The Compressor Situation

Lets just pick up right where we left off: a broken compressor.  Robby was told by his contacts in Masinloc that the compressor would be fixed within a week and not to worry.   We took that with a grain of salt, wondering if a week would be more like two or three, but decided to wait and hear what the shop had to say about it.  Since he could not collect, Robby ended up coming back down to Manila so he was home when I returned from Thailand.  Since we couldn't collect fish, we decided to make the most of our new found free time and spend the week doing dissections.  Woo!

Starting Monday and going through Friday we were in the lab dissecting fish from the early morning until well into the evening.  We soon found out that at UP you are not allowed to stay late in the buildings, or come in on the weekends, without signed permission from a faculty member.  This was such a foreign (no pun intended) concept to us as back home working at odd hours and over the weekend in college is pretty much expected.  However, starting at 7:30pm we needed to have permission to be in the building so we figured out that protocol and got signed off each day.

Dissections were slightly more interesting this time around as we now had a wide range of sizes for each species to work on:

Here are the goat fish: "smalls" and "mediums".

The twospot bristletooth (we call them bino's because their species name is binotatus).

Here is the brushtail tang, we have since collected some that are even tinier!

To give you a better scale, largest lined bristletooth and smallest.  13.5cm vs 4.5cm (we use a measurement called standard length  which includes the body and not the tail, for those of you thinking the big one is more like 20cm)

We were dissecting babies!  So small!

And so much more difficult!  You had to be so careful!

But, we got the hang of it.  Robby was in charge of the gonads, and I took the otoliths.  Pulling incredibly small bones out of incredibly small fish is quite a task and the gonads were often too small to even be seen.

I eventually got the hang of it and was pulling out otoliths the size of the tip of the tweezers.  Unreal, good luck to whoever has to read these things...

By the end of the week Robby and I were a little out of it.  Smelling dead fish that many days in a row would make anyone crazy.

At this point we had still not heard anything about the compressor, but had dissected a couple hundred fish and decided to take real advantage of this free time and go on a quick trip down to the SE portion of Luzon (the island we are living on) to see some whale sharks! We flew out on Saturday morning and came back Monday morning, but managed to see some unreal sights in those two days.  I'll give you the trip in photos so you can appreciate the beauty as well!

It was a short 60 minute flight to Legazpi.   

As we were getting closer, I saw something peaking through the clouds out the window.

It was Mt. Mayon, the real life image of what you picture when you think of a volcano.

Once we landed, we went directly to the lookout point in town for a better view. Unfortunately the clouds were obscuring the top.

The view from the opposite side of the lookout was of Legazpi itself, such a colorful town siting with crystal clear waters on one side and this breath taking volcano on the other.

Before making the trek to Donsol via van, we decided to stop by the local church.

We had read in our book that there were great views of the volcano,

but the clouds were even worse by the time we arrived. 

We still had a mini photo shoot though!  It was impressive even with the clouds, it just dominated the landscape.

The church itself was pretty cool as well.  It was made out of coral!

No idea how they managed that! 

After our couple of hours in Legazpi we took a van to Donsol and arrived at our resort right before sunset.  

We decided to go for a walk along the beach and wait for the sun to set.

It was low tide so there were huge stretches of beach, 

which the resident pups took full advantage of.

The beach was lined with bangka boats.

As well as children.

The kids would call after us or walk with us and repeatedly ask "What's your name?" and even after we answered them, they would all giggle and another would ask the question again.  They also kept wanting their photos taken, so I have quite a few of these local kiddos!

The sunset was absolutely stunning.

The tide pools reflected the sky perfectly, it was so picturesque.  Way better than being in the lab!

The next morning we got up early to head to the whale shark tour.  

A few years back someone shot video of a whale shark in the local bay and it sparked a huge tourism industry. 

 This area, and Oslob in Cebu, are both known for their sharks.  However, in Oslob they feed the sharks to get them to come close to people so it is not the most natural setting.  Here you go out on a boat and search for them in their natural habitat so you aren’t guaranteed to see one.

The tourism center made us watch a film about how to behave around the sharks, and they also had posters up explaining the rules.

Essentially the idea was to only allow one boat per shark (max. 30 boats on the water at a time) and when tourists entered the water you were to give the shark at least 6 feet of space.  Robby and I were pretty impressed with their operation as they seemed to be putting a lot of effort into making sure the sharks did not feel harassed.  However, this feeling lasted up until we got out on the water and saw what actually happened.

Once a whale shark was spotted, it was a mad dash by every boat in the area to the shark.

They had you gear up and sit on the bow of the boat as they maneuvered you into position to drop in next to the shark.

When they said go it was a sprint by every tourist on all the nearby boats to the shark.

We did get to see a handful of them though!

Such beautiful animals!

Unfortunately, with all of the people around each siting was very short as the sharks tried to get away.

It looked as though they were hardly trying, but one swoosh of their tail and they were 15 feet away from you and disappeared either into the depths or just out of sight.  Though seeing the sharks was definitely worth the trip to Donsol, Robby and I both left the tour with mixed feelings.  While we were happy we had gotten to see these unique and rare animals, we were appalled by the behavior of the boat operators and guides who were trained to respect the sharks space.  It was clear that they put the tourists desire to have a whale shark siting, no matter how brief, above what was best for the sharks. We were both a bit uncomfortable with having taken part in something that was not what we thought we were signing up for, and at the end of the day seemed to have harassed the sharks rather than appreciated them from a distance.

The video and posters were right on point as far as sustainable eco-tourism, but the reality was quite different.  

After eating lunch and talking it out more I decided to go back to the office and actually say something to them about it.  The whole thing just wasn't sitting right with me, so I went in and talked to the people in charge at the tourism center.  After hearing my perspective and thoughts on the tour that morning, they said they were really glad I came in to talk to them and value feedback like this.  They gave me a sheet of paper to write everything down and said they would discuss it at their monthly meeting with the guides and operators.  They explained to me that often the boat operators get lazy and rather than going and looking for a shark on their own, they all ambush one and just drop tourists every so many feet along the sharks path.  The result, as we saw, is that the shark keeps swimming away, but just into more people.  I'm not sure if my feedback will get anywhere, but I felt better having at least tried!

When we got back to our resort that afternoon, a tricycle driver was hanging around asking if we wanted to do a firefly tour that evening or be taken into town.  Robby and I wanted nothing to do with anymore organized tours, but we asked if he could just show us around Donsol.  The entire area had a nice feel to it, everything was really green and the homes were very pretty so we wanted to go out and take some photos of the area.  We decided to head away from town and out towards the rice fields with the plan being that we would just ask the driver to stop if we saw something we wanted a photo of or to explore a little more.  It ended up being a wonderful afternoon, and hopefully the photos will help bring our do-it-yourself tour to life for you all!

Our driver stuck me on the top of the trike so that I could have a better view.

You can see my shoes up top if you look closely!

We drove by countless homes.

Several of them had fish drying out front.

We also saw so many kids just out and about on their own.  These two were selling something, my guess: fish!

Our first stop was when I saw these two on the side of the road.

They call them water buffalo, or caribou, and many people use them to haul things. 

They stick the rope right through its nostrils, kinda gruesome,  but they pierce them when they are young so the rope just slips right through and they are easier to steer this way evidently.

We hopped back on the trike and continued on down the road, passing some more kiddos along the way.

Our next stop was the rice fields.

It was harvest season, so the fields were quite active. After cutting down the plants, they take the rice and send it through a machine that splits the grains from the stalk.

I'd never seen rice up close so I had no idea what it actually looked like, but there it is inside its little casing.

After the grains are separated, they are put out to dry. Most of the time this is done on the side of the road, but sometimes it is right smack in the middle of it.

Others take their grains home, or deliver it to the owner if they are hired to work the fields.  And yes, they drive right through the grains.

This man was laying his rice out, raking through them to make sure they all got some sun.

The stalk and other parts are then burned in the field.

It was neat to see the whole process in motion, our timing worked out really well!  After spending some time in the fields, we decided to head back out to the main road and work our way back to the resort.  On the way out we came across this mom and baby cooling off.

One of my favorite photos from the trip!

Our next stop was a home that had a yard full of roosters.

Owned by a family that breeds roosters for cockfighting!  Most municipalities have a cockfighting arena, cockfights are a big thing over here.

 I asked our driver to pull over so we could have a look.  There were lots of different colors and sized roosters.

I can't imagine living with all of these loud mouths in your front lawn.  They never  stop crowing!

It turned out not only did this family raise roosters, but their land was also a coconut plantation.  So they offered to climb up and get us some fresh coconut water to drink.

They cut grooves in the trunk to use as a ladder to climb up.

He couldn't quite reach the coconuts so our guy cut himself another notch while he was up there. And no, he is not attached to anything!

While he was up there we saw something coming along the path through the coconut trees.

It turned out to be a young girl being pulled by a water buffalo/caribou.

She turned him around and then they loaded her sled up with coconuts to be pulled to the other end of the plantation!

We sat back,  drank some coconut water and watched.

Our driver also scooped out some of the flesh of the coconut for us to eat!

While we were relaxing the kids who lived there came out to have a look at us.  

I put this photo in here only because it is so so typical to see a young kid walking around looking after, taking care of, and often struggling to walk around holding their younger siblings.  Kids seem to have a lot more freedom and less supervision over here!

While the kids do have some freedom, they also help their families out a lot.  These boys were carrying dried fish down the side of the road.

We loaded back onto the tricycle and the next stop came when I spotted a group of men working on building a bangka!

We arrived in time to see them bending the sides up toward the bow of the boat.

There was definitely some creaking (and maybe some cracking) as they pushed the wood into position.  They kept it there with a stick of bamboo to hold the curve and keep it in place.

While we were watching them, this little boy next to us grabbed a dried palm leaf

And started using it as a sled to go down the hill (which was about two feet tall).

He was a trip!  He just kept going up and down his two foot slide.

Taking a break to dance every time he made it to the bottom.  He had some good moves, and I think we got some on video!

Having been able to talk with and enjoy spending time with some of the locals, we decided to end the tour by driving out to the main bridge.

The bridge spans a large waterway connecting town proper to the outskirts where we had been driving around.

Our driver told us this bridge was a relatively new addition to Donsol.  About 15 years ago they had to use boats to get across to town.

He told us that as soon as the bridge was constructed, everyone saved up to buy a motorbike or tricycle.  He said that after the bridge, the town really started to develop as tourists could easily access the area with the whale sharks

Robby wishing he could take the trike for a spin.

We headed back to our resort and from my birds-eye view I could see one of our neighbors building another bangka.  This one was a bit further along!

We thanked our driver and asked how much we could pay him for the tour.  He said that was the first time anyone had ever asked him to do something like that and left the price up to us.  He explained that he honestly wanted to know how much he could charge, and what tourists would be willing to pay, as he wanted to offer what we did to guests in the future.  I think we may have started a new business for him!  We paid him the equivalent of around $7, which he was really appreciative of.  We've gotten so used to how cheap things are over here, coming home is going to be such a shock!

Speaking of creating tours, we had asked our resort if they knew any shrimp fishermen and it turned out their neighbor was one.  They arranged for us to go out with him that night and experience shrimp fishing.

Our fishermen showed up as the sun was setting.  All he needed was this giant net, a head lamp and a "backpack" that was just a bag with a hole at the top used to hold whatever shrimp we managed to collect.

The net had slices of coconut shells on the ends of the bamboo so it could be easily pushed across the sand.

The bamboo skeleton of the net crossed at the bottom which allowed for it to fit nicely around your hips and then created handles for you to push the net.

We could not bring the camera out with us, and the GoPro was dead from our earlier tour (though it does terribly at night anyway) so we don't have any photos of what we caught in the net which is unfortunate as it was easily the coolest things we’ve done on/in the water!  We scooped up a baby octopus in the net and got to hold it in our hands and let it crawl around on us.  We also caught baby puffer fish!  They are my favorite and this was the first time I got to see one puff up!  They puffed into little spiky balls and made a clicking/chirping sound as they continued trying to puff.  Though once you picked them up and put them back in the water they immediately deflated and swam off.  It was so cool!  We also scooped up a lot of crabs and baby filefish.  We saw lots of baby fish as we were close to shore which is where the juveniles live before heading to deeper water as adults.

We scooted the net along the bottom for a couple of hours, stopping occasionally to check what we had, but we never got any deeper than just above our knees.  Apparently, shrimp are found in the more shallow water, but for all the time we spent out there we did not catch very many!  We caught a few tiny ones and a couple big ones which were really neat to see swim around, but that was it.  Our fishermen felt really badly and kept apologizing, but Robby and I were more excited about all of the other things he was catching.  The shrimp were definitely at the bottom of the list!  Oh, he also scooped up a scorpionfish which is a fish that looks the same color as the sand and is incredibly poisonous.  We let him get that one out of the net; he wasn't phased by it at all which was shocking as he was walking around barefoot and could have easily stepped on it!  We had our dive booties on so we had nothing to worry about, but still it was a little unsettling.  At the end of our tour, our fishermen didn't even want to accept any money but we were able to convince him to take $4.  As I said, things are so cheap here!  We went to bed feeling incredibly fortunate having met these two "guides"  and that they showed us and allowed us to really experience life in Donsol.

The next morning we woke up incredibly early and took a van back to Legazpi.  As it was really early, the clouds were not yet covering the volcano so we decided to quickly head back to the church for the view.

You'll recognize our chili pepper lady from our previous photo shoot.

But the real focus was, of course, Mt. Mayon.

We had another photo shoot, complete with a selfie this time!

We could not believe how absolutely perfect the volcano was.  I forgot to mention Mt. Mayon is perpetually smoking!  It is still an active volcano, one of the deadliest in the Philippines, and a truly awe inspiring site to see.

After our volcano viewing we headed back to the airport and then back to Manila.

AirAsia gearing up for the Mayweather vs. Pacquiao fight.  The man is kind of a big deal over here.

We arrived back in Manila by 9am and Robby went straight to UP for a meeting with his advisor to discuss options for his project moving forward, in the event that the compressor was not fixed quickly.  They were discussing allowing him to use a department compressor or more scuba tanks, but the department was gearing up for a 3 week long expedition so all spare gear was being sent on the ship (40 people were going on this expedition, the majority of the department).  As such, we were out of luck for at least another 3 weeks and were told we would just have to wait and see about borrowing one from the university when they returned.  No guarantees.  Robby’s advisor did inform him that another group from MSI would be up in Masinloc, overlapping us by one day, and they would have an air compressor that we could use.  One day of fills was better than none, but then we got a text message that changed everything!

Our contact in Masinloc texted and said that he found another compressor.  Just out of thin air, poof!  A compressor we could use!  He said he was filling our tanks and they would be ready to go for us tomorrow.  With that news, we packed up our stuff and took the 8 hour bus ride back up to Masinloc.  It's amazing that an 8 hour bus ride feels like nothing to us anymore. It used to feel like the most inconvenient thing but now we just hop on and go without a second thought.  We've clearly been here a while!

With the new compressor we were able to start back to work, but still only outside of the MPA as the MOA was still not signed by the chancellor of UP.  In fact, the MOA was still sitting in the legal department being looked over for approval.  With the compressor situation being the most immediate problem at hand, we put the MOA out of our minds (there was nothing we could do to speed the process up anyway) and we just focused on what else needed to be collected outside.

Getting back to work also meant getting back to our good friend the ratmouse.  At last count ratmouse was up 3 to 0.  We hung all of our food again from the ceiling and moved everything up off of the floor and went to bed confident nothing was going to be nibbled.  I should mention that I also hung up our 20 raw eggs which Robby accidentally knocked down (he had no idea I'd hung them up) so about 20 eggs cracked all over the floor.   Woops.

Robby told me I was going a little overboard hanging raw eggs so the next day I bought a case with the eggs to keep them inside.  I'm not taking any chances with this thing!

Well, when we woke up that first morning, we found a hole in the corner of the bag that was hanging with my nut mix inside.

I have no idea how he reached it!  It was at least a foot above the ledge, the thing has gotta be big! 
Ratmouse 4, Robby and D 0.

The second night we moved everything up higher and nothing got chewed, but we found that the little guy had chewed several holes in Robby’s dry bag and some in my dry bag backpack.

We couldn’t believe it, they were just sitting on the bench empty! 
Ratmouse 5, Robby and D 0.

At this point I was pretty ticked as two nicer pieces of our equipment got ruined, a dry bag isn’t very useful when it is riddled with holes.  We told the family that owns the resort and were met with indifference towards it being there.  They offered to find us a tailor in town to try and fix our bags, but the material needed I doubted anyone had here.  

So, we took matters into our hands and bought sticky paper.  Many, many sheets of sticky paper.

We laid two out on the ledge in the hall, put a plop of peanut butter in the middle and waited until morning.

When we woke up, nothing had changed.  No points scored on either side.

So, the next night we put it on the floor thinking that maybe it couldn’t reach the ledge and then put a second one on the bench where it had eaten our dry bags.  

The one on the bench got a pile of my nut mix that it loves so much (yes, I made a neat little ring of almonds around the pile.  Those are its favorite, I had to tempt the thing!).

The next morning we found an almond that had strayed from the group, but it got caught in the paper.  I’m going to chalk that one up as a draw, we didn’t get it but it didn’t get our food.  
Score remains: Ratmouse 5, Robby and D 0.

That night we ended up doing some dissections in our usual hut

Freezer space was becoming an issue so we dissected the fish up until doing the otoliths (ear bones), then cut off their heads and froze just the heads to save space.

We had a lot of fish out on the table and over on the counter where they were being decapitated.

After about an hour of dissecting, the ratmouse turned up.  It started running across the rafters above or heads and then down onto the ledge around the hut and finally onto the counter where we had the fish laying out!  I couldn't believe it was so bold!  We were not about to lose any of his project fish to this ratmouse, and we figured it truly couldn't resist the smell of the fish as it was coming out while we were there, so Robby quickly ran and got the sticky paper.  We put the bodies of a few fish in the middle of the paper and waited.  Well, it turned out that as soon as we put out that sticky paper, it stopped coming around!  How does it know?  I'm considering it another draw, Ratmouse 5, Robby and D 0.  Our defense was getting better, but our offense was definitely still lacking.

Alright, well enough about the ratmouse, we didn't catch it, so back to the project.  After two smooth days of collecting and refilling the tanks, we received another text message.  This text had pretty awful news.  The compressor we had been using was actually BFAR's (the same organization that made Robby get a MOA to do his research that we were still waiting on, the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources) and BFAR was now done their assessments in the area and thus was taking their compressor and heading back to Subic.  So now we were back to where we started, no compressor.  Oh and the Masinloc compressor still had not even been looked at by the dive shop, so one week down and absolutely no movement in that area.  Somehow we weren't at all surprised, as I said we've been here a while.  We are totally accustomed to things taking an obscene amount of time to get done, it's just how it is.  The only problem for us is that Robby's research sort of has a deadline that is getting closer and closer.  We had planned to be done collections at the end of April and it was now mid-April and we had only begun outside collections, in one location, and still did not even have the required permits to do any inside collections.

We were a little stressed.

That night we were actually able to use the MSI compressor that was in town for a day, and they actually brought it to Puerto Asinan (where we were staying) and filled them right there for us.  So convenient.  I forgot to mention, we looked into buying one, but compressors run anywhere from $5,000 - $10,000 which was a completely unrealistic amount for Robby to spend, so the search for nearby compressors continued.  The next day, we got another text telling us that yet another air compressor had been found that we could use.  Yup, just out of thin air.  Boom, compressor!  We couldn’t believe it.  Back in February during our recon mission we literally asked about air compressors over 50 times up and down Zambales and only ever received one answer: Masinloc.  Now, there proved to be several answers, and this latest compressor was actually permanently kept in Iba.  Iba (the provincial capital 1 hour by bus south of us) apparently had a compressor at the local DENR (Dept. of Environmental and Natural Resources) office.  So Robby just had to coordinate getting all of the tanks down to Iba to be filled.  This cost way more than we had budgeted, but we decided it was a necessary temporary solution so that collections could continue and we wouldn’t get even more behind schedule.  Our contact in Masinloc told us he had two friends that could help us move the tanks and then fill them.  When Robby and the fillers arrived to get the tanks filled, they were told there was no air intake hose and that this was something that people had to bring if they wanted to fill tanks.  They had just completely failed to mention this.  Ridiculous, but not surprising.  So he and the fillers set out to find an intake hose and ended up with this:

Not the most professional looking piece of equipment (it is that skinny tubing tied up to the tree), but it got the job done!  Fresh air went on in!

With our tanks now filled once again, we decided to do a night dive in Masinloc.  The fishermen were having trouble finding one of Robby’s species, the goatfish, and felt that they would be more easily targeted at night.  They sleep on sand flats and are easy to get at night, according to the fishermen, so we headed out for what was to be my very first night dive!  

I found out my (and I think probably all) dive computer glows in the dark.  All you have to do is shine your flashlight on it and it glows to allows you to see how deep you are, your dive time and how much air you have.  So smart!

Night diving is juuuust a little freaky, as all you can see is what your flashlight shines on.

Luckily my light was crazy bright (left) while Robby's was a little dimmer (right).  He said mine was too bright though, it made it feel much less like a night dive, that was fine by me though!

Unfortunately, not being able to see the ground, or the sky, and only being able to see what my flash light was shining on left me with intense vertigo and motion sickness, so I felt really ill.  I'm incredibly stubborn and stayed down thinking I could talk myself out of it (you can't, motion sickness just is), but I tried to make the best of it and enjoy what we were seeing.

We got to see a couple of squid that were posturing and threatening us.

One eventually took off in a cloud of ink (look behind the one that is still there), but the other stayed around until we left it alone.

The second dive we did was in a shallower area so I could see the sandy bottom and had a much better time.  While we were enjoying all the critters at night, the fishermen were hunting for goatfish.

Most fish were asleep so here you can see our fishermen literally just reaching down and picking up a fish off the bottom!  It's almost too easy, you sort of feel guilty!

While some fish were being caught, we were completely striking out on goatfish: the entire reason for the night dive.  The final tally for the night was a whopping 0 goatfish, with none even being spotted for that matter. The fishermen felt pretty bad that we had paid for the boat and ended up empty-handed, so they caught a bunch of other fish and squid for us to have for food which we took back to Puerto Asinan.  We gave the fish and squid to Momma Norma (the owner and one of our favorite people in the Philippines) in the morning and she said she would be happy to cook it up for us.  We convinced her to also take some for her family (you may remember last time we tried this she wouldn't and insisted we eat it) and so the next few days we all ate a bunch of fish.  For breakfast, lunch and dinner.  Fish. Fish. Fish.

We woke up to sweet and sour fish one morning,

With a side of rice, of course, it's not a meal if you don't have it with rice!

And fried squid.  Not your typical breakfast to say the least, but delicious!

For lunch we had fish soup.

And for dinner: fried fish and sour soup.

This went on for many days in a row.  We were so tired of fish, but when our supply ran out they wanted to repay us and so they cooked us more food each night and, you guessed it, they made more fish!  Norma wouldn’t take any money from us for preparing dinner or cooking her own food so we had a weeks worth of food for free! So we had that going for us, which was nice.

But back to the compressor situation.  

After one day of having to pay for the tanks to be moved down to Iba (via a combination of jeepney and tricycle) and then having to pay for someone to fill them, we decided this method really wasn't sustainable even in the short term, and came up with a new plan. Well, several new plans actually. First, we asked if the compressor could be moved to Masinloc for a short time, but Robby was told that could not be done. So next we asked to be trained on how to fill so we didn't have to pay someone else to do it.  We scheduled out the coming week and decided that if we had two more tanks on top of the ones we already had filled, we could finish collections outside of Masinloc and Candelaria by the end of the week.  As such, we borrowed two empty tanks from Masinloc and headed to Iba to fill the tanks and learn to use the compressor.  Well, when we arrived all of our planning turned out to be for nothing.  We were told that this would be the last time we could use the compressor.  These tanks were the last two, no more fills.  They said they had too many government projects going on, plus the military was using the compressor, and they could not afford for it to be overworked and to break.  

Due to the fact that Robby's project was not associated with the government, he was not allowed to use it.  Robby tried negotiating for one more day of fills, as that would have allowed us to finish Santa Cruz and be done all outside collections, or to pay more to do another round of fills, or to do just about anything but the director wouldn't budge.  He said he would look for another one for us, but we already knew finding two over the last 4 days was already a miracle and there was no way a third would materialize.  I couldn’t help but laugh.  Here we were sitting in front of a perfectly good compressor, using it correctly and for its intended purpose, right in front of the office and we were being told it was off limits to us as it could break.  Just absurd.  Robby’s project seemed to have hit yet another dead end and this time he lost hope.

Poor guy was completely defeated.

He was at a complete loss as to what to do next.

The week was such a roller-coaster of air, then no air, then air again I just wasn't surprised we were dealt another blow.  These miracle compressors had sort of been a gift that kept the project going for a little while, but now it was back to square one and figuring out what to do about the fact that the compressor we had counted on was still in a shop being repaired and there were no others around.  Nothing about this project has been easy, or simple, so I started racking my brain as to what we could possibly do next.  We had already coordinated with Candelaria to start collections and were moving up a little further north to do so, which meant we had a couple of days of collections ahead of us before we had to figure out what to do about the tanks.

As such, we had some time to come up with a plan.  Our first thought was that we could take the tanks to Subic and get a dive shop there to fill them.  The problem with this plan was that Subic is a 3-4 hour bus ride south and there was no way we could carry 12 tanks with us on a bus, then get them to a shop, then back to a bus and back up here in a day.  Fortunately, Subic is also the only municipality within a 5 hour radius of us where you can rent a car so we decided to look up car rentals!  Since the car rental companies are in Subic, this meant we would have to bus down to get the car, drive back to get the tanks, drive down to get them filled, drive the tanks up to drop them off and then drive down again to drop the car and bus back up.  An insane plan of course, but it was a possible way to get air in those tanks, so we went with it and called around.  All of this driving would require two days of a car rental, and more delays in the collection schedule, but we decided to call and price things out anyway as a back up option.  Trying to get answers from the rental car people turned out to be much more difficult than anticipated.

Here is Robby trying to ask what kind of gas mileage the car got.  Totally lost in translation, kilometerage is not a thing either evidently.

Aside from not being able to get an answer so we could estimate gas prices, we also were told it would be impossible to rent a car without our passports.  They said a copy might be ok, but they prefer originals and would require them (which is a very confusing answer…).  Our passports were in Manila, too far away to be useful, so renting a car was out.  Even if we ran to Manila and got the passports (a 1-2 day endeavor), the plan once we had the car also seemed like a huge waste of our time so we scrapped that idea.  We decided to put that option aside as not really possible and turned our thoughts to the marine lab in Bolinao.

I guess really I should say I turned my thoughts to Bolinao, Robby was so exhausted by the week that he fell asleep at the table after getting off the phone.  Poor kid, PhD's are stressful!

Bolinao seemed like a good option as it was a little bit closer to us than Subic (2-3 hours away rather than 3-4 hours).  The problem with Bolinao was how to get the tanks there.  We decided to just think about it and ask around the remainder of the day.  We split up at this point and Robby went back to DENR to try to talk to the director again and plead for another day of fills as that would be the most convenient option.  I went back up to Masinloc to meet our tricycle driver Brian (Brian is the neighbor of the SeaSun resort where we stay in northern Zambales and he is who we always call when we need to move between our two field homes: Puerto Asinan and SeaSun).  As we were going to start collections in Candelaria tomorrow, we had to move everything up to SeaSun.

Brian met me in Masinloc and we loaded our 12 full tanks into his tricycle.  

As we were doing this I asked him if he thought we could get the tanks on a bus and up to Bolinao.  He wasn’t sure they would allow us to put them on the bus, but he said he could drive us with the tanks to Bolinao on his tricycle if we needed.  So we had a plan!  

After moving the tanks, we had to move our other gear.  Here is Brian's trike packed full of all our gear moving it from Puerto Asinan in Masinloc to SeaSun in Santa Cruz.
Love that tricycle!

I got to SeaSun earlier than Robby and while I was sitting around waiting it dawned on me that the answer to our problem could literally be right under our nose.

This is how SeaSun advertises itself on the main road. 


Yes, those are scuba divers under the water if you look closely.

The little store at the resort also has this written in the window: DIVING.

Talk about having the answer right in front of your face!  It was around this time that Robby arrived and he immediately went to go ask about diving here.  We were informed that the owner of the resort, an Australian who only comes a couple times a year, likes to scuba dive and owns a compressor that is locked upstairs.  The owner is the only one with a key to his place (it is on the top level of the resort) so that was not an option.  However, they did say that their neighbors also dive and they thought one of them had a compressor.  Robby and I didn’t want to get our hopes up, but we showed them our tanks and, it seemed, that they understood what we needed and thought their neighbor could do it.  It was already late so we made plans to go talk to this neighbor tomorrow afternoon after Candelaria collections.

Speaking of the Candelaria collections, when we arrived the next day we were beyond impressed with what we found. The bantay dagats (fish wardens) in Candelaria have a well run operation.
  

Not only do they have uniforms,

But their guard house sits on the beach right in front of the MPA (no, that is not a given) and they have a log book that anyone going into the MPA has to sign.  

We registered ourselves and set out to collect.

It was wonderful to be able to get out and have some fun and try to enjoy Robby’s project.  Collections were supposed to be the most fun part of the project, but thus far they were turning out to be so stressful!  

Robby and I didn’t use any of our precious tanks so that we could give them to our fisherman, Noel.  Instead, we spent the day taking video and attempting to spear fish while snorkeling.  

Our spears kept breaking so Robby and I had to swim back to the boat and swap out spears while the bantay dagats worked on fixing ours (the rubber was breaking and just needed to be retied, no big deal).

We also decided to start experimenting with how Noel would do without a tank, and if he could still collect as many fish just free diving with a mask and snorkel.  (EDITORS NOTE: if anyone is thinking that Noel looks a bit strange in this photo, he has a large net tucked underneath his wetsuit)

It turned out he was still good, but not as good, but he said he thought he could keep going with the project even if we didn’t have air so we had another back up plan.

The bantay dagats also went fishing, they geared up with:

One wooden fin

Along with homemade wooden goggles and a huge net.

I’m not sure I’ve ever showed you Noel’s fins, our fisherman uses homemade fins as well, but he has two and his are made of PVC.

I decided to follow along to see how the bantay dagat's net was used.  

There are weights at the bottom that make the net sink. 

and bouys at the top that make it float.  

As a result, the net sinks down to the bottom, while remaining upright in the water column.

They lay the net out in a large circle, once they pick a spot with a good amount of fish, and then scare the fish into the net.  

They then wrap up the net with the fish inside and bring it back to the boat.

Once on the boat, they go through the net, untangling it

and untangling any fish that they caught in it!

They ended up catching some of Robby’s species, above is the goatfish, the one we were having trouble with in Masinloc! 

So we were able to use some of their catch for the study which was great!

The rest of the fish they kept for dinner (remember we were doing outside MPA collections so fishing is allowed).  After this we headed back to the guard house for lunch.

As I said they have a smooth operation, and they had cooked up a nice meal for all of us (paid for by Robby).

Here is a photo of Robby with our fisherman Noel, the bantay dagats and the women that cooked for us.  

After lunch we set back out to do it all over again.  At the end of the day we made plans for the following morning and headed back to SeaSun to find out about the compressor situation there.  Robby went out with one of the staff, but came back an hour later shaking his head and laughing.  They took him to a place that filled up tanks full of pure oxygen, not scuba tanks.  So, not helpful.  As the compressor upstairs (another one so close, but so far) was not available, we decided Bolinao was the only option we really had.

Robby had emailed his advisor, the director of the marine science department and his advisor back home asking about other ideas or potential options for filling our tanks.  While he asked them, I texted my family for their thoughts/opinions/ideas.  My family felt we should pay the money to rent a car as that meant we were not dependent on anyone else and would be able to then drive to wherever the compressors were.  Unfortunately the rental cars were really far away and Robby really didn't have that kind of money in his budget so we decided that would be what we did if the bus and tricycle didn’t work out.  Robby’s email got a response and we were told that the compressors on the cruise had all broken (I know, what is the deal with these things?) so having a compressor of our own was out of the question.  They did however promise us 10 more tanks once the 3 week expedition returned so that we could run 20 tanks to Bolinao at a time and get them all filled at once.  So that was really helpful, problem was we still had to wait for those extra tanks though.  Bolinao still seemed like the only viable option for us so we hired Brian and got ready for the adventure via bus or trike to Bolinao.

After loading the tanks, our first stop was the bus terminal in town.

When we arrived, we were  told the tanks were not allowed underneath the bus.  

We tried to explain that it was safe, but they wouldn’t budge.  Taking the bus would have cost around $5, while taking the tricycle was going to cost around $40.  However, the bus was not an option so tricycle it was!

So we gassed up and left Zambales

And headed for the province of Pangasinan

If you remember, Pangasinan is where three of Robby's original sites were to be located: Bolinao, Bani and Anda.

Everything was going fine, though Brian had never been to Bolinao before which was a little unsettling, but there really aren't that many roads to take so we figured it would be fine.  I had looked up a route on Google Maps before leaving and we could either cut across the island to Alaminos and go up to Bolinao from there, or just continue north along the coast and take a diagonal through Bani (if you remember Bani = Pakwan festival) and then on to Bolinao.  

About an hour into our trip we had a bit of a scare with one of the tanks.

Nothing bad happened thankfully, but Brian secured them down again even tighter this time.

While Brian was doing this we were trying to look up where we were to make sure we found that diagonal short-cut.  Our Google Maps was not working, but then we looked up and saw that on the tree across the street was a sign showing the alternate route to Bani!

We had stopped right before the turn for the short-cut!  What perfect timing to have some tank trouble, we would have missed the turn completely if we hadn’t been forced to stop!  As you can tell the road signs are anything but official here and not so obvious so without stopping we would have blown right by the turn!

We got back on the road and an hour and a hlaf made it to Bolinao without any further trouble!

We unloaded the tanks and took them down to the Dive Locker.

The Dive Locker is exactly what it sounds like: a big room where dive gear is cleaned and housed.

Off to the side is the tank filling room.  So many full tanks! We had reached Mecca!

Just behold! 

We traveled so many miles for that little compressor!  

We started in the northern part of Zambales (on the west coast in Santa Cruz) and drove up the coast and then over the mountains to the very tip of Pangasinan where Bolinao is located!

While the tanks filled, we went to town and got lunch and also bought a rope hammock to help tie down the tanks on the way home.

Robby then showed Brian and I BML's wet lab.

They had all sorts of tanks filled with marine life.

From giant clams

To sea cucumbers

To corals

They also had a bunch of seaweed laying out to dry.  So colorful!

After about two hours, the tanks were filled and ready to be loaded back on the tricycle.

They gave us some extra rope to tie them down and make them even more secure for the ride home.

We also used the hammock as an added precaution.

Success!  I can't tell you how relieved we all were that we had tanks full of air and that the project could now continue indefinitely!

Robby climbed back inside with our precious cargo

And then we just had to travel back across the mountains

Through Bani (the giant Pakwan from the festival was still there!)

Across the rest of Pangasinan, past some tricycle drivers hauling even more than we were!

Then past all of the rice fields and salt fields (I'd never seen them before!) until we made it back to Zambales

And finally to SeaSun!

Where the tanks could be unloaded for our next day out on the water.

What a day. The men working at Bolinao couldn't believe we had gotten a tricycle to come all the way from Santa Cruz, but we did it!  Brian officially saved the project!

Well before we end this, Robby created a few videos to go along with the blog for you all to enjoy. So... Enjoy!:

Trip to Donsol: http://youtu.be/BFf91Vsqd0c

Candelaria Fish Collections:   http://youtu.be/ci2PkiD2x2M 

  

(Editors Note: I made the "Tank Run" video sort of on a whim, since it was in the blog and I had some footage of it.  It is really more for myself and D to remember what a pain that process was. So feel free to skip it, as it may not be that interesting if you weren't there to experience it yourself. Or watch it anyway, and share in our struggle.) 

Tank Run: http://youtu.be/8kBtN0uL1kY

I know this has been a long blog, so I’ll leave you now with this fun fact.  The Mayweather vs. Pacquio fight happened the next day.  As I’m sure you all already know the outcome, I’ll tell you about our experience here rather than the actual fight.  Pacquio is a national hero in the Philippines, his break out of poverty and fame in the boxing world has made him incredibly famous in the Philippines so everyone was watching the fight.  There were signs up all over the place in support of him and showing where you could view the fight.  

We decided to watch with the family that runs SeaSun.

Unbeknownst to us when we decided this, the TV we were watching on was itty bitty.

The family had also not paid to view the fight, so we started seeing updates online at how the first rounds were going before the fight had even begun to air on our TV.  We decided to stay off of the internet and watch, but watching was sort of awful.  After each two minute round, there would be 15 minutes of commercials.  It was taking forever and I had to leave for Manila that afternoon as Anusha was arriving for a visit the next day (more on that next blog!).  We were patiently waiting through another commercial break when Robby got a text on his Philippine cellphone, it was from our trike driver Brian so he opened it and then just started shaking his head.  Brian had thought we didn’t have a place to watch the fight and wanted to let us know that Mayweather won!  Robby couldn’t believe it.  Just another example of how things never really go quite the way we plan over here, despite our best efforts.

I wasn’t that upset that the ending got spoiled as it was going to be another two hours before our version of the fight ended and I had an 8 hour bus ride ahead of me so we decided to not watch (what was the point?) and to go to town.  We ran some errands, including going to all three ATMs in the town only to find that all of them were out of order so we couldn’t get any money.  Thankfully Robby had enough money to loan me for my travel back to Manila!  

You really can’t rely on banks in the provinces, I’m still not accustomed to that!

We then made our way to the bus station and when we arrived it was quiet and everyone had their eyes on the fight.  

It was the 11th round, same version we had been viewing at SeaSun, so Robby and I joined in and got to watch the end of the fight.  It was funny how biased the commentary was, they had Pacquio winning by a large margin and just couldn’t believe when it was announced that Mayweather won.  Such a let down after all of the build up over here!  It was a shame as we really wanted to get to celebrate with everyone as it would have been one crazy party if he had won! But then again, if we have learned one thing over here, its that nothing ever goes quite as one would hope!