort.

The destructive tropical storms of 2006 wrought havoc on the shallow reefs off the beaches of Sabang & the two Lalagunas and elsewhere on the Southern shores of the Verde Island Passage. Many coral areas were stripped of their vibrant cloak of life, as the waves pounded a millennium of cnidaria (a.k.a. coral; Greek = stinging needle) growth to rubble while many corals in other areas were broken, dislodged and tumbled.
Puerto Galera, like so many other tropical paradises, primarily survives as a tourist destination because of the fish that feed on the coral, the fish that feed on those fish and the thousands of scuba divers who come to take in their beauty and capture it in splendorous pixelation. Recognizing this and the importance of timeliness, and following advice from the Puerto Galera Dive Association, Bjørn & Alice, the determined Danes of ABwonderdive took affirmative action to restore at least one part of the coral community, at the same time expanding the variety of diving attractions along the beaches.

Bjørn & Alice recruited local metal workers and within three days they built two pyramids of steel at a cost of less than US$250. On 21st July ´07 the pyramids were loaded onto a boat and, about 200 meters off their dive resort on Small Lalaguna Beach, the structures were lowered to the sandy bottom. They came to rest between 18 and 20 meters down where to be brushed by the life-enabling, crystal-clear Verde Island Passage currents.
To the pyramids sections of steel mesh have been added to facilitate the attachment of broken coral pieces retrieved from damaged reef areas and still showing viable life; the structures are secured to the seabed with broken coral clumps and concrete blocks. The expectation is that the corals will revive & flourish, eventually covering the steel frames and concrete blocks before the steel eventually corrodes to nothing in the oxygen-rich, cobalt-blue water.
The exact timing of the pyramids’ demise as steel structures is not clear – probably eight to ten years – but it is hoped that within that time sufficient mass and solidity will have been established within new coral growth that, at the very least, they may only partially collapse. Assuming minimal collapse they will offer a network of “caves” and crevices where fish will find sanctuary and homeliness sufficient to confirm the new reef’s significance, in place of those that have been lost or damaged.
Bjørn says that he will probably not stop at two pyramids, “if these show results within the year then we will add more” he asserts, “we want our visitors and those from other dive shops to enjoy the experience of watching them grow”.

Within a week (on 27th July) “pyramid reef” had already accepted its first fishy residents so it looks as though Bjørn may have to plan for more structures faster than he thought. And as he pointed out, “these pyramids cost so little and require so little effort that all the dive shops on all the beaches should start their own programs”.
If you want to know more about the repopulation and rejuvenation of Puerto Galera’s reef ecosystem then stay tuned to the Cruiser News; in the next issue we hope to bring you the story of one man’s dream to reintroduce the harmless (to man) black-tip reef shark.
If you want to watch the growth of “pyramid reef” week-by-week then check out the “Artificial Reef Project 07” on the ABwonderdive website or any questions to Info@abwonderdive.com (http://www.abwonderdive.com/website/default.asp) or, better still, book a dive with Bjørn & Alice and check out the reef in real-time.

Martyn Willes

Book now on info@abwonderdive.com