Sea Knights: Diving in Subic Bay

by Steve Johnson 72

My family came to Subic in the summer of 1968. I started my freshman year that fall at GDHS. My father was a Naval Officer in Subic’s Ship Repair Facility (SRF). My sister, Janice, was 2 years younger than me and my brother, Mark, was 5 years younger (well, I guess they still are). We left in December 1970, in the middle of my junior year. So, its been 45+ years since my family was in Subic. Therefore, if you spot an inaccuracy or can add to the info in this article, please feel free to comment. I also hope that other members of the Sea Knights might add their experiences (and pictures) to one of the future newsletters. I was happy to find out that the Sea Knights continued for quite a few years after my family left Subic. I know there were others who were diving in Subic outside of the Sea Knights. Hopefully they could add their experiences to a future newsletter.

Diving

I was first exposed to diving when our family moved to Hawai’i in 1959. I was five at the time. My dad took up skin and scuba diving and I was able to listen to his stories and see the stuff he brought back from dives. Skin diving, to me, means diving without tanks. You used a snorkel. I will use the term skin diving and snorkeling to mean diving without tanks. SCUBA (Scuba) (Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus) means diving with air tanks.

Coral was a big deal when my dad was diving and we had various pieces of it throughout our house. He also brought back a few shells, which inspired my shell collecting later in life. I did a little “light” snorkeling as a tot, but nothing more than floating on top of the water looking at fish. Of course, even then, Jaques Cousteau: was my hero and I never missed an episode of Sea Hunt on TV (starring Lloyd Bridges 1958 to 1961, then in syndication for a couple of decades).

 

As some of the things described later in this article make clear, diving as a teenager can sometimes show the Darwin-challenging stupidity of teens left to their own means (think “Darwin Awards”). But as teens, the pure adrenaline rush that adventure can bring was absolutely incredible. Courageous? Stupid? You decide…While I describe the Sea Knights and what fun that was, I’ll also describe some adventures we had diving “free” (outside the purview of the Sea Knights Diving Club).

Somehow I hooked up with Glenn McManus freshman year and we became close friends. He introduced me to skin diving. Soon after, Greg Thobois became part of our little group and the three of us used every weekend to go skin diving. In fact, we got so into diving that after waiting a couple of hours for the first moon walk on July 20, 1969, we opted to go skin diving rather than wait for the actual walk. My father was beside himself as we walked out. “This has been a dream of mankind for all ages,” he said, “how can you think about leaving now???!!!” My response was; “We’ll see the replays on the news tonight dad, no problem.” C’mon, watch some grey shaded images of guys hopping around on the moon or dive into the incredible beauty of the sea? Seemed an easy choice to us. I don’t think dad ever quite got over that one.

Speaking of the beauty of the sea, for those of you who haven’t dived in a tropical climate, you just can’t imagine the colors and sounds. When we were there, the waters off the beaches on the base at Subic were alive with tropical fish, coral reefs, sounds and all sorts of other fascinating sea stuff. While most of our diving was off the enlisted men’s beach and around the Cubi Point runway, we also went to other places including Grande Island, the Capones, San Miguel, Shark Point and, one time, the Hundred Islands. We would occasionally dive off of dependents beach, but not much. The “pickins” were better in other areas.

Besides spear fishing and just general exploring, Glenn taught Greg and I to find and collect sea shells. With very few exceptions, we did not collect the beach specimens, but looked for live ones. If cleaned properly the shell looks much more beautiful than beach specimens. I have no idea where Glenn learned all this, but he was more than willing to share his secrets with Greg and I. Cool guy. You searched different environments for different shells. Some lived on the surface of the reef, some lived under rocks, some lived and fed on sponges and others lived on or under the sand. You learned how to track and find them all, using different techniques. I ended up with a substantial shell collection that I still have today. Pictures below are a small sample of the collection. The two drawers below are part of a 14 drawer collection. I still occasionally buy a specimen or two if I run into a good shell shop. Glenn, Greg and others also had great shell collections.

Anyway, before the Sea Knights were established, the three of us had already been skin diving for a while. But it was very cool to get into scuba diving, via the Knights. Diving during my 2.5 years in Subic was a phenomenal experience. One made up of extraordinary beauty and interesting adventures.

Sea Knights

The Sea Knights was a teenage scuba diving club. I believe it was established around the beginning of 1969, maybe a little later. Mike Lewis, a senior at the time, was our first president. We had an “adult” advisor. Unfortunately, I don’t remember his name, but he was someone senior at Subic who was able to arrange for members of the Navy UDT to train us in diving. He also arranged for boats, getting our tanks filled with air and regular check outs of our gear. He was a great guy, even if I don’t remember his name. The other founding members of the club that I remember were me, Steve Lewis (Mike’s younger brother), Glenn McManus, Greg Thobois, Bill Garlinghouse and Jake Schaffner. There were a few more, but I can’t remember… I apologize but, c’mon, it was 45 years ago. I’m surprised I remember my own name at this point…. Chime in if you read this and have other founding members’ names.

At the beginning, the club membership was all guys. I’m happy to know that only a few years after my family left Subic in 1970, gals were regular members of the Sea Knights. Why didn’t we think about that in the beginning? As mentioned, Mike Lewis was the first president of the Sea Knights. He left around the summer of 1970 and I became the next president. My family left in December 1970 and Glenn McManus took over as president.

The Sea Knight “Colors”

I’m not sure who came up with our patch. They found a seamstress in Olongapo who helped develop and produce them. I think we can all agree it’s the coolest patch to come out of the kids in Subic. C’mon, we had a giant pregnant Sea Horse that we rode around Subic Bay, a shark and some medieval rendering of a shark or dolphin. We had a spear! We had a shield! We had a feather in our cap (okay, possibly strange underwater)! What did the other clubs have? Smiling faces? Nuff’ said….

Training

I don’t think the UDT guys were happy about wasting some of their evenings training teenagers to scuba dive. I often wondered how they were selected to do it. However, when they realized that some of us were officer’s or civilian’s kids, a couple of them (there were three, I think) felt they could get back at all officers and civilians during the training sessions.

Actually, they were pretty cool most of the time, but took opportunities here and there to get their digs in. Of course, as kids at that age, we thought these guys were super heroes.

Gratuitous Aside: We knew that the UDT guys had their own bar in Olongopo that no other sailor in his right mind would dare enter when they were present. I mean, the UDT guys were tough SOBs. So we were surprised at one of our training sessions when they showed up with a few noticeable cuts and bruises. When we asked them what happened, they said an Australian ship had arrived in Subic and the aussie sailors made it a point of showing up at the UDT bar every time they were in port. Apparently, according an Australian Navy Officer who attended a party my folks had at the house, an aussie sailor feels he hasn’t had a good time out in town unless he’s thrown at least a few punches.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the dive training we received from our UDT trainers was way more demanding than anything you would get through the well known NAUI (http://naui.org/) or PADI (http://www.padi.com/Scuba-Diving/) sport diving training outfits. It began with six weeks, twice a week, training sessions in a swimming pool. This was followed by ten dives in the ocean (each one deeper than the previous). Upon successful completion of all training requirements, you earned diving certification from the Mariana Trench Diving Club out of Guam.

The swimming pool training sessions taught the basics of scuba diving, emphasizing safety and focus. You learned the use of basic equipment, which included your tank, regulator, mask, weight belt, swim fins and snorkel. In addition, when diving, we often had a spear gun, dive knife you strapped to your leg, crow bar, leather gloves and canvas bag (not netted, because of poisonous cone shells and other possible nasties) for shells, fish, etc., etc. Besides just basic familiarization with equipment and practice using it, there were a few other hurdles to conquer before you could get certified:

• You had to know how to swim. This is not always a requirement for learning sport diving, but it was for us. You can scuba dive if you don’t know how to swim very well and many people do. But our trainers were of the mind that if you couldn’t swim, you shouldn’t go in the water. So you had to demonstrate you could swim 50 yards.
• You needed a note from your parents, which stated that they were okay with the training, would not hold UDT liable for injuries and stated we were in good health. I think we had to get a physical, but don’t remember.
• In the deep end of the pool, you had to successfully (a couple times over the weeks) do a “ditch and don”. This means, you swim to the bottom of the pool with your tanks, mask, regulator, swim fins and weight belt. At the bottom, you “ditch” or take off all of your gear (you could keep your bathing suit on – imagine our relief – you never knew with the UDT guys…) lay it on the bottom and hold it all down with your weight belt. You then swim to the surface, take one deep breath of air, then swim back down to the bottom and “don” or put on all your equipment. It’s not all that difficult as long as you can stay calm. A couple guys panicked the first time or two, but nobody failed to complete the task successfully by the end of training.
• You had to master the use of Dive Tables (http://www.scubadiverinfo.com/2_divetables.html). When using a regular scuba tank, you can only stay at certain depths for a limited amount of time to avoid the need for decompression. Decompression is needed if you exceed these limits because while diving, your body is absorbing more and more nitrogen from the air mixture in your tank. Understanding how long you can stay underwater at various depths without needing decompression is extremely important. Dive too long and you can get nitrogen narcosis, which makes you punch drunk, not a good thing underwater. If you need, but don’t go through the decompression process as you return to the surface, you can get the “bends” as bubbles expand in your joints and other parts of the body, which causes incredible pain. This got our attention. You do this wrong, you can die… (dramatic pause) …Really. So, as part of the certification process, we had to fully understand the use of dive tables.

• Successfully complete a free ascent from 60 feet deep. This was done in open water. Basically, you swim down 60 feet, take one last breath from your regulator, then remove the regulator from your mouth and slowly swim back up to the surface. It was important that you continually exhale as you ascend because the air in your lungs expands as you go up. If you don’t exhale, the air can expand to the extent it causes serious problems. There is a psychological issue you confront because as you get closer to the surface, you begin to think you are running out of air to exhale. But if you don’t exhale too quickly and keep focused, you find you can overcome this. Just to make sure you kept exhaling, a UDT guy would swim with you, face to face. They claimed they would have to punch us hard in the chest if we stopped exhaling. None of us stopped exhaling. I guess fear can get you over those nasty little psychological hurdles, eh?
• Complete 10 open water dives. First dive was 10 feet. Tenth dive was 100 feet.
• Pass a rather tough written exam. We all passed. Hey, this wasn’t Navy Seal training…

One other note…Given that we were a bunch of teenagers forming a diving club, there are always the parents who fear (probably with good reason) that we were getting into something that needed more institutional controls. Thus, some parents thought we should align ourselves with the Boy Scouts or something like that. Nothing against the Boy Scouts, but we kind of liked our independence and fought vigorously against it. I mean, I’d been kicked out of the Boy Scouts a few years before this (another story for another time) and didn’t think we needed this. Well, shucky darn, the parents won and we became a local Sea Scout branch which was a part of the Explorer ranks of Boy Scouts. Sucked, man. We even hosted another teenage diving club from Taiwan or something. We never wore (or owned) uniforms and never told anyone about this. Happy parents make happy diving, I guess.

Adventures (or, Why Are We Still Alive?)

Whether snorkeling or scuba diving, we had some interesting times. Some would call it adventure. Some will wonder what we were thinking at the time. My mother will be horrified if she ever reads this (I actually plan to send this to her). But, hey, we are still here. The Darwin Theory doesn’t always apply.

Sharks

 

Yeah, yeah, we wished we rescued 40 Ms. Philippine contestants, given our age and percolating hormones. Many of you may have seen this picture over the years, purportedly from the coast of South Africa. It’s completely fake, but I had to get it in this article somehow. Once again, its Albert’s fault…he wanted pictures…

It is interesting, though, that when I was diving in Subic, some of the local folks I ran into said there was a legend of a giant white shark that hunted in Manila Bay. It was supposedly fond of attacking tourist boats and gobbling up the inhabitants as they fell in the water. I’ve never been able to find anything published about this legend. International shark attack files say there have only been 11 reported unprovoked shark attacks in the Philippines since the 1580s. Keep in mind those are “reported” attacks. The same files list one fatal shark attack in Manila Bay around 1924. But let’s get real here. In most places of the world, who reported shark attacks in the 1500s and who the heck would they report them too? Also, it’s understood that many shark attacks around the world, even in this century, are never officially reported and recorded. Even those who maintain the shark attack files acknowledge that in some areas of the world, shark attacks are significantly under-reported. I’m not saying this to cause fear, because I think sharks are the ultimate cool predator. My poor suffering wife knows that when Shark Week shows up on television, there will be no dinners out that week, and Saturday is screwed because they replay all the shows from the week that day. I’ve also seen every shark movie ever made, several times over. Even the really bad ones (and there are plenty). I mean, doesn’t everyone have a shark perched atop their television???

Back in the late 1960s, there was still very little known about sharks, at least in the general community. There were a lot of myths about sharks and many of the diving magazines would run incredible stories of shark encounters and shark attacks. I only had a few interactions with sharks while diving. I mean, we didn’t go into the water in Subic fearing for our lives. Of course, we were teenagers and felt invincible. But the few encounters we had were interesting:

Shark Tails

Besides playing underwater volleyball with what we called a pillow starfish (looked something like the picture below – could be as big as a football), I had a habit of grabbing the tails of small sharks that were sleeping under rocks or in caves, pulling them out by their tails and shaking them at my diving buddies. Loads of laughs. We had great fun trying to scare the bejeebers out of each other when diving. Some sharks need to swim continually to move water through their gills (e.g., Great Whites), but a few others can pump water over their gills while resting on the ocean floor. The sharks I messed with were small (maybe two feet at most) and could bite if provoked, but were usually harmless.  But if you pull them out of their slumber and shake them around for fun, they can get a little cranky. Fortunately, as stupid as this was, we never got hurt except for the time I grabbed the wrong shark.

 

I think the little sharks I normally harassed were a variant of the dogfish. One day I pulled on the tail of what ended up being about a three+ foot shark. Really, really stupid. I grabbed its tail, it reared back from its sleeping position, flicked its tail and cut through my leather glove into the skin of my palm. Blood started flowing and although the shark darted away, I felt I should get out of the water quickly (duh). While my diving buddies tried to control their laughter (since it’s kinda hard to laugh underwater), they did sidle up next to me, spearguns drawn (you can hear the Spaghetti Western theme songs here, I’m sure) as we swam back to shore. The cut to my palm was fairly superficial, thanks to the leather gloves I was wearing. But the fact that just a flick of its tail cut through the glove and into my skin…got my attention. No more shark shaking after that.

By the way, there are some things you don’t need to tell your parents when you are 14 or so, particularly your mother: “Hey mom, I pulled on a shark’s tail, it cut me and I bled all over the place”, could get you banned from diving. Also, don’t be fully factual about some of the dive sites you were planning to go to with the Sea Knights. For example, saying “Hey mom, the club is going near the mouth of Subic Bay to dive at a place called Shark Point next weekend”, can cause all kinds of angst, especially if the dive is on Saturday and you announce this on Monday. Mom says “Why is it called Shark Point”, whereupon you realize the big, big mistake you just made…. Live and learn, folks. Love you mom.

Gonna’ Need a Bigger Boat

The “need a bigger boat” phrase, made famous by the first Jaws movie, struck home a bit when I saw the movie. Back in Subic, a few of us were planning to skin dive on the outer side of Grande Island, because we hadn’t explored that area much before. We weren’t scuba diving, just planning to snorkel and look for shells or spear some fish. We were in one of those small outboards you could rent for the day (I think it was $25 for all day).

We motored to the site and were getting our gear on when someone said “Hey, there’s something big in the water.” We looked around and didn’t see anything, so continued preparing for the dive. I think it was McManus, Thobois and me on that day in the little boat. The 3 of us jumped off the boat into the water and almost simultaneously jumped back into the boat. I don’t know about the other guys, but I think I hardly touched the side of the boat when I jumped back in. When we jumped into the water, we saw probably the biggest shark we’d ever seen in Subic Bay swimming around us, just a bit out of range to get a clear look at. While you learn that everything underwater looks bigger than it really is, this sucker was huge, even compensating for the magnifying effects of the ocean. Once back in the boat, we were able to watch as it circled us one more time, then swam close to us before heading away. I think the little boats we rented were maybe 6 or 7 feet long. When the shark swam by, it was probably 3 or 4 feet longer than the boat. Bottom line, no more diving that day. I mean, c’mon, I was about 5’6″ at the time. I don’t know what kind of shark it was, but didn’t want anything to do with it. I still get chills thinking about that little episode.

Coral Reef Encounter

Although the previous encounter gave me chills, this one probably scared me more. Glenn McManus and I were snorkeling near San Miguel. To get out to the edge of the coral reef, we had to swim through a sandy path through the coral reef to its outward edge. The reef itself was a bit too shallow to dive on during low tide, so we decided to do some spear fishing along the reef’s drop off. A drop off is where the shallow reef comes to a stop and drops off into deeper water. One part of the reef edge was deep enough to dive around but further along it became really shallow with large waves crashing on the coral. About 15 minutes into the dive, we realized we had drifted to the shallow wave-crashing part of the reef. Before we knew it, a large wave crashed down on us. Glenn was smart enough to grab onto a coral head and hang on. I tried the same, but was too late and was raked across the top of the coral heads and back by the wave. I stood up on a coral head, which lifted me out of the water and saw that the front of my chest, stomach and legs were striped with very shallow cuts that, though superficial, together were bleeding a lot. Well, hell. I found a deeper spot to dive back into and was surrounded by blood. Glenn came over and we discussed our options. We decided we had to swim back out to the reef drop off and swim the 25 yards or so to the path we had used to swim out. Great. So we made our way back to the reef edge and started to swim back to the path to get us to shore. I was leaving a nice sheen of red in the water. As we got to the edge of the reef, a shark appeared. It was probably only 4 feet long, but it was definitely interested. Having read a lot of diving magazines, I was acutely aware of something called a shark feeding frenzy, wherein lots of sharks converge on a wounded animal and tear it apart. Wonderful.

So we swam along the reef edge backwards, aiming our spearguns at the shark as it followed us at a distance – maybe 20 feet away. We finally got to the cleared path and began swimming backwards to shore, again with spearguns aimed towards the shark. It calmly followed us (I swear it kept smiling at me – murderous bastard), keeping its distance. No other sharks showed up, which probably disappointed Darwin. The damn thing followed us into shore until we were able to stand in the sand and the water was only up to our mid calves, then it turned and swam away. Meanwhile, I looked like some slasher had taken a razor blade to me. Glenn’s dad was at the beach and poured something over me that stung like hell but stopped most of the bleeding. Again, the cuts were very superficial and healed quickly. Not quickly enough to hide from Dear Ol’ Mom, however. Sheesh. Poor mom. I think her first grey hairs starting showing up around that time. She was only 35. Dad, well, I think he believed in the Darwin Theory. In his view, if I was meant to live, so be it, but if not, well, hopefully I would have a good death. He was cool that way – raised on a rural farm in Sequim, Washington.

The Cone Shell Incident

Cone shells have poisonous spears that they shoot through their “mouths” to paralyze and then eat small fish. One web site I looked at referred to them as “predatory snails”. Now that’s a hoot. “Slime The Movie” (ramp up the Jaws theme…)

Kidding aside, you need to be extremely careful when handling live specimens. Although small cones can hurt no more than a bee sting, the larger cones can kill a human with their venom. However, even the smaller versions can cause significant pain as we found out on one of our Sea Knight dives.

We had been diving at a remote part of Subic Bay and had collected various shells, fish and other sea stuff. As we were riding the boat back to the base, one of our members (who will remain unnamed) put a small cone on his arm (see dramatic re-enactment picture below). The animal came out and began to crawl up his arm. A couple of us told him to remove the cone snail from his arm. He scoffed and continued to watch it move up his forearm. Real smart. Sure enough, a couple seconds later he let out a yelp, flipped the snail off and grabbed his arm. Some bee sting. He was in quite a bit of pain all the way back to the base. Teenagers. I’m sure Darwin was laughing.

Night Dive

Our club decided it would be cool if we did a night dive.  One reason it might be cool is different animals hang out at night than during the day. Also, some fish go docile in the dark and you can actually reach out and touch them. I mentioned this to Darwin Theory Dad, who insisted I had to get Dear Ol’ Mom’s permission. I found out later that several members had to convince their parents to allow them on the dive. Anyway, once again, Dear Ol’ Mom, sprouting more grey hairs than ever, told me that when we were in Hawai’i, she knew some of the Navy divers. She further explained that they were always very nervous about going on night dives because of the dangers. Thanks much mom. Anyway, “Darwin Theory Dad” eventually convinced her to let me go. I think some of the others were unable to convince their folks and there ended up being maybe four of us, plus our advisor and a couple UDT guys that went on the dive.

This ended up being the most incredible dive we went on. You use underwater lanterns (actually more like spotlights) while you swim around. We all stayed close together and wondered at the incredible array of colors that you don’t see during the day. The coral comes alive and things like eels swim around freely at night, wherein during the day they stay in the crevices and caves. The spooky thing about night diving is you only see through the tunnel of your spotlight. Everything outside of that tunnel of light is pitch black. But I was never nervous or fearful during this dive. Again, teenagers, but it was so serene and beautiful. You couldn’t help but be entranced by the experience. Of course, the movie “Jaws” hadn’t come out yet…

Pirates

You’d think we would have learned from the big shark encounter we had on the outer side of Grande Island, but no, we (Glenn, Greg and me) decided to give it another go. We felt we should explore the area more, since as far as we knew, few folks had dived in this area. Once again, we had rented one of the small outboards to get to the dive spot. The water over the reef varied from 20 to 30 feet and was full of fish, coral and other sea stuff. We were scuba diving, looking for shells or fish to spear. Suddenly, we heard a motor noise, like a boat. The thing with being underwater is, you can’t tell which direction a sound is coming from. So it took us a bit to look up and see that a small outrigger boat (called Banca Boats in the Philippines, http://indigenousboats.blogspot.com/) was parked next to our boat. It had an outboard motor.

We swam quickly up to the surface, poked our heads out of the water and saw a couple Filipino men in our boat. I shouted and pointed my speargun at them (like that would scare them), whereupon they jumped back into their boat and sped away. We quickly got back into our boat and I started pulling the cord to start the engine so we could chase after them. Yeah, we thought we’d chase them. Right, great idea. After pulling the cord several times, I looked down and realized they had cut the gas line to the outboard motor. We also realized they had gone through our clothes and our wallets, which included money and ID. As we scratched our heads, we saw the banca boat heading out of Subic Bay towards a huge triple-masted sailing ship way off in the distance. Pirates…we’d been pirated!

Although we were pissed, being teenagers, it was pretty damned exciting. Anyway, once we settled down, we realized we had no engine and would have to paddle a long way to get back to the boat dock at the base. We didn’t think about landing on Grande Island. Instead, we paddled all the way home with two small paddles.

We finally got back to the boat rental dock around midnight. The Shore Patrol and an ambulance were there with their lights flashing. All our parents and other folks were there. Apparently, when we failed to appear by sundown, people got nervous. We spent another couple hours being debriefed by a couple Navy guys from some official agency. I mean, is that cool, or what…or so we thought as we discussed it between ourselves the next day. However, It was not a fun ride home from the boat docks. I think I added significantly to Dear Ol’ Mom’s grey hair that night.

Dynamite!

We went on a Sea Knights dive near Shark Point in Subic Bay. There was no one else close when we dove into the water. We did see a banca boat off in the distance, but didn’t really pay attention to it. On a Sea Knights dive, there was always at least one person in the boat during a dive, so we weren’t overly concerned.

I was aiming my spear gun towards a nice lapu lapu (smallish grouper in the Philippines), when an extremely loud, almost ear shattering sound pulsed through the water. All of us were momentarily disoriented by the sound and looked around quickly, trying to figure out what the hell was going on. We used hand signals to agree to surface (we were in about 20 feet of water). When we hit the surface (my ears were still ringing loudly), we saw some fishermen in a banca boat who looked at us a bit sheepishly. The UDT guy on our boat was yelling at them and gesturing wildly with his hands. We all clamored back aboard the boat and checked each other out. The fishermen quickly fled the scene. The UDT guy told us that before he knew what they were up to, the fisherman had thrown sticks of dynamite into the water to stun fish. We were very lucky they weren’t much closer. After about a half hour, the wringing in our ears had gone away and none of us seemed to have split eardrums or anything like that. But, wow, that little episode got our attention.

Sea Creatures

Every time we went diving, we ran into various sea creatures that demanded our respect and care. Besides sharks and the various pretty little reef fish, we often ran into fun denizens like sea snakes, turkey fish, large and small eels and stone fish (just to name a few).

Sea Snakes

We usually ran into sea snakes when diving near the big boulders surrounding the Cubi runway. These were baby sea snakes (or sea kraits). Mommy sea snakes have their babies in places like the area surrounding the Cubi runway because there are lots of places for the babies to hide from predators. The following video shows some of the little suckers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJLEZaZIku4

Now, even though the babies were only about a foot or two long, they were extremely territorial and could be quite aggressive. They are also 10 times more venomous than a rattlesnake. So, naturally, even as dumb teenagers, these critters got our full attention. There were more than a few times when we were diving close to the runway rocks and one of the little buggers would dart out and swim towards us. If it decided you were its intended target, you had to act fast. Something you learn when diving: always have a tripod spearhead handy for your speargun. If your spear gun has a single tip, it’s much harder to keep the snake away. The tripod made it easier to push them away. Of course, you had the spear gun in one hand and your trusty dive knife or crowbar in the other.

Now, even though the babies were only about a foot or two long, they were extremely territorial and could be quite aggressive. They are also 10 times more venomous than a rattlesnake. So, naturally, even as dumb teenagers, these critters got our full attention. There were more than a few times when we were diving close to the runway rocks and one of the little buggers would dart out and swim towards us. If it decided you were its intended target, you had to act fast. Something you learn when diving: always have a tripod spearhead handy for your speargun. If your spear gun has a single tip, it’s much harder to keep the snake away. The tripod made it easier to push them away. Of course, you had the spear gun in one hand and your trusty dive knife or crowbar in the other.

Eels

Never, never, never, ever stick your hand into a crevice underwater without using your spear gun or other long implement to check it out first. There are lots of types of eels in the Philippines, including some huge moray eels. Some can get up to 12 feet or more long.

In the 60s, we didn’t know a lot about eels, just that they looked vicious as hell. Once they bite something, they can’t let go, even in death. If they bite you, you have to kill them and physically pry them off your arm. While they aren’t normally venomous, recent discoveries suggest there may be a few that are. Great, you tell me that now.

Initially, when we ran into an eel we’d kill it if it wasn’t too big. Just because they really scared us. They had a habit of zooming half way out of their caves or crevices towards you and showing their teeth. Of course, after diving awhile, we realized that, though territorial in defending their caves, they normally don’t attack humans unless defending themselves and we stopped killing them. It’s apparently popular in some areas to have dive trips to feed eels, which is kind of stupid. Places like the Great Barrier Reef have banned this sort of thing. Reason? People kept getting bit. Go figure.

Turkey Fish

http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/turkeyfish.html

Also known as Lion Fish or Zebra Fish, Turkey Fish are exquisitely beautiful and a popular fish for bigger home aquariums. Their spines are poisonous a deterrent to predators. We saw many of these when diving in Subic Bay. Normally, if you left them alone, they left you alone. They weren’t territorial or aggressive and were fun to watch swimming around. We just knew to swim clear of them and let them be. They were quite cool.

As the above website mentions, these fish have invaded warm waters of the Atlantic, including Florida, and are causing serious damage to the ecosystem. In response, there are groups of people hoping to convince folks that its great eating and trying to get sport fishermen, as well as restaurants, to catch and serve them. Apparently (maybe some of our GDHS folks in Florida know) they are quite good eating, sans spines, of course.

Stone Fish

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synanceia_verrucosa

This is the most venomous known fish in the world. It can be lethal to humans. Spines on its back can inject poison. When looking for shells, turning over rocks, looking in crevices, etc., you have to be very diligent. Sometimes these suckers can be territorial and swim towards you in defense of their spot. Not a good feeling, believe me. Fortunately, they are relatively small – biggest one I saw was about the size of a volleyball and a bit sluggish when swimming. Their hunting tactic is to blend in with their surroundings and wait for a hapless fish or crab or some other tasty morsel to swim by. They should obviously be respected. We carried crow bars (along with knives and, sometimes, spear guns) with us, so when exploring an area, we didn’t just reach down and look around with our hands. We usually poked around with the crowbar to see if anything with camouflage was lurking about. It wasn’t unusual for a stone fish to suddenly pop up. Always fun…

 

Rare bonus photo of elusive world famous late 60’s 14 year old superhero, reputed to swim the depths of Subic Bay:

Hey, my folks wouldn’t let me have a dog, they wouldn’t let me have a cat…

After 45 years, this article was a blast to put together . Again, I hope others who dove in the Philippines will add their thoughts and experiences to a future GDHS Newsletter.

 

A Note from the author

Okay, so I got on FaceBook (fb) last fall, 2015 (I’m a little slow with these social media networks). I perused the various GDHS web and fb sites and made the mistake of posting the above Sea Knights Diving Club “patch” on the GDHS 70-75 fb site, bragged about being a Sea Knight and wondered why nobody else has mentioned the existence of this scuba diving club on any site that I know of. Of course, given that my life story is one of “instant karma”, my bragging was immediately met with a request from the ubiquitous Al Morel to write a GDHS newsletter article about the Sea Knights. Curses. Al added that it would enhance the article if I had lots of pictures. I’ve put in pictures. I know he hoped for pictures from our days at Subic, but I don’t have many from back then that would be relevant here, so I’ve “improvised”. Gosh, thanks Al. Seriously, though, it’s a lot of work to put together a newsletter and I thank Al and those who help him put it together for taking the time to produce it.

Cheers All and Salamot Po!

Steve Johnson (fb: SE Johnson), 72