May 2004
Philippines-deep diving training

Purpose of the project:
To get experience in deep trimix dives using hypoxic mixes.

Description of the dive site:
Deep areas around the holiday destination Puerto Galera seemed suitable for this project and by the information we had received, you could find nice nightlife spots where to analyze the daily dives.

Details of the dives:
Technical diving is more common in the Philippines than in Thailand which is easy to understand as you can find deep waters almost anywhere. Members of our Philippines team were: Janne, Jani and Supa Suominen. Most of the dives were done with air as bottom gas in 50-60 meters and EAN 50-100 on decompression stops.

Landscapes were really steep, with beautiful untouched coral walls going down to hundreds of meters. To the surprise of everybody there was not much fish and no bigger creatures came along.

One of the interesting spots was a cave in 45 meters, which divided into two separate 200 meter long tunnels, a couple of marbled sting rays swam around the caves. The second tunnel had a man size hole and Jani with the help of Janne went to explore it (read: Janne had to pull Jani back by fins, as it was impossible to turn around…). The tunnel went deeper (by rumors about 70 meters) and went into a bigger grotto. If the same team ever dives again in this same cave, they will have trimix mixes and several reels with them.

Mildly negative attitude of the local tech-dudes to dives deeper than 80 meters made the original purpose of this project difficult to fulfill and we had to keep trimix dives to a minimum. After a lot of negotiations and reassuring at the Tech Asia center we got to make one decent deep dive. Close to Puerto Galera Janne dove down a wall to 100 meters together with American Sam. The wall was magnificent full of caves and ravines. After planning exactly, we got a bottom time of 12 minutes, of which 6 minutes was used going down. Decompression stops were made next to the wall at 20 meters, after that the current took us to mid-water. From then on came long and dull deco-stops, staring at blue water (and Sam). Ascent and decompression stops together took 78 minutes, so the dive time came to 90 minutes.

Gases used:
Most of the dives:
Bottom gas air, deco-gas EAN 50
100 meter dive:
Bottom gas: trimix 11/50
Deco-gas 1: trimix 20/35
Deco-gas 2: EAN 50
Deco-gas 3: EAN 100

Equipment used:
Wetsuit 5mm + hood
2 X 12L aluminum 200 bar tanks
3 X 6L aluminum 200 bar deko-tanks
2 X ScubaPro MK25 + S600 regulaator
Diverite backplate, harness, wings
Reel + SMB
Diverite HID dive lights