Like all adventure journeys, our Babuyan island quest has never been that easy. About fourteen hours land trip from Manila to Aparri and four hours boat ride to Camiguin Island. But we have to admit, there are adventures of the mind just as there are adventures of the body, and summer vacation offers the perfect opportunity to tune up your alternative travel skills and challenge yourself to an on-the-edge adventure experiencing the less traveled part of the archipelago “The Babuyanes”. Every seasoned extreme traveler has a hallucination story and It’s all about sacrifice but heaven is when you conquer any weird journey that you are aiming.

The trip began to chance on the evening of April 6,2004, when nine different individuals meet in a bus station in manila for the start of their Babuyan Island Quest. It was like the “Survivor Series”, the team was composed of nine adventure seekers with various professional backgrounds, all in one goal. Upon reaching the port of Camiguin in Brgy. Balatubat, Jun – the team leader immediately went to the Barangay Office to ask for possible assistance, luckily in a short while the local officials offered us the beachfront “casitas” for our accommodation.

 On our second day, we left Camiguin Island to do some island hopping and whale watching before heading to Babuyan Claro. Watching a whale dive is simply awesome. They simply grab your attention, and then the silent way its slides down into the water. There was a genuine sense of loss when the whales disappear. Babuyan’s biggest and most beloved visitor -  the Humpback whales (megaptera novaeangliae) are arriving during summer for their annual winter holiday, marking the start of whale watching season in the islands. Humpback whales are migrating from Alaska each year to breed and calve in Babuyan’s warm coastal waters, one of the Philippines marine sanctuary dedicated to whales and their habitat. Surveys by the WWF-Philippine’s Humpback Whale Research and Conservation Project over the last four years counted more than 36 individual Humpback whales in the waters of Fuga, Calayan and Batanes. The project group has been working in the area since 2000 when the local WWF confirmed the presence of the whales.

The humpback whale is one of the more energetic species of its kind, known in particular for its fantastic displays of jumping out of the water (breaching), flipper slapping, and lob tailing (arching just beneath the surface so the fluke, or tail, rises out of the water as the body descends). During mating season, they are also known for the complex and haunting songs that the males use to attract females. These songs can last for hours, and research has shown that although there are certain patterns that repeat in many of them, the males often improvise variations that make each song unique. Humpback feed on small crustaceans called krill, which they strain out of the water by forcing large amounts of seawater through their baleen, a series of fringed overlapping plates located in the jaw in the place where teeth would normally be found. Its almost four hours in the sea before we finally reached the Fuga Island, a long island with never ending stretch of white sand and coral beaches. It was already 2pm so we decided to have a stopover to have our lunch. The head boatmen told us that its impossible for us to head to Babuyan Claro by that time so we just stayed in the island. The night was totally dark and cold so we roam around to find driftwoods for our campfire. It’s an exciting race; laughter’s and fun echo everywhere, from naughty to creepy stories, everybody is listening until wee hours of the morning.

Eyes were bit sored, temper where short, and fatigue was etched on everyone’s face and I’m just talking about the journalists in the group. Almost 4am when we left the island, still aiming to reach the Babuyan Claro. The breeze was exceptionally cold as we sail to the northern part of the islands. The waves are getting bigger as we reach the open sea, nobody knows that there was a cold front because of the islands lack of communication facilities. Some of us still managed to laugh, purposely to ease the stress and fear of the gigantic waves. It was like having the whitewater rafting in Kalinga and surfing in Siargao all at the same time. But who’s to blame? Its part of the adventure, even the strong fishermen’s are not sailing every Good Friday to follow the old beliefs that traveling is not safe during this special Lenten day. The adrenalin pumping waves was gone when we reached the Camiguin cove, we thought that it’s the end of our adventure, but the truth is it was just the beginning.

The third day was our turn to smile, we may have failed to conquer the three remaining islands but we still always have the “next time”. We may say that we are the real survivors because this time we are not guided by a script nor a series of reality-based obstacles but instead a true to life exhilarating adventure. It was a sunny morning; everybody was prepared for the beach hopping and dolphin watching. Halfway to the fronting Pamuktan Island, we already saw a couple of jolly dolphins, performing handful of show offs. As we sail around the island, dolphins are just coming out from the waters. The playful dolphins delighted everybody. We had some snorkeling right in the beach shore and then we head back to Camiguin for some bird watching and nature tripping. Ah! This is life.
The Babuyan group of islands is composed of five islands north of Aparri. All of the islands have small Ilokano communities. Phone lines and mobile phones are unheard and only few settlers have electricity powered by gasoline-supplied generators. The province of Cagayan is bounded by the mountain ranges of Sierra Madre on the east extending up to the beaches of the coastal towns, on the south is Isabela province, on the west is the Cordillera Mountain and on the north by the Balintang, Babuyanes and the China Sea.

The Babuyan group of islands which include Calayan, Dalupiri, Fuga, Camiguin and Babuyan Claro is about fifty nautical miles north of Aparri. There are no luxury resorts in these islands and no regular ferries but the trip here with all its inconvenience is well worth the effort. Whether whale watching or discovering a great beach destination is your goal, Babuyan Group of Island offers a lot for the active traveler.

Babuyan Island adventure is all about dreaming a vacation after it was over. It gives you a never-ending discovery, almost impossible to forget. The experience maybe unforgiving but truly it was a walk to remember.

For biologists, there are few things quite as exciting as discovering a new species. And though it has been said that the Philippines is one of the most gifted countries in the world in term of biodiversity, there are few things that demonstrate this fact quite as well as the discovery of a new form of life right here on our shores.

A new bird species, believed to be found nowhere else in the world, has been discovered on the remote island of Calayan, 70 km north of Luzon.

The bird will be named the ‘Calayan Rail’ (Gallirallus calayanensis), after the island on which it was found. Calayan is the largest island in the Babuyan Island group that lies between Batanes and Luzon.

The discovery was made by a team of nine volunteer wildlife researches from the Philippines and the United Kingdom, who conducted a survey of birds, mammals, repriles, and amphibians on the islands from April to June. The team was led by conservationists Carl Oliveros and Genevieve Broad.

Carmela Española, a Filipino wildlife biologist, found a group of these dark brown birds with their distinctive orange-red bills and legs foraging in the undergrowth near a stream while she was walking through a rainforest on May 11 this year.

Her notes and photographs, along with the recordings of the bird’s loud, harsh, rasping calls, later helped determine that the species was not only new to her, but also new to science. Locals, however, know the bird by the name ‘piding’. Some residents said the birds were there sometimes even caught for food.

“We expected many new distribution records for the Babuyan Islands, but a new bird species was completely unexpected,” said Española.

Oliveros said, “We plan to undertake further research to determine the habitat requirements, abundance and distribution of the rail, while working closely with local residents to minimize threats, and to encourage long-term initiatives to protect the forest.”

He added, “Although apparently not under the immediate threat, the limited distribution of the new species makes it vulnerable to habitat loss and predators introduced to the island such as cats and rats.”

Carlo Custodio, chief ecosystems management specialist of the Protected Areas and Wildlife Bureau, said “the Department of Environment and Natural Resources has taken the initiatial steps in the process of declaring the islands of the Babuyan group a protected area. The discovery of this rail inspires us to continue the work that has been started.”

Juan Carlos Gonzalez, a professor in zoology and wildlife biology at the University of the Philippines in Los Baños and a member of the survey team, said the new species may be classified as ‘vulnerable’ under the World Conservation Union Red List criteria for species of conservation concern.

Thia means the Calayan Rail faces a “high risk of extinction in the wild.”

Rails are ground-feeding and ground-nesting birds with long legs and straight pointed bills. Rails and other similar species have among the highest records of recently extinct or endangered birds.

Eighteen of the 20 living species of the flightless rail are considered threatened, and the majority of the rail species that have become extinct since 1600 were flightless, said a 1998 handbook on rails.

During their stay on the island, the nine-member expedition team saw adult and juvenile birds on several occasions. Within a two-kilometer range of their rainforest camp, they recorded an estimated 100-200 pairs.

The Calayan Rail also appears to be nearly or completely flightless. Expedition members said the birds were seen skulking in the undergrowth or out on open trails, sometimes alone, sometimes in family groups.

Altough it orange-red bill and legs look similar to the Okinawa Rail from the Ryukyu Islands in Japan, the Calayan Rail does not have a white stripe below the eye and black white barring in its underparts, said Gonzalez, who is one of the authors of the scientific paper describing the new species.

Apart from Española and Gonzales, other expedition members included Oriental bird specialist Desmond Allen (British), Harvey John Garcia, Marisol Pedegrosa, Mark Anthony Reyes and Amado Bajarias Jr. Most of the team are members of the Wild Bird Club of the Philippines.

The nine-week survey was funded through the Rufford Small Grant Committee and the Oriental Bird Club. Additional equipment was provided by IdeaWild USA.

The team surveyed the terrestrial fauna in Camiguin, Babuyan Claro, Calayan and Dalupiri Islands, which form part of the Babuyan Island group.

Calayan Island is still largely covered by rainforest and has 8,500 residents. The island was last visited by ornithologists exactly one hundred years ago.

“In the midst of the disapprearing rainforests of the Philippines and the drastic loss of biodiversity, the discovery of the Calayan Rail in one of the most fragile habitats in the archipelago is a sign of hope that it’s not too late to conserve these remote rainforests. But we need to conserve and learn about it before it’s too late,” added Gonzalez.