Day Zero

I slept so well on this ferry.  It was nice to have our own private room.  I got to work on finishing my slugs and figured out that I have internet still through Starlink.  Wow.

At 7am the crew brought breakfast to my cabin.  It was pretty bland but it tasted ok to me.  We then went through the disembarking stage which is crazy because these porters come and take the luggage and then no matter how much you pay them, they make a face like it is not enough.  Well, God love ‘em for trying but we followed the recommendation from 3P.

Then we had a one hour drive from the Batangas Pier to Anilao.

We set up our rooms, our cameras and our gear and arranged for a 2pm dive.  Everything has been upgraded at the resort.  It feels so fancy!

When putting a charged battery in my Kraken, I noticed that the o-rings needed cleaning, so I did that and then I could not get the light to turn on again.  WTF?  I kept adjusting and trying and even messaged Mike about it.

After lunch, I came back to it and determined that I put the o-ring back in the wrong place.  OMG.  I am so ridiculous.  I moved it and all was working fine.  Whew.

I met another diver, Mario.  He is from California and just started diving in 2021 in Cozumel and is now addicted to SCUBA.  Super fun guy to talk to and having the enthusiasm of a newcomer to the group is energizing.

Robin is here with her 12 year old granddaughter Jeanne.  So cute.  Of course, Jim Anderson is here… our unofficial leader and slug count.  He has an iBook of the Anilao Nudibranchs that he keeps up to date:

https://books.apple.com/us/book/anilao-nudibranchs/id1210743768

I put the Pikachu (Thecacera sp. 8) tissue box cover (that Cheryl gave me years ago) on the table for everyone to find.  Everyone was tickled by it and even took pictures.

I’m going to post at least one nudi-themed article of clothing, trinket, etc each day of Slugfest.  Today is Day Zero as the Festival has not yet started.

Our first afternoon dive was very good.  I found a lot of things and Glenn our dive guide found several.  I enjoyed looking as much as the finding/shooting.  The second dive at Buceo was so boring, which is weird because I remember that last year it was outstanding.  It was windy and a little rough at the surface, but not too bad.

I got to have dinner with Anouk, Georgina and Hannah.  They are so fabulous.  

I know Anouk from Slugfest 2018.  We dove together here and Romblon.  She is from Belgium and now lives in Tulamben, Bali and can dive for slugs right from her doorstep.  My dream!  

Hannah is German and knows Christianne from Villa Markisa, Tulamben and Georgina is from South Africa.  She helped revise Terry Gosliner’s book, Southern African Sea Slugs.  These ladies are dialed in.

https://divetek.co.za/product/southern-african-sea-slugs/

The two big topics of conversation at dinner were…

Do the slugs we find pre-workshop count for the numbers?  The answer is no.  The workshop officially starts at 1pm tomorrow.

How will boats be assigned?  There is a suggestion that boats will be assigned via lottery… but Anouk/Hannah/Georgina WANT to dive together, so they don’t like that idea.  Interesting, I honestly don’t care as long as I can keep diving.

Here are today’s slugs:

1 - Rostanga bifurcata

2 - Hypselodoris katherinae

3 - Phyllodesmium opalescens

4 - Coryphellina pseudolotus

5 - Atys multistriatus

6 - Mexichromis mariei

7 - Favorinus tsuruganus

8 - Hypselodoris infucata

9 - Elysia sp. 37

10 - Eubranchus sp. 26

11 - Thuridilla albopustulosa

Ramblin' on from Romblon

We leave tonight on the overnight ferry.  We are still going to do two dives this morning.

The weather was cloudy today, but there was a double rainbow on the walk to the boat.  Bobby continued to find great slugs on our last dives.  I worked harder on my photography and did some snooting.  I found out I love the chunk-chunk sound of when I have locked in on a subject and I flip on the diopter.  It is pretty satisfying.

We saw the Melibe colemani one last time.  I shot it and saw later that it was laying eggs.  Whoa.  I really should have snooted this guy but I was just so happy to stare at it for a while.

We had lunch and then had some downtime to pack and get ready for dinner.  I was able to stay in my room, but Francis and Pirjo had to pack up and get out of their room because someone else was coming.  I told them they can hang in my room if they want, but there is a lounge in the office area.

I streamed some comedy and worked on my slugs.

At dinner I had one last coffee ice cream before we headed to the ferry terminal on trikes.  The ferry was late in departing and I fell full asleep in the waiting area.  Once we got to our first class cabins I was ready for bed.  I finished my book instead of working on my slugs.  

Last List for Romblon

154 - Chromodoris lochi 

I guess this guy was hungry!  Its head was buried deep into that sponge.

155 - Polycera sp. 8

156 - Mexichromis pusilla

157 - Phyllidiopsis fissurata

158 - Tenellia sp. 82

159 - Thordisa sp. 17

160 - Thordisa sp.

These last two were right next to each other and SO cryptic, I could barely see them.

So, that brings my Romblon species count up to 160.

To summarize in Romblon I did 29 dives bringing me up to 2420 lifetime dives.  

Here is the trending graph:

Bob Marley Nudi

I slept in until 5am.  Whoa!  That is the latest I have slept in so far!  We had another power outage right at 6am today.

We had two very nice dives in the morning.  

On the first dive Bobby said we were going to see the Bob Marley nudibranch. What?  We had never heard of that.  He meant the Tenellia melanobranchia.  So funny!

After the first dive, my computer said the “do not go” sign and a time of 3 hours right next to the mountains.  Both were colored yellow.  I went to the Altitude on my computer and it said 100 ft.  I never set it to that.  So I went back down to Sea Level.  It didn’t go away immediately but after the second dive it was gone.  Weird.

I also pulled out my hidden backup dive computer.  Doh.  Its battery ran out.  I have another battery so I changed it over lunch.  It is good to have a second computer just in case the first one fails.

At lunch we had a delicious fish dish and then Pirjo and I got to talking about the Poisson Cru dish in Tahiti.  Now I am craving that.  Yum!

The afternoon dive was nice and we found lots of interesting slugs.  I tried to take another snoot shot with my left strobe.  So awkward.  I feel like I should only snoot when conditions are PERFECT.

The night dive brought lots of treats and I even tried to snoot again on a Goniobranchus fidelis.  I’m not sure my results were great, but they were interesting.  We also saw a mutant nudi!

Nudi Queue

140 - Phyllodesmium macphersonae

141 - Kabeiro sp. 1

142 - Sakuraeolis marhe

143 - Trapania sp.

144 - Phyllodesmium briareum

145 - Tenellia sp. 71

146 - Goniobranchus coi

147 - Aglaja fulvipunctata

148 - Hypselodoris reidi

149 - Favorinus mirabilis

150 - Favorinus sp. 2

151 - Sagaminopteron psychedelicum

152 - Trapania gibbera

153 - Stiliger sp.

Blackwater - 3P Style

OMG.  At four am, this pack of dogs was barking loudly outside my window.  How can the neighborhood stand this?  The noise is so terrible.

I finished my nudis in time for breakfast.  I am super excited to dive today, tomorrow and part of Sunday… and then the trip will already be half over.  How can that be?

During the second dive, Pirjo told me she wasn’t getting any strobe and I thought about the flash button and hers was in the off position.  We were able to turn it on and it works.  So I troubleshooted her problem underwater.

Then I went into High Resolution Mode and had a disk write failure… and I couldn’t figure out how to get out of it.  I just felt sorry for myself for a bit, then hovered while I scrolled through all the settings and found it and turned it off.  I have no idea how it got triggered to be turned on.

Bobby was shocked as we came back to the resort when he told me that I should be ready for the Blackwater by 6:30pm.  I was like and for the afternoon?  He said that there is no afternoon dive because of Blackwater.  What!??!  Nobody told me that.

After a bit of clarification, it was just that Bobby cannot do an afternoon dive, so they put me on another boat with two Americans, Laura and Alan.  Both are from California.  It was on the house reef and I got to practice some more and got some good shots but at some point, this dive guide put me on a slug right on top of Alan.  I got mad underwater.  Ugh.  There is a WHOLE ocean.  Why do they have to set up subjects right ON TOP of another diver?

I reconfigured my camera for Blackwater and took a little nap.

Blackwater was good, but not as lifechanging as the times I did it in West Palm Beach in 2020.  I barely got any shots to fire at all.  The highlight of this dive was a huge shrimp living in a six fool pyrosome.

This is not the six foot one, but a smaller version.

Here are the slugs for today:

124 - Mexichromis trilineata

125 - Hypselodoris roo (I thought Hypselodoris infucata, but Vie corrected me)

126 - Dendrodoris arborescens

127 - Hoploplana sp. 

This one is causing quite a stir on Facebook whether or not it is a flatworm or nudi.  

Marli Wakeling said https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/252060947 Hoploplana sp. from Romblon.

128 - Sacoproteus smaragdinus (originally I thought Caulerpa mimic "Stiliger" smaragdinus but Vie corrected me)

129 - Costasiella kuroshimae

130 - Gymnodoris sp. 29

131 - Kaloplocamus sp.

132 - Goniobranchus rufomaculatus

133 - Miamira sinuata

134 - Siphopteron sp. 4

Strobes were not firing due to the High Resolution Mode Disk Error.

135 - Jorunna ramicola

Strobes were not firing due to the High Resolution Mode Disk Error.

136 - Tenellia puti (originally I thought Tenellia sp. 15, but Vie corrected me)

Strobes were not firing due to the High Resolution Mode Disk Error.

137 - Cyerce nigra (sub-adult) - (Originally I thiguht Cyerce cf. nigra, but Vie corrected me)

138 - Phyllidia elegans

139 - Halgerda batangas