Sea Glass Kids: Tubbataha Reef: Philippine’s Natural Wonder [Joshua Burke]

Tubbataha Reef is an amazing place. It is located in the Sulu Sea about a day sail from Puerto Princesa, Palawan, Philippines. Tubbataha Reef forms the apex of the coral triangle, the area with the largest coral species diversity on the world. The triangle extends as far as Borneo in the West and New Guinea in the East.

Checking out an overhang.

Some christmas worms living near a piece of brain coral.

Because it was so unique, the Philippines named it a national park in the 1980’s. Then the world saw how unique it was and named it A UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) world heritage site in the 1990’s. The reef is also on the back of one of the Philippine bills.

Since it is a UNESCO site, Philippine rangers and Navy personel protect the reef area from over fishing and harmful fishing practices like dynamite and cyanide fishing. The only damage to the reef is when a typhoon comes through the area and breaks some coral or a wayward US minesweeper or Chinese freighter crashes into one of the atolls.

A beautiful sunset over an exposed part of the reef at low tide.

We made good friends with the rangers and on the first day we got to watch a big fight at the Ranger Station (they had satellite TV) televised from Las Vegas. It was Mayweather (USA) vs. Manny “Pacman” (Philippines). Manny is the most decorated Philippine fighter and the whole of the Philippines shut down to watch the fight. We were rooting for the home team. Whenever Manny hit Mayweather, all the rangers would gleefully yell and holler. It was quite funny. Unfortunately Manny lost and all the Philippine rangers were super upset. Luckily Dad and Mom brought a lot of cold beer from Princesa….

Watching the fight at with the rangers and some dive boat crew at the Ranger Station.

When we weren’t watching guys beat each other up, Jacob and I played volleyball with the net they had there. In the afternoon when it was low tide, a sand spit would surface and you could play on it. The rangers have built a volleyball net on the spit and Jacob and I had lots of fun playing volleyball.

Us on the sand spit with the ranger station in the background.

One night we had smores over at the ranger building. Many of them said it was too sweet but one of the Rangers, Marc, loved them. I think he ate four! Since he liked them so much we left half of our smore supplies with him.

The diving here was astronomical. Even the snorkeling here was comparable to the diving. On one snorkel I saw two sharks! I have never seen sharks while snorkeling. And these were huge white-tips that got pretty close to me!

Like Layang Layang, the reefs at Tubbataha had walls that were sheer and went down to the ocean floor that is +2000 meters down. While diving I saw tons and tons of white-tip and black tip sharks. Surprisingly enough, most of them were babies about a foot long.

The drop off.

A baby white tip.

You are also supposed to be able to see thresher sharks and tiger sharks, but I didn’t see any. Whale sharks are also a common sight here. Just a week before we arrived there was a sighting of one. Too bad we didn’t see that, it would have been awesome.

Me and mom on a dive.

Besides from all the sharks here, there are also many sea turtles. I saw about 2 turtles every dive I went on. The thing that surprised me the most was that I didn’t see any mantas! It was really weird; usually you see lots of mantas when you go to a remote area like this.

A Hawksbill Turtle.

Of course the fish and coral here were abundant. There were tons of triggerfish, parrotfish, unicorn fish, bug-eyed fish, wrasses, and clown fish. And that is just naming less then 1% of the fish we saw.