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Displaying items by tag: Cebu

#Diving - The Daily Inquirer in the Philippines turns the spotlight on Irish diver David Joyce, who together with British business partner Matt Reed runs the Evolution diving school in northern Cebu which specialises in technical dives such as wreck explorations, and more recently the recovery of a downed aircraft.

A former TV producer and director, Joyce tells how he met Reed during a holiday in the Philippines in 2008 and suggested the idea of setting up shop in the country together.

Five years on and the pair now employ 24 people across 10 properties, training locals and tourists alike in the more technical aspects of diving, going deeper with more specialised equipment.

“Everything has to be calculated," says Joyce. "When you return to the surface, it has to be slow  taking 90 minutes to two hours or 3 meters per minute).
You have to be prepared—four tanks containing different gases, regulators and rebreather units have to be on standby."

Aside from their particular interest in wreck dives - including the discovery of what might be the wreck of the MV Pioneer Cebu, which sank in 1966 with 262 passengers aboard - the duo are dedicated to preserving the natural resources of their tropical island paradise.

That involves working with the local coastguard to prevent destruction of delicate coral reefs and the decline of the catch for local fishermen.

The Daily Inquirer has much more on the story HERE.

Published in Diving

About Brittany Ferries

In 1967 a farmer from Finistère in Brittany, Alexis Gourvennec, succeeded in bringing together a variety of organisations from the region to embark on an ambitious project: the aim was to open up the region, to improve its infrastructure and to enrich its people by turning to traditional partners such as Ireland and the UK. In 1972 BAI (Brittany-England-Ireland) was born.

The first cross-Channel link was inaugurated in January 1973, when a converted Israeli tank-carrier called Kerisnel left the port of Roscoff for Plymouth carrying trucks loaded with Breton vegetables such as cauliflowers and artichokes. The story, therefore, begins on 2 January 1973, 24 hours after Great Britain's entry into the Common Market (EEC).

From these humble beginnings however, Brittany Ferries as the company was re-named quickly opened up to passenger transport, then became a tour operator.

Today, Brittany Ferries has established itself as the national leader in French maritime transport: an atypical leader, under private ownership, still owned by a Breton agricultural cooperative.

Eighty five percent of the company’s passengers are British.

Key Brittany Ferries figures:

  • Turnover: €202.4 million (compared with €469m in 2019)
  • Investment in three new ships, Galicia plus two new vessels powered by cleaner LNG (liquefied natural gas) arriving in 2022 and 2023
  • Employment: 2,474 seafarers and shore staff (average high/low season)
  • Passengers: 752,102 in 2020 (compared with 2,498,354 in 2019)
  • Freight: 160,377 in 2020 (compared with 201,554 in 2019)
  • Twelve ships operating services that connect France, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Spain (non-Covid year) across 14 routes
  • Twelve ports in total: Bilbao, Santander, Portsmouth, Poole, Plymouth, Cork, Rosslare, Caen, Cherbourg, Le Havre, Saint-Malo, Roscoff
  • Tourism in Europe: 231,000 unique visitors, staying 2.6 million bed-nights in France in 2020 (compared with 857,000 unique visitors, staying 8,7 million bed-nights in 2019).