Today we had to get up at 4.30am, however, because we were so jetlackish, it wasn’t a problem. The two of us and two other german divers went with two gusy to the dive site monad shoal to look for tresher sharks. Unfortunately, the visibility was very bad and it seemed like we were swimming trhough green mud. Nevertheless, we saw them. Oh gosh, how beautiful they are! Whatsmore, we also saw 3 Mabolos when we went down. Happy and daddy a bit freezing, 1mm is just too thin, we came back to our hotel. The trip with the boat takes around 20min.

After a big tastey breakfast, we are totalley into baked beans at the moment, and a little rest, we went to the second ´dive at 9.30am

The dive site is called Lapus Lapus. And its known for small things.

At Lapus there is a little hole with thousands of little redish fish. There were also very colourful pipefish, 4 of them, and ghostcrabs.

Lapus Lapus has lots of soft corals and “Fächerkorallen” on one of them we saw two little pigmyseahorses. The are just adoreabel!

There, we sa a “zebracrab” for the first time too. The zebracrabs are sitiing on very colourful seaeagles (they are purple, blue, yellow…) and hab the size of a nail of the thumb maybe.

Moreover, we met pegasusfish, 3 of them, in Galapagos we called them Jorge 1 and Jorge 2, scorpionfish, cardinalfish and so on. It was really good.

After that dive we made a break. I was sleeping while daddy broke his makro-linse. For the night dive we went to a place called lighthouse. It’s next to the island and u can hear the disco from there. Philippines are totally creazy about discos, music and dancing.

Lighthouse is famous for the mating mandarins. The dive shool is so sure about them, that they even say that you will get the money for the dive back if you don’t see them.

Despite that we saw totally huge,even gigantic Einsiedlerkrebse, heaps of crabs, different seahorses (white ones, yellow ones,…) and the blue ring octopus,the deadliest underwater animal. Rex, our guide, must really have good eyes. He teased it a little bit and the angrier the little one go the bluer his rings turned. One of the divers wanted to touch it. Thanks god he didn’t dare. When we told him how poisonous it is on the surface, you could literally see how he turned white.

Well, that’s it for the second day. After diving we had a shower and had dinner. The golden fried calamares are terrific. After a few drinks and a bit watching tv we fell asleep.

Yesterday we arrived at around 10pm in a really pitchblack night on malapascua. We brought our laguage in the room and then we went to the beach to have a nice bbq with good music and a spectacular view over the sea. Of course, the bbq was very tasty as well! Unfortunately, we were so stuffed from the airplane food that we couldn’t enjoy the meal that much. After that we went to our room to fate the day out with a bit watching television, however, I was so exhausted (I’m the only one in the family who can’t sleep in the plane, no matter how tired I am…the longest sleep was maybe for 10 min), that I fell asleep right away.

The trip from cebu airport to malapascua was amazing. (Well, I slept most of the trip, but my father told me)

The street was very bad and you needed a pretty good imagination to see it as a street. There were thousands of people, who were sitting on the street, next to street,…just everywhere. It seems like the people actually live on the street. There were also many motorcycles, where 4-5 people were sitting on (so, for no misunderstanding: I really mean 5 people on one motorcycle). They also had there babies on the motorcycle. They just hold them in their arms.

After the cardrive, which took literally uncountable many hours, we changed to a boat. The harbour was actually no-harbour. We had to climb over small rocks to get to the boat, which here very interesstinglook. We will add a picture of one later. And then we crosst the sea in the pitchblack night. The only light was the end of my cigarette. Really! I’m not exaggerating at all!

So, and now to the first dive-day.

We started the day quite lazy. We got up at around nineish and had a nice american style breakfast. Then we went to the diveschool. It’s name is sea-explore and it seams that it is managed by a around 40years old german guy. First we had to show our ids, voucher and sign the papers. (Well, same procedure as everywhere) and then he showed us the shop and told us a bit of the divesites. We signed in for the day-trip to gato island and brought our equipment. And then we were already on the way.

The trip to gato island took around 45min. The first dive was not that good. Dad didn’t have anough weights and my mask, which is totally new, was always fogy. But, I saw the black white seasnake for the first time in my life. Moreover, we saw a white tipped in a cave (and the camera didn’t work of course), some shrimps and a “Einsiedlerkrebs”.

After an one hour break we did our second dive. And that one was much better! We saw a shrimp on the sand (it even didn’t go away as we were filming) and 3 sepia mating. They changed their skin within a minute I think 4 times. This was already quite fantastic, but at the end of the dive we saw a totally white seahorse. I’ve never seen something like that before. Oh, and 4 black-white striped seasnakes.

We returned to thedive center, put our stuff away, had a nice shower (cold one- there is no hot water) and went to the white sofas on the beach. After dinner, which was way to much, 2 cocktails and some beers we went back to the room were we had a good and deep sleep.

schaut, was ilse & ich in einem toy’r'us entdeckt haben:

ein grusliges spielzeug, das die vorurteile über haie sicherlich nicht verschwinden lassen wird. ganz im gegenteil, denn “dieser hai wartet gierig auf die heranrollende mahlzeit” & wer durch die bucht rast, besiegt den fiesen hai.

mehr haben wir dazu auch gar nicht zu sagen. außer: unsere zwerge kriegen das mit sicherheit nicht zu weihnachten!

Ich schaue gerade einen Bericht bei zdf.umwelt, bei dem der neue Film von Hannes Jaenicke vorgestellt wird. Am Dienstag kommt bei ZDF um 20:15 Uhr seine neue Reportage “Im Einsatz für Haie”. Schon die Vorberichterstattung ist so interessant, dass ich den Film – ohne ihn also bereits gesehen zu haben – gerne empfehlen möchte.

via zdf.de:

Dienstag, 3. November 2009, 20.15 Uhr

Dokumentation über die Könige der Meere

Nach dem erfolgreichen Start der Umweltdokumentationsreihe “Hannes Jaenicke: Im Einsatz für Orang-Utans” und “Im Einsatz für Eisbären” setzt das ZDF die Serie fort, in der es um vom Aussterben bedrohte Tierarten und Umweltzerstörung geht. In der aktuellen Folge verfolgt Hannes Jaenicke das Schicksal eines Tieres, das bisher klar als Täter und nicht als Opfer gilt: der Hai.

Die Könige der Meere sind kritisch vom Aussterben bedroht. Ihr größter Feind ist der Mensch. Jede Sekunde werden weltweit sechs Haie von Menschenhand getötet, im Jahr an die 200 Millionen. Zahlen, die bisher die wenigsten stören, denn die großen Raubfische haben weder Lobby noch Freunde. Zu oft wollten Filme uns glauben machen, Haie seien blutrünstige und hinterhältige Killermaschinen.

Ein tödliches Image, gegen das Hannes Jaenicke ankämpft. Er reist nach Hawaii, um dort die Tiere in ihrem Lebensraum hautnah zu beobachten. Ohne Käfig und ohne Schutzanzug schwimmt er frei mit den Topräubern der Meere – in atemberaubenden Aufnahmen kommt der Schauspieler so diesen außergewöhnlichen Tieren näher. Bilder, die das blutrünstige Image verblassen lassen.

Doch Jaenickes Einsatz für Haie geht viel weiter: Der Hai wird vor allem wegen seiner Flossen gejagt, die im asiatischen Raum eine begehrte Delikatesse sind. Ein lohnendes Geschäft mit unfairen Methoden. Jaenicke macht sich auf die riskante Suche nach den Drahtziehern – mit versteckter Kamera und getarnt als europäischer Restaurantbesitzer verschafft er sich Zutritt zu den Hintermännern im Handel mit der geschmacklosen Delikatesse.

Bei seinem Einsatz deck Jaenicke auch die Zusammenhänge zwischen der gnadenlosen Überfischung der Meere und dem Sterben der Haie auf. Deutschland ist ebenfalls mit von der Partie – denn Haifleisch kommt auch bei uns auf den Tisch. Der Verbraucher ist dabei meist ahnungslos. “Kalbsfisch”, “Karbonadenfisch”, “See-Aal”, “See-Stör” oder “Schillerlocken” – alles Fantasiebezeichnungen für ein und dieselbe Art von Fisch: Hai.

Mit versteckter Kamera nimmt Hannes Jaenicke das Angebot eines Großmarkts unter die Lupe. Seine Ausbeute lässt er im Toxikologischen Institut der Universität Kiel untersuchen. Mit schockierenden Ergebnissen: Haifleisch ist hochgiftig, hochgradig kontaminiert mit einem gefährlichen Nervengift: Methylquecksilber – ein echter Lebensmittelskandal. Der Film beweist, dass hierzulande jeden Tag Lebensmittel verkauft werden, die eigentlich auf den Sondermüll gehören – und nicht auf den Teller des Verbrauchers. Zusammen mit der Organisation Sharkproject konfrontiert Jaenicke die Anbieter. Mit einem ersten Teilerfolg: Das Berliner KaDeWe hat noch im Laufe der Dreharbeiten aufgrund der Testergebnisse seine Haifleischbestände aus dem Sortiment genommen.

Hannes Jaenicke im Einsatz für Haie

Dienstag, 3. November 2009, 20.15 Uhr
Länge: 45 Minuten
Produktionszeit: Dezember 2008 bis Juli 2009
Produktionsorte: Hawaii, Costa Rica, Spanien, Deutschland

dear diving buddies & everybody else who likes to know more about sharks,

in austria we are in very good contact with the people who run ‘sharkproject‘.  the goal of the project is to give everybody information about the sharks and their behaviour. the divingfamily thinks that they are doing a good job because they show people how much in danger the sharks are nowadays. check out the behaviour patterns & shark myths at their website.

sarah also did a psa for shark project for an university project, you can check it out here.