“Decompression ceiling, cave or wreck, it’s all the same. If it comes to a problem you can’t just go up”. How many times I had heard or read these words I’m not sure, but thinking back and scratching my head it actually amazes me to […]

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 […]

Around the year 2005, stories began circulating of a relatively unknown Japanese war wreck being dived just outside of Davao City, in the far south of the Philippines. Curiousity aroused I poked my nose into this a little further and came across this story, https://www.shipwreckworld.com/articles/the-sagami-maru-and-the-uss-seawolf […]

While patrolling the Manila-Singapore shipping lanes on 22 February 1944, at 07.20, Lt. Cdr. Frank G. Selby sighted masts and smoke some fifteen miles from his submarine, the USS Puffer. An eastbound convoy moving at seven knots. Not wanting to engage the ships in shallow […]

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 […]