Running in a marine sanctuary, a natural high

The nature of my work requires me to travel to places seldom visited by people. I’ve been documenting on video and making audio-visual production of our agency’s projects. And since I started to run two years ago, I have managed to squeeze in some run in my official travels whenever possible. I’ve been in this kind of work for more than ten years now. But my travel last summer of 2009 was truly different. I had a chance to go to the Tubattaha Reef. Surprised? Me too!

Our agency has an on-going project on the densification of geodetic control points or GCP (commonly called mojon) to be the basis for all surveying and mapping needs in the country. One of the sites identified to have this mojon is the south islet of the Tubattaha Reef. With its uniqueness of the location, a team from our office was sent to document the activity. We went to Tubattaha via our survey vessel, Barko ng Republika ng Pilipinas (BRP) Hydrographer Ventura.

The place is a sanctuary not only for fishes and other sea creatures but also for migratory birds. There are no inhabitants in the place. Neither tourists nor scuba divers are allowed to set foot in the small island. We were only allowed to go there for official work. It was a small island with a sand bar portion that appears on low tides and vanish during high tides. On our first day, we went to the islet using our skip boat from our vessel to have a reconnaissance of the place and look for the GCP that was previously established in the area. This early, I have noticed the sand bar and have made a plan to run on it the following day. On the scheduled day of surveying, the whole process of Global Positioning System surveying would require us to stay there for the whole day. While our surveyors were setting up the equipment, I was also busy shooting on the activity. When everything was in place, we will have to wait for 8 hours for the equipment to read the data it received from various GPS satellite passing along our country. These allowed us to rest or do anything to avoid boredom. For me, this was the best opportunity to run… a place where no one (I mean, documented) has ever run yet… the south islet of Tubattaha Reef.

J Running (photo by Nato, my officemate who is also a runner)

related postings :

J Running video shot in south islet, Tubattaha (http://brojrunning.blogspot.com/2009/05/j-running-video.html)

a preview of work and play (http://brojrunning.blogspot.com/2009/05/preview-of-work-and-play.html)