You don't want this to happen...a small turtle chews on a piece of plastic

Help us and hundreds of thousands of people worldwide as we make a stand on September 25 for Project Aware's International Beach and Dive Clean Up Day. This is an event for divers and non-divers and for everyone who loves nature.

Last year, we gave a 50% discount on the rooms for Clean Up participants. This year, Coco Beach's exclusive Clean Up Promo is giving a night (September 25) free for participants! For the Beach Clean Up, join our scheduled clean up. For Dive Clean Up, you have to be a certified diver to participate. The Clean Up Activities are free including the equipments and a certificate from Project Aware.

Requirements:
- Participants must be a certified scuba diver. License should be presented.
- Participant must join in the Clean Up Activities on September 25, 2009
- Failure to join in the Clean Up means that full amount of room accommodation must be made.

Limitation:
- Accompanying guests of the participants who will not join in the Clean Up are based on regular published rate. (Read: NO DISCOUNTS)
- Any other dive and other activities aside from Clean Up are based on regular diving rates.

Coco Beach Island Resort
Unit A Ramona Apartments
1555 M. Adriatico St.
Malate, Manila
Philippines 1004
Tel# (+63 2) 521 5260 / 526 4594
Fax# (+63 2) 526 6903
E-mail: sales@cocobeach.com or reservation@cocobeach.com
Website: www.cocobeach.com

Leon, Lea and Victor with their Service Family

Leon Huther from Germany and his Brazilian wife Lea Plankenhorn together with their 10 year old son Victor are staying at Coco Beach for 3 long weeks. According to them, a friend of theirs recommended Coco beach Island Resort for their summer holiday.

Leon is an avid diver and explored many of the dive sites here in Puerto together with Lea. Victor also signed up for some diving lessons. According to Leon, although he enjoyed the diving so much, his best activity while in the resort was fishing. Maybe because, Leon used to go fishing in his younger years. They also enjoyed visiting a Mangyan village where they got the chance to see how the Mangyans lived.

Benson playing the guitar as the rest of the staff sings Leon a birthday song

On their last few days of holiday, Leon celebrated his birthday with staff of Coco Beach singing him a birthday song. Leon, Lea and Victor promised to come back some time in October.

Happy Birthday Leon and best wishes from all Coco Beach Family! Hope to see you and the family back in the resort!

Blue Thunders uses all their muscle for the Tug-of-war

Every year the staff of Coco Beach would have one company activity. Last year, the Coco Sports Fest was unique because the uniforms were exchanged. The women wore men’s style clothes while the macho men wore skirts. It was a really interesting sight to see. This year though is more traditional as the staff hold their COCOlympics.

Oath of Sportsmanship by all the teams

The games started last August 31, 2010 with four teams participating. The staff was divided into 4 groups as follows: The Orange Juicers headed by Dr. Ariel Torres, our in-house physician, the Yellow Submarine led by HR Manager Lyzzelle Ceralde, the Blue Thunder headed by our bartender Ray Masungca and last but not the least, D’ Red Horse team headed by Rodel Lopez, Dining Supervisor. Team members came from the different departments of Coco Beach which included the ladies from the Front Office, Admin and Shopping Arcade. There were also the waiters, waitresses, bartenders, and Kitchen crew of F&B, Activity coordinators and guides, Security, the Coco Divers, Services men and the mamas, papas, helpers and children of the Service Families.

Each team posing with their banner

The 4-day event started with a parade around the resort with the teams in their uniforms and carrying their own colors and banners. Service Mama Angie Atienza led the prayer followed by HR Lyzzelle who gave the opening remarks. Everybody recited the Olympics Oath of Sportsmanship led by Service Papa and Sports Committee member Eugene Dizon followed by the raising of colors.

Obstacle course is no hurdle for these swift contenders

The first event for the day was the TUG-O-WAR where everybody had to give all their strength, digging their feet in the sand screaming, grunting and sweating as opposing teams pulled on the rope. D’Red Horse team won in this event. This was followed by the Team Relay event which included an obstacle course, sack race, jumping over beach beds, kayaking for 100 meters, swimming and “wogging” around the perimeter of Coco Beach. This time it was the Orange Juicers who won with the fastest time of 15 minutes.

Hauling, pulling and tugging with all their might...as you can see in all their faces

Ball games were played in the afternoon with D’ Red Horse Team winning over the Yellow Submarine and the Blue Thunder over the Orange Juicers in the women’s volleyball for the first round of games. In the men’s basketball, the Yellow Submariners won over the Red Horses by a 3-point lead, while the Orange Juicers had a big lead over the Blue Thunders.

We will be giving you more updates on this event by next week.

Diligent students made sure no trash is left behind

Last August 27, the Municipality of Puerto Galera issued Ordinance No. 81 requiring all municipal and barangay officials, employees, teachers as well as the students in the public and private schools and all non-government organizations (NGOs)to volunteer a half day cleaning in their respective barangays and coastal areas. The General Clean – Up started around 7:30 in the morning in Barangay Sto. Nino going to Muelle, all the way down to Plaza Iluminada. The students from Puerto Galera National High School also cleaned up the public market area and Hondura Bay.

The clean-up program is part of the local government’s efforts to keep Puerto Galera clean and maintain its title as one of the Most Beautiful Bays in the World.

Solveig and her boyfriend Lasse, both from Denmark, visited Coco Beach this week for a nine days vacation. They are both hunters and love skiing, but only Lasse was a certified diver, so Solveig was a bit interested in diving but also afraid it would take to much time of their vacation. Finally she jumped in the pool with Thomas to make a free pool-trial and she got hooked. Within 4 days she finished her PADI Open Water Diver certification and she still didn’t had enough, so she decided to also take the PADI Advanced Open Water Diver course right away.

Rex, Solveigs instructor, handing over the Advanced diploma after 2 successful courses with him.

Now, 7 days later she is the proud owner of 2 certifications and is planning to come back to take her Rescue Diver course and Nitrox course. Congratulations Solveig and we are all looking forward to see you both again.

Bottlenose dolphins

This is a small warm-up for next weeks newsletter because Ino, Rex and Thomas are attending a 2 days course how to handle stranded mammals. During the course they will be handling life mammals like bottlenose dolphins and a false killer whale. But much more about that in the next newsletter.

Bottlenose dolphins are the most common and well-known members of the family Delphinidae, the family of oceanic dolphins. They inhabit warm and temperate seas worldwide. And these dolphins are also the ones sighted when you join a dolphin watching trip from Coco Beach or when you are crossing over from Batangas to Coco Beach.

A bottlenose dolphin chasing the outrigger from the Coco Beach boat.

Bottlenose dolphins live in groups typically of 10-30 members, called pods, but group size varies from single individuals up to more than 1,000. Their diet consists mainly of small fish, crustaceans, and squid. Although this varies by location, many populations also share an appetite for fish from the tuna and mackerel family.

Dolphins often work as a team to harvest schools of fish, but they also hunt individually. Dolphins search for prey primarily using echolocation, which is similar to sonar. They emit clicking sounds and listen for the return echo to determine the location and shape of nearby items, including potential prey. Bottlenose dolphins also use sound for communication, including squeaks and whistles emitted from the blowhole and sounds emitted through body language, such as leaping from the water and slapping their tails on the water surface.

Two bottlenose dolphins playing around in the surface.

Bottlenose dolphins are popular from aquarium shows and television programs such as Flipper. They have also been trained by militaries to locate sea mines or detect and mark enemy divers. In some areas they cooperate with local fishermen by driving fish into their nets and eating the fish that escape. Some encounters with humans are harmful to the dolphins: people hunt them for food, and dolphins are killed inadvertently as a by-catch of tuna fishing.

They are gray, varying from dark gray at the top near the dorsal fin to very light gray and almost white at the underside. This counter shading makes it hard to see, both from above and below, when swimming. Adults range in length between 2 and 4 meters, and in weight between 150 and 650 kg. Males are on average slightly longer and considerably heavier than females. In most parts of the world the adult's length is about 2.5 meters with weight ranges between 200 and 300 kg and can live for more than 40 years.

A dolphin mother with her calve.

The dolphin's search for food is aided by a form of sonar known as echolocation: they locate objects by producing sounds and listening for the echo. A broadband burst pulse of clicking sounds is emitted in a focused beam in front of the dolphin. To hear the returning echo they have two small ear openings behind the eyes, but most sound waves are transmitted to the inner ear through the lower jaw. As the object of interest is approached the echo grows louder, and the dolphins adjust by decreasing the intensity of the emitted sounds.

Some large shark species, such as the tiger shark, dusky shark, great white shark and the bull shark prey on the bottlenose dolphin, especially calves. The bottlenose dolphin is capable of defending itself by charging the predator: dolphin 'mobbing' behavior of sharks can occasionally prove fatal for the shark. Targeting a single adult dolphin can be dangerous for a shark of similar size. Certain (but not all) killer whale (orca) populations may also prey on dolphins, but this seems rare. And other orcas again may swim with dolphins.

Swimming in pods allows dolphins to better defend themselves against predators. Bottlenose dolphins either use complex evasive strategies to out swim their predators or mobbing techniques to batter the predator to death or force it to flee.