Evolution Diving Resort Malapascua

In December of 2016, the Holmen family (aka ‘The Holmen Clan) first showed their faces at Evolution, being relatively new to diving. With keen enthusiasm, the family of four have excelled in terms of competence and certification since.

After being put off diving by previous experiences, youngest family member Peggie learned to dive with Evolution when they first arrived, and soon found a passion for it. But as for the rest of them, the addiction had already begun. Upon arrival Magnus, Anna and son Zeb went on to immediately complete their PADI Advanced Open Water.

From Sweden, with Viking blood flowing through their veins, they embarked on the great journey that was a full-on family rescue course, which they tackled with great ferocity and a yearn to learn like true Vikings would. 

From day 1, when they were first introduced to self-rescue skills and dealing with an array of situations at the surface, all the way through until their final scenarios, the drive to improve and become better divers never lessened.

Through extensive skill practice, repetition and out of the blue ‘instances’ the improvement day by day was more than evident. Search patterns at a popular training site originally named Los Bamboos but re-dubbed ‘Lost Bamboos’ after extensive missing diver procedures, and Magnus getting renamed Hoff, all aiding for a very memorable few days. All in all the course for both the instructor and students, it was an incredibly enjoyable experience (but slightly more tiring from the rescue candidates side of things.)

The family have been awesome and everyone at Evolution looks forward to their return. Congratulations to all of them and especially Peggie for being one of our youngest Evolution Rescue Divers!

The provenance of Evolution and our name is all about moving forward, striving to improve and considering ways to do things better.   This is the foundation of our business and percolates in to everything we do, including our comprehensive Divemaster Training Programme.

When you sign up for your ‘DMT’ with Evolution you can expect a really thorough month or 6 weeks of training in a busy Five Star dive centre.  But you can also expect to be involved in other aspects of our life here on the island, such as all important environmental projects and community projects.

Recently we started our Kids’ Book Club with the goal of promoting reading as fun amongst the school kids of the island.  We are asking our guests to bring books from home and donate them to our ever growing library.  Several times a month we read to a class of enthusiastic children in the school and offer some books as giveaways in an effort to show there children books are joyful and not just for ‘boring’ school work.

This week our two DMTs Christina from the US and Allan from Scotland came with us to the school and both delivered a great narration to different packed classrooms.  Each session ended with a competition and a book giveaway.  

With no fans and 40+ kids in the classroom it was a sultry affair but a lot of fun and a great way for our guests to see a slice of the provincial Philippines up close.

If you want to donate to our Kids Book Club then please do as every single book will find a use.  Thanks to Allan and Christina for taking part and thanks to everyone who has donated so far.

To learn more about our Kid’s Book Club contact us on info@evolution.com.ph

Four years ago a brash New Yorker strode in to Evolution and demanded to speak to someone in charge.  With great trepidation, David stepped forward to see what this brassy wiseguy wanted.  Joey G proceeded to shake down David with questions about why he should choose Evolution as his dive shop to complete his Divemaster training.  Fast forward 4 years and Joey G is now an annual visitor with a great DM under his belt but more importantly, he also graduated to the highest standards with TDI’s Advanced Nitrox, Decompression Procedures, Extended Range, Trimix and Advanced Wreck.

Badabing! Joey’s a made guy!

This year Joey G was back for some great tech diving and made us an offer we couldn’t refuse.  With his very nice new GoPro5 set up with great video lights he set about documenting his dives with us.  Joey’s passion is for wrecks, so the Mogami Maru got the Scorcese treatment and the results are just great as you can see here for yourselves.  The Omertá on one of the best dives in the Visayas has been lifted.

The Mogami Maru is our very own Japanese WWII wreck, sunk by an aerial attack off Malapascua in 1944 and has been dived by Evolution over 500 times!  This video is just one of those dives on a glorious day in May.  Tell me about it!

The Mob diving with Joe included Don David and Julia ‘The Tooth’ and nearby with Don Matt were Mikey ‘Bagpipes’, brothers ‘Mini’ Martin and ‘Tiny’ Thomas being watched by Capo Andy and finally in there also were ‘Not so Fat’ Tony’ and adding some muscle was Dannie ‘The Plugger’ Holmstedt.  Hey, forget about it!

To learn more about cosa nostra here on Malapascua contact us on info@evolution.com.ph

Disclosure: Joey G is of Irish, English and German descent and was born in New Jersey but we just can’t help enjoying the whole NYC goombah thing every time we see him. 

Every year, the 8th of June is World Ocean Day, when we all do a bit extra to give back to the ocean and the aquatic life living beneath the surface.

In Malapascua this year, 9 dive shops got together doing an underwater clean up. We therefore decided to share the sites out between us so not everyone shows up at the same area.

Today we went to Pipefish Bay. With 6 buddy teams we could very efficiently cover the whole dive site in one hour. After one hour all our volunteers came back and sorted out the trash. Today we collected 22 kg of it! The majority of the collection was, no surprise, plastic, rubber parts and loads of diapers.

In the afternoon when the tide was the lowest we then went for a land clean up. We cleaned the ally going inland towards Evolution, the beach in front of Evolution and the area just next to the resort. The area next to the resort is small fishing village and building area for boats, and therefore very prone to trash. In total on land we collected 39 kg of trash!

It was a great success, and we managed to collect a LOT of trash this year. With help from other dive shops on the island we managed to cover big and important areas of Malapascua, both underwater and on land.

As we owe our beautiful island cleanups more than once a year, we will continue to contribute to a clean ocean by doing cleanups as regularly as possible. or the past few years, our goal has been to do cleanups at least once a month – hopefully this will lead to clean dive sites around Malapascua and eventually we don’t have to do this at all.

Thanks to our amazing staff but also to our guests volunteers: Mike, Douglas, Carel, Theo, Ludvig and Terese.

We have just come back from our trip to the amazing World War II wrecks of Truk Lagoon in Micronesia and to say it was an amazing trip does not do it justice.

Hosted by The Odyssey Live Aboard, David and a coterie of Evolution guests spent a week diving unimaginable hunks of history, that all sank in Operation Hailstone in February 1944. Taken by surprise by American bombers, over 50 large wrecks met their demise, complete with crews and artifacts on board, allowing modern day divers to plan challenging dives steeped in history.

We visited wrecks such as the San Francisco Maru, complete with three Type 95 Ha Go tanks on the deck, 500kg aerial bombs in the hold and huge deck guns primed for defence. We also dived the sombre Aikoko Maru which saw 700 Japanese soldiers perish when the aerial bombs ignited the munitions in the hold and blew the ship in half, killing almost everyone on board.

It was wreck after wreck after wreck, with complex engine room penetrations for those in the mood for tight spaces. And for those less inclined, we had amazing swims around the outside of wrecks, marveling at the marine life, like Grey Reef Sharks, Eagle Rays and fish galore.

Spending 7 nights on The Odyssey is like living in a five star hotel. The kitchen crew outshone themselves with fresh food coming at us non stop, and the highlight being the best steaks, BBQ’d on deck for our hungry divers.

The group was just perfect, with a great social aspect and everyone mixing each evening for a few beers or glasses of wine.

Evolution would like to thank all those who came and got wrecked with us – Julia, Joey G, Big Mike, Sidemount Mike, Larry, Donna, Jethro, Tobias, Martin,Thomas and Jan as well as Lenny and the amazing crew of this amazing boat.

We will have a video soon to tantalise our readers for our 2019 trip. To join us in Truk Lagoon aboard the Odyssey in 2019 email us at info@evolution.com.ph

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