ESCAPE.COM.AU SUNDAY JANUARY 31 2016 ESCAPE 11

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U NDERWATER, no one canhear you scream. Instead, I cantell you it’s more a kind of

strangled gurgle and what confronts me is truly the stuff of nightmares.

The hideous creature greets me with its mouth opened as wide as its body, the giant cavity an eerie crimson. I reel back in fright as it edges closer to me, now spreading its wings like some flying demon about to pounce. Its coarse, gnarled membranes are veined like a barbed wire fence.

Clad in dive gloves, my fingers fumble with the camera. I need to capture this beast because no one will believe I’ve ever seen such a thing. I manage to push the shutter and the animal vanishes as the flash fires.

Back at the dive resort and still trembling, I ambush dive expert, Mike Bartick, who I know is a bit of an authority on such things and show him the blurry apparition on my camera.

“Nice,” he says in an unimpressedmonotone, “looks like rhinopias frondosa. How big was it?”

Those same fumbling fingers try toapproximate the size of this fiendish brute. I indicate with my hands instead.

“OK, so about the size of a small rat.That’s a big one,” says Mike feigning admiration. I might have exaggerated.

The weedy scorpionfish (its common name), Mike tells me, is a popular fish in Japanese home aquariums and pulls out his iPad to show me the most superb image in pin-sharp focus and perfectly exposed.

Here in the Philippines I’m told there are more marine species than anywhere else in the world. More than 2200 types of fish of all shapes and sizes alone inhabit the waters around these 7000-something islands as well as manta rays, dolphins and whale sharks. Some 80 per cent of the world’s known coral species also exist in the Philippines.

I’ve been invited to tag along withsome of the most accomplished underwater photographers in the world and I can’t help feeling a bit of aperture envy when I see the massive contraptions these experts wrangle.

My new dive buddy, David Hinkelfrom San Diego, runs Blue Abyss Photo specialising in underwater cameras. When Dave holds up his apparatus, which takes nearly an hour to assemble, I can’t help thinking he’s trying on a gigantic robot moose head. Yet underwater he glides gracefully through the depths like a fully rigged space cruiser from Battlestar Galactica.

Aquanauts from all over the world,experts and novices alike, come to enjoy the unsurpassed diving at any one of the hundreds of resorts from Anilao to Mindanao and Palawan to Pamilacan. But it’s not the popular big creatures like sharks and whales that

seem to attract my group. Instead they are transfixed by the miniature and microscopic. Tiny nudibranchs of a myriad vivid hues, brightly speckled shrimps and lurid eels gaping out from little crevices capture the imagination of these folks who show a peculiar obsession, much like birdwatchers or train spotters. But their images are masterful, capturing this aquatic wildlife like alien monsters.

Such is the importance of scuba diving to the Philippine economy, that an entire section of the government’s Department of Tourism is devoted to driving this sector. Represented by Tourism Secretary Ramon R. Jimenez,

Jr, the department is quick to underscore the importance of responsible, ethical, and sustainable dive tourism.

“The country’s terrestrial and marine ecosystems are home to many of the best and rarest wildlife species. Most of these species are endemic to our country and can be found nowhere else in the world. These facts highlight the global significance of conserving the Philippines’ biodiversity. The abundance, distribution, and degree of threat to which these resources are exposed call for a rapid and effective response to accelerate the coverage of conservation efforts in the country,” Jimenez said.

The claim is also made that “the Philippines is what Switzerland is to skiers, Hawaii is to surfers and Nepal is to mountaineers.”

In support of that, regions like Bohol here in Northern Mindanao, claims to host some of the best scuba diving in the Pacific, if not the world. Now before you reel back with the boastfulness of that assertion, I consulted several of the experts in my group before going to press. One whose every word I hung off was the doyenne of Philippine diving, Lynn Funkhouser from Chicago.

“After checking out the diving in many great places, my favourite place

in the whole world is the Philippines,” Lynn tells us, “I’ve followed my heart and spent two months here every year since 1976. Because it lies in the Coral Triangle (along with parts of Indonesia and New Guinea), it missed an ice age 18,000 years ago. This explains why the Philippines has the richest species diversification in the world and I love seeing new critters almost every dive.”

Not satisfied with her word alone, Ispent several hours beneath the waves checking this out and found the reefs and underwater nooks and crannies just full of lurid molluscs, wriggly things and colourful and exotic fish like my weedy scorpionfish. Dave’s images, for example, turn these submarine organisms into dazzling works of art. Places like nearby Balicasag Island, a short banca boat ride from our resort, are clearly where serious underwater photographers come to bolster their macro libraries.

With much of the world’s attentionrightly focused on the state of health of our oceans and the incredible animals that rely on it for life, the plight of my spooky little scorpionfish will forever serve as a reminder that we know more about the surface of Mars than we do about our Earth’s sea floor.

The writer travelled as a guest of Philippine Department of Tourism.

PHILIPPINESGETTING THEREPhilippine Airlines flies regularly to Manila from Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney while Cebu Pacific Air flies up to five times a week between Manila and Sydney. Capacity is set to increase from March 2016. Qantas has a four times a week service between Manila and Sydney

STAYING THEREAmorita Resort, Bohol, has a fully equipped dive shop and training poolamoritaresort.comCrystal Blue Resort, Anilao, offers intensive photo courses with Mike Bartickdivecbr.com

MOREitsmorefuninthephilippines.com

ESCAPE ROUTE

Aliens of the deepMore than 95 per cent of the marine world is unexplored. Roderick Eime dives into this mysterious realm and confronts an alien creature

DIVE DELIGHTS: (clockwise from main) An amazing coral display in Anilao; a diver examines anemone in Bohol; a nudibranch; and a ferocious weedy scorpionfish. Pictures: Mike Bartick, Dave Hinkel

PHILIPPINES Where’s your favourite place to go and de-stress? Share your photos with us on Instagram @escapesnaps