Preston and I were up first thing in the morning to go over to the dive shop and get fitted for our scuba gear.

The boat trip over to the dive site was our first exposure to El Nido's awesome diversity of small islands nearby.

The first dive of the day was the Popolcan Forest.

These needlefish swim perpendicular to the bottom. All the better to see the stuff to eat that lives there I guess.

I tried not to get too close to this jellyfish when taking the photo.

Now you can say you've seen a jellyfish's butt.

This species of nudibranch is pretty common throughout the places that I've been diving in the Philippines.

So is this species of clown fish!

Wherever you find them, they are always willing photo subjects.

I couldn't tell what kind of fish were gathered into this large school, they darted away when I got too close.

After about an hour underwater it was time to head back to the surface.

Preston hung like a monkey from the outrigger of the pump boat.

For lunch we stopped at Entalula Island, just a short boat ride from Popolcan Island.

I think Preston and I were both pretty excited to be having lunch in such an incredible place.

Before we ate, I had to get a few scenic photos like this one (click here for a close up view of this photo).

Preston took the opportunity to lay down and rest off some of the jetlag. After all, he had only been in the country barely 24 hours at this point.

We had a traditional Filipino lunch of fish, rice and mangoes.

This is another one of those classic Palawan scenes that makes everyone want to visit here (click here for a close up view of this photo).

After lunch we headed to South Miniloc Island for the second dive of the day.

Preston hadn't been diving for a while, but he got back in the hang of it pretty quickly.

A-ok.

Only a few minutes in to the dive, we spotted this brightly colored eel.

From this angle it almost looked like a sock puppet to me.

Here's another one of those yellow submarine looking tunicates.

The visibility was better at South Miniloc than at Popolcan Island.

Here's a shot of a giant clam, they are endangered in many parts of the Philippines.

Bubble corals like this one are pretty common though.

I'm not exactly sure what this is, I need to check with one of the folks at the Marine Lab.

I'm pretty sure this is a goronian, but I need to check that for sure as well.

This trevally swam close to inspect the divers.

This large crocodile fish blended in pretty well and was just resting on top of this coral.

It's just waiting for an unsuspecting victim to swim by so he can snatch it for a meal.

Towards the end of the dive we encountered a large school of these brightly colored little fellows.

There was also this school of small yellow snapper.

Their colors really popped out with the light from the underwater flash.