48 
THE CORAL TRIANGLE: HEARST BIODIVERSITY EXPEDITION 
The Trip Home 
With all the collecting done, the only thing left was to ship all the animals home. Luckily for 
us the Academy has a great relationship with an exporter in the Manila, Aquascapes Philippines 
Co, a company that early on embraced the idea of responsible and sustainable collection evidence 
by their becoming one of the first companies to be MAC certified in 2002. This relationship real¬ 
ly streamlined our exporting process. Using their facilities meant we didn’t need to procure our 
own shipping boxes, shipping bags, rubber bands, oxygen, heat packs or any of the other essential 
supplies associated with successful shipping of live saltwater animals. They also arranged flights, 
getting boxes to the airport, and did all the running around to make sure all the export permits had 
their i’s dotted and their t’s crossed. All we had to do was arrange the stateside paperwork, state 
side inspections and get the animals from the collection spot to Manila. 
The morning of our final pack out of the Expedition, we needed to hit the road by 9 am. Since 
many of the researchers were not 
going home yet, we enlisted 
them to help us pack up the 
seemingly infinite number of live 
specimens we had collected. Of 
course we had to pack up our 
personal stuff and our dive gear 
as well, so the morning was real¬ 
ly go go go. We swam out to the 
offshore holding just after dawn, 
disassembled it and brought all 
the animals to shore. There we 
quickly packed them up in col¬ 
lecting bags for the 3-hour car 
ride to Manila. But before we 
could start our ride, we had to get 
everything to the cars: heavy 
boxes of animals, and luggage 
heavy with wet dive gear all 
needed to be lugged up the 4 
flights of stairs from the living 
area of Club Ocellaris to the 
road. The locals, who are short 
even compared to me, made the 
exercise look easy; they flew up 
the stairs with several boxes and 
suitcases each as we huffed and 
puffed with our comparably 
teeny loads. Finally, every tub 
bag and box made it to the van. 
After a short stop at McDonalds 
for a McDo (a hamburger with 
some sort of brown sauce on it), 
we were on our way to Manila. 
Once we arrived at Aquas- 
Figure 8 : Sitting on little wood blocks for hours at the Aquascapes facili¬ 
ty as the rain beats on the roof 
Figure 9: Bart and Flor check and double check the paperwork 
