When you go snorkeling in Apo's sanctuary you'll find this coral wall dropoff just to the right of the entrance area.

Between dive trips around the island there are sometimes impromptu jam sessions in the dive shop.

On our first dive with Kris, Kristen and Emily on Apo, we went to Cogon Pt. with Welmer as our dive guide.

Here's our group (from left): Kris, Kristen, Emily, me.

After a short ride on the pump boat we were set to jump overboard.

The visibility was about as clear as I've ever experienced on Apo--probably 30 meters!

Unfortunately I didn't take enough precautions to get rid of the humidity in my underwater camera case, so my lens fogged up just as we came across the same old hawksbill turtle that was so photogenic for the Apo Island Post Card project.

Before long we saw a second hawksbill, this was turning out to be a really great dive.

The turtle had plans of its own and after a short time of swimming along with it, the hawksbill disappeared over the coral outcropping.

Pam and Alex joined us on the second dive at Apo's Coconut Point. I can't remember what Emily was talking about in this photo, but it was definitely funny.

Here's the coconut point dive team.

The tiny yellow sea cucumbers were swarming over some sponges just as they were when Preston came to visit in February and we dived Coconut Point.

Typically on Coconut Point you can see large schools of fish and the generally larger predatory fish that eat them.

Also turtles like this hawksbill.

I swam with the turtle for a little while before it disappeared into the blue.

We got a quick glimpse of these large bumphead parrotfish cruising at about 30 meters (90 feet) below the surface.

The little detachable flash that I picked up comes in handy to bring out the color of the corals when it's too deep for all the colors of the spectrum to be seen.

Without the flash at depths of over 20 meters everything appears in shades of blue.

Here's another otherworldly nudibranch from Apo.

I thought this little fellow looked pretty funny skittering along this sandy flat. I need to look up what kind of fish this is, it has a small antler like an undersea deer.

It seems pretty obvious why these two are called lizardfish.

After about 70 minutes underwater, it was time to climb up the ladder and head back to Apo to dry off.