More than a touch of the Déjà vu’s hung over the planning of our January 2011 return to Samar. Weather in the area was reported as poor, but that had been the case twelve months prior, and we had managed some successes then, so decided […]

Moving into Summer 2010 we put most emphasis on Eastern Samar, but still followed a few leads in the west. The western points of interest were located in areas with outstanding natural beauty, such as Timogbong, but for one reason or another, all turned out […]

In January 2010, a nasty looking low pressure system formed in the Pacific, seriously threatening our first expedition of the year. If this had been a weekend of diving in our home base of Puerto Galera, it would have been a simple choice to just […]

The transition from tourist cavers to fledgling explorers began in February 2009 for Ralph Joerger and Dave Ross. A large, and even now, ongoing part of that is learning to deal with the local formalities and in some cases, abnormalities. A case in point being […]

In the mid-to-late nineties as technical diving found the Philippines, cave exploration experienced something of a flourish. Alex Santos, the IANTD franchise holder at the time, was the driving force, and alongside him much of the time was Ralph Joerger, the man responsible for the […]