It’s been a fun week here having Adrienne Ng and her group from Hong Kong back with us again. Despite a windy day of typhoon Nona, they were able to get in lots of diving, complete AOW and Nitox courses.  We know it’s not the ideal holiday when you get some unexpected bad weather, but it sure makes things easier when you have a fun group like this that takes it all in stride with smiles on their faces. Congratulations to Long Long Ng, Edison Chan, Wing Yuen Lee (Ida), Man Hing Lee (Mandy), Joe Kwok Keung Lee, Joanne Leung, and Daniel Bristow for completing your Nitrox  courses and to Daniel Bristow, Joe Kwok Keung Lee, Man Hing Lee, and Wing Yuen Lee (Ida) for earning your AOW. We hope to see you all back again real soon!

It’s been a fun-filled time with this wonderful group of 23 folks from Sweden. Most stayed for 8-9 nights, enjoying the sunny weather, cool stuff to see and great food at El Gal!  Thanks to Henrik Jörnvall for organizing this and hoping to see you all back again. Congrats to Jakob Forestier, Ann Dahlberg, Stefan Lundeberg and Taina Ylonen for getting their nitrox certs and enjoying that extra bottom time.

Sune and Asa are thrilled to have done their 100^th dive here in Puerto Galera. A bit warmer here than Sweden for sure!

The illustrious Gareth Bowen has praised us with his presence once again this week. After winning quite a few prizes in the Hugy Cup underwater photo competition he has become quite a celebrity around the shop, with lots of other photographers asking his advice, and he always seemed more than willing to help and give away some of his tricks. Below you can see an awesome photo of a Blue Ring Octopus taken just the other day by Gareth. 

Look whose back in town, the amazing Rhinopia. After getting a tip from down the beach Jamie and few divers went out to search for this amazing fish. What luck they had not only did they come across it but Video Rob was on the dive and got some great video footage.

Congratulations to Brigitte Swanson for finally being able to wear this 100 dive club t-shirt! The big number had been in the works for a while so Alli had a shirt all prepared and waiting for the right moment to happen.

Congratulations to all the winners of the HUGYCUP photo competition which was held here over a two month period from Feb to April. It was great to see the results of the competition and it’s a wonderful showcase for Puerto Galera’s amazing marine biodiversity.

A special congratulations to LUC EECKHAUT Winner of the HUGYCUP 2014/2015 (Series of 10 pictures – best macro photo – best fish portrait photo– best nudibranch or seashell photo – best wide angle), Best result in 5 categories.

Here are some more of the winning photos. You can see them all at: http://2014.hugycup.com/

Congratulations to Gareth Bowen who cleaned up in the compact category. He got best compact camera photographer (Series of 3 pictures – compact macro – compact fish portrait)

Gino Symus from Belgium has returned for more photography dives. He came here earlier in the year to participate in the HUGYCUP photo competition. Gino can be seen above with his two SLR cameras, one for macro and one for wide angle so he never misses a beat. You would think with all that gear that buoyancy control would be a big problem, but Gino mages it with ease, being very careful not to put even a fin on the reef. A true master and inspiration to all photographers out there! You can see some of his photos on http://2014.hugycup.com/