Image courtesy www.samal-island.com

UPDATED 27/03/2010

Dive Davao Festival 2010 is the latest in a series of annual scuba diving events designed to promote the superb scuba diving and snorkeling areas in the Davao Gulf, around Samal Island. Almost all of best Samal Island beach resorts take part in the event and offer special packages for scuba diving adventures, and snorkeling adventures for those who have not yet qualified as scuba divers.

The week long Dive Davao Festival 2010 (formerly: Dive The Gulf 2010) activities will climax on Saturday evening with the Caracoles Festival. The Caracoles Festival is a dusk-to-dawn party along Peñaplata Wharf and adjoining beaches, with music & dancing, food & merriment served all-night long.

Photo courtesy batsanctuary.org

13th January 2010; Samal Island - Philippine fruit bats that roost on Samal Island were officially accorded the Guinness World Record of largest colony of any fruit bat species. On any given day approximately 1.8 million Geoffroy’s rousette fruit bats (rousettus amplexicaudatus) inhabit the Monfort Bat Cave on Samal Island.

The Monfort Bat Cave & Conservation Foundation aims to protect the Samal Island fruit bats through research programs that lead to better education and conservation of habitat. Education programs will foster a greater understanding of the role of fruit bats and dispel the myth that fruit bats compete with humans for food when the reverse is actually true. Samal Island and the nearby provinces of Davao would not enjoy such an abundance of durian and other tropical fruits if it were not for centuries of natural seed and fertilizer dispersal undertaken free of charge by the fruit bats.