WWII Wreck Diving and Barracuda Lake in Coron, Palawan

Barracuda Lake and Wreck Diving in Coron, Palawan from jayvee Fernandez on Vimeo.

I summarized one memorable weekend into 3 minutes. It was hard, but I did it! This was my first time to experience wreck diving in Coron, as well as enjoying the reverse thermocline “spa” inside Barracuda Lake. Good friends, great dives, what more could you ask for the long weekend?!

Credits: “Open Happiness” (www.openhappiness.tv) for the audio. The entire video was shot using a Panasonic Lumix LX3 and a Sony Cybershot W230 w/ marine pack for the underwater shots. Editing done in iMovie ’09.

Our dive weekend itinerary consisted of overnight stay on board the Super Ferry (their chocolate cake is really good!) and 6 dives throughout Saturday and Sunday. We boarded the ferry back to Manila Sunday night and docked into a work-filled Monday 🙁

This was my most memorable local trip, and it would have been at par with my Batanes sojourn but it obviously exceeds that due to our “getting wrecked” in Coron. Our itinerary consisted of three dives for Saturday — the Kogyo Maru, Tangat Wreck, and the Olympia Maru (my best wreck dive!), and Sunday had us inside Barracuda Lake (overall the most entertaining dive for the whole trip), the Akitsushima gunboat (with actual guns!) and finally the Taiei Maru oil tanker.

This trip had several tiebreakers for firsts — it was the first time for me to fully utilize the Aladin Tec 2G computer I bought, first time to actually test the Gull Mantis fins in current, and my first time to dive in fresh water.

Barracuda Lake is post-card breathtaking. No need for Photoshop. The dive site is 15 minutes away from Sea Dive and the live aboard docks a good 50 meters away from the shore which means you’d have to swim. Smaller boats can of course make their way closer. If you check the video above, we had to carry our gear into the lake via a jagged path ala Lord of the Rings. But the small cuts and bruises were all worth it!

Barracuda Lake has a reverse thermocline which means that the first 20 feet has cold water and at about 40 feet, the water temperature rises to about 40 degrees Celcius. If you look closely, the thermocline is actually visible in the form of a long white strip. It’s eerie!

There is supposedly the “Last of the Barracudas” somewhere inside the lake but we didn’t see it. Life inside the lake consists of small fish, catfish, shrimp, but otherwise the lake is empty. No corals, but hovering above the jagged limestone cliffs makes this dive very unique.

There is a P100.00 entrance fee which I assume goes to the conservation of the lake.