Diving in the Philippines

With over 7,000 islands (depending on the tide), located in warm, tropical waters, the Philippines is a diver’s Paradise. Here you will find everything you could possibly want, at least if you are a warm-water diver.

From the WWII shipwrecks of Coron to the Spanish wrecks of Subic and Puerto Galera, to the relatively unspoilt reefs of Tubbataha, and the whale sharks of Donsol, the Philippines is unquestionably blessed with boundless natural beauty.

But all is not well in Paradise. The Philippines is one of the poorest countries in Asia, and it is estimated that over 70% of its population lives at a subsistence level, eking a living from the land and the sea, often in destructive ways. Dynamite fishing is rife here, often sponsored by Taiwanese fishing conglomerates, and cyanide fishing is said to have originated here, initially as a handy and unchallenging way of catching small fish for the international aquarium trade, now more to stock seafood restaurants in Hong Kong and China with live fish.

As well, large fleets of foreign trawlers ply Philippine waters, having purchased concessions to do so, and not always legitimately either. With such a large body of water to patrol, the Philippine authorities are naturally hard pressed to enforce local legislation, and a high level of official corruption adds to the dismal picture. It is estimated that up to 80% of the coral reefs in the Philippines are either wholly or partially destroyed, whether from dynamite or cyanide, or both.

Still, there is treasure to be found here for the diver who knows where to go. Progress is being made to educate local villagers, teaching them that while a dead whale shark may earn them $400, a live one could earn them $400,000 over a period of time. It will take time for the devastated areas to bounce back, but with care, they will. There are still areas of incredible underwater beauty, and I will take you to some of them in the following.

Rather than attempt to write a dive guide to all of the Philippines, I will concentrate only on those areas I have so far managed to dive, updating this page as I hopefully get to sample more of the delights of diving here.

The areas covered here are Anilao, Puerto Galera, Mactan, Boracay and Club Noah near Palawan. These are some of the most popular sites in the country anyway, and will give you a good idea of what to expect here.

I will also touch on other issues dear to divers’ hearts, such as rental gear, travel issues, and prices.

In fact, let’s get those issues out of the way immediately:

RENTAL GEAR:

The dive industry here is self-regulated, but one of the prime money-earners for the quite undeveloped tourism industry in the Philippines. Uncharacteristically for South East Asia, diving is also a sport which the locals have embraced with typical Philippino enthusiasm, and as such, the standards are very high indeed.

While places like Boracay have the expected plethora of shoestring dive shops catering to the backpack tourist, each of the areas that I have dived have a large number of well-organized, reasonably priced dive shops with top-quality rental gear. Renting gear in the Philippines is something you might want to consider because of the…

TRAVEL RESTRICTIONS:

Many areas are only accessible via plane (unless you are into long trips in rickety buses), and a lot of these planes are very, very small. Commuter airplanes seating 20-30 passengers are the norm, unless you are flying to one of the main centers like Cebu or Davao.

For a diver, this creates the infuriating but very real problem of personal baggage restrictions of 10-15 kilos per person! Unless you plan to dive and otherwise frolic in the buff, you are going to have to spend this allowance on clothes and toiletries, leaving precious little, if any, room for dive gear. It is of course possible to pay overweight, and the rates are reasonable. But you will often have to either deliver your excess luggage to the airline a day in advance, or accept that it will only show up when they have room on the aircraft, whether that is one, two or three days after you yourself arrive at the destination. I would recommend that you consider bringing only the essentials. This would include a dive computer if you own one, mask and snorkel, booties and perhaps fins and a wetsuit. Rent your regulator and BCD, and anything else you might require. If you are a photographer, rent everything and bring only the camera!

PRICES:

Diving is very reasonably priced here. Generally, in all the locations I describe here, a dive with full equipment rental runs about $30. This is cheap for South East Asia, especially so given the high quality of gear and shops.

OTHER CONSIDERATIONS:

There are hidden dangers here. Both dengue fever and malaria are common, and so if you travel outside of Manila, you would do well to take that into consideration. This is especially true in Palawan and environs.

The quality of hospitals in the Philippines, especially outside of Manila is low, and some of the remote locations may not have much more than a clinic, if that.

On a more sinister note, the southernmost part of the country, the main island of Mindanao, is not a good place to travel to at this time. The Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the Abu Sayaff, both radical Muslim independence movements, finance their activities partially by kidnapping people and collecting ransom. Recently, the Abu Sayaff ventured as far as Sipadan in Malaysia to collect a number of foreign tourists, all of whom are still in captivity at the time of writing. Avoid Mindanao for the time being.

A beautiful gorgonian seafan blows in the current in Puerto Galera

Enough of the travel stuff, let’s go visit some of the dive sites. Being the lazy person that I am, rather than re-writing all the dive reports, I am simply going to copy the postings I have made to the SCUBA-L mailing list over the past 6 months, liberally sprinkled with pictures from the sites. Enjoy!

A mantis shrimp caught out in the open in Puerto Galera. Small critters like this are everywhere in the Philippines, a macro photographer’s dream!

PUERTO GALERA:

Puerto Galera has been on my hit list for years. This natural port has long been famous as one of the best shore-based diving destinations in the Philippines, for a number of very good reasons. With Songkhran (Thai New Year) coming up, TSAC had mustered 18 divers for the trip to PG, and it was good to have the usual gang assembled for 4 days in paradise.

"Puerto Galera" means "Galleon Port" in Spanish, and it was indeed used for that very purpose by the Spanish explorers and colonialists during the long period of Spanish rule in the islands. It is a perfect natural port, attached to the island of Mindoro, and accessible from Manila in less time than it takes to get to Anilao, the other famous retreat for dive-starved Manila residents.

Sabang Beach at Puerto Galera

Dive bancas waiting for business

To get to PG, one drives or takes a bus to the Port of Batangas, roughly 2.5 hours' scenic drive south of Manila, then either boards a hotel banca or buys a ticket on one of the many ferries plying the route from Batangas to PG. The crossing takes about an hour by banca or an hour and a half on the ferry. From the landing point in PG, it is rarely more than a 2-minute walk to whatever hotel one has chosen to stay at.

There is a plethora of hotels, resorts, guest houses and other types of accommodation in PG. The TSAC members had arranged everything from Thailand, and were scattered over several establishments, none good! Soyong and I, on the other hand, were in the Honeymoon Suite at the Atlantis Resort (http://www.atlantishotel.com), with a huge patio overlooking the sea and a wonderful, spacious room in a style that can best be described as Spanish-Hacienda-Meets-The-Flintstones :-)

The suites at Atlantis run $100 per night (cheap for a top-quality resort in the Philippines), and the patios have their own bar and large entertainment area, perfect for a party...Regular rooms, still head and shoulders above anything else in PG, are $60 per night.

PG became famous in 1972, when a diver came upon the remains of a Spanish galleon in the harbor. Several have since been found, and artifacts are continuously discovered by local dive shops. Diving on the galleons is OOB, since excavations are ongoing. It is to be hoped that at least some of the loot finds its way into museums, not always the case in the Philippines.

The area is protected from blast- and cyanide fishing by the local community, and they are evidently doing an excellent job. We never saw any evidence of these destructive fishing practices, and the only blast we heard underwater was on a trip to the nearby Verde Islands, of which more later.

All diving was arranged with Capt'n Gregg's, one of the leading establishments in PG. Capt'n Gregg's has recently (and in my opinion rightly) acquired infamy in parts of the worldwide diving community, for the world record-breaking deep air diving activities undertaken by some of the staff. But we weren't there to dive deep, and the subject stayed largely untouched upon throughout our stay.

The staff at Capt'n Gregg's were professional, friendly, helpful and knowledgeable about the area, and run a top-notch diving operation. Excellent and well-maintained equipment is available for rent, and the entire operation is obviously run by professionals. The packrats among you will be gratified to learn that Capt'n Gregg's also has by far the coolest diving T-shirts, designed by Roger Harvey, the cartoonist of Asian Diver fame!

View from the balcony at Atlantis

Spectacular sunsets are part of the Philippines experience

The diving in PG is predominantly drift diving. The area has many similarities with Cozumel, being situated in the strait between Mindoro and Batangas and almost permanently featuring currents.

Sometimes the currents are quite mild, but they can move at up to 3-4 knots on regular tidal exchanges. The waters are deep, dropping off to 40 meters+ quite rapidly, and dropping to hundreds of meters in places. The visibility is normally very good at 30 meters and over, although we had a few dives with markedly lower viz, owing to several days' rain just before our arrival.

However, with the strong currents and lack of rain, the visibility improved rapidly, and nobody had any complaints in that area. The underwater terrain varies significantly, offering anything from shallow reefs to vertical walls, canyons, overhangs, pinnacles and caves. There are at least 30 regularly visited dive sites within a 10-minute banca ride from the beach.

SKY'S DIVE: Our first dive of the trip, and the only one to feature low visibility. "Low" is of course a relative term, and I guess it was still at 15 meters or so, conditions that would induce heart palpitations in many of our diving mates and matettes in colder climes :-)

The first thing that strikes you in PG is the phenomenal amounts of crinoids! Nowhere else have I seen such an abundance of these critters, in such psychedelic colors. They are everywhere, clustered in bouquets adorning the healthy coral, and swimming freely until a diver comes along, at which point they may try to hitch a ride. No doubt, the strong currents account for the presence of these filter feeders in such abundance. The coral itself was very healthy, with a good variety of both hard and soft corals, including the most breathtaking PURPLE sea fans, a rare sight in this neck of the woods.

The current was brisk but not unmanageable, and we drifted slowly along, taking in the magnificent scenery. All around us were schools of red-toothed triggerfish, pyramid butterflyfish, quite a number of titan triggerfish, and other fish collectively termed ARF ("Assorted Reef Fish"). There were several species of morays, and lots of the colorful nudibranchs that one sees everywhere in the islands. A very good start to the vacation!

Banded coral shrimp

Garden eels poke out of the sand if you wait long enough

ERNIE'S CAVE:

I never saw a cave on this dive, but I suspect this is because I got lost :-) I literally lost my buddies 30 seconds into the dive, and spent the next 45 minutes in delightful solitude. I was part of a buddy threesome, and as soon as I hit the bottom, I spotted an exquisite nudibranch, which I absolutely had to get a picture of. A few minutes later, when I looked up, my buddies were gone. Bearing them no grudge, I set off on a solo dive, knowing that the current would definitely carry me in the same direction they had gone.

It was a wonderful dive. I shot two rolls of film (my Nik V fitted with a 28mm lens and my housed Nikon with a 105), intruding on the privacy of nudibranch, garden eels, morays, triggerfish, crinoids, and scorpionfish. After 45 minutes, I came upon my buddies, just as they were completing their safety stop. They waved resignedly at me, I finished my stop, and we all got back in the waiting banca. Come to think of it, nobody said anything about a cave! As a measure of how serene the dive was, I surfaced with 100 bar left in the tank, after 45 minutes at average 15 meters, and two rolls of film...

Gold flaked moray eel

VERDE ISLAND:

Verde Island is not dived as often. The main reason is that this is a long trip by PG standards, requiring a 2-hour banca ride each way to get to the site. The site is the remnant of an old Spanish fort, which slid into the sea at some point in the last 200 years. It sits atop a large (VERY large) pinnacle, dropping from 3 meters to 60-70 at the bottom.

This site is a MUST, and is quite possibly one of the top 10 dives of my life! Visibility was endless, the coral exquisite, and the marine life so prolific that one had the feeling of diving in an aquarium. Little orange anthias were everywhere, by the thousands, a large school of jacks was playing in the distance, and the reef was teeming with life. I have rarely seen such a healthy site outside of the Discovery Channel.

Verde Island is an aquarium!

A banded sea snake

Don’t overlook the little things

If wide-angle photographers have a heaven, then it can't be much better than Verde Island. But there was lots of macro life, too, including some very large green and red nudibranchs, lots of clownfish, scorpionfish and the like. The nudibranch must be in heat, as their red, rose-shaped egg clusters were everywhere, and to top it all off, we were visited by a 1.5 meter black and white-banded sea snake at the safety stop. I had unfortunately run out of film in the Nik V, but the divemaster helpfully manhandled the snake into position for some headshots with the 105!!!

Truly a world-class dive, which will stay with me for a long time. While we did hear one blast while underwater, it was so far away as to not even bring the usual pressure wave with it, and the site itself bore no evidence of dynamite fishing. According to Philippine press, over 300 TONS of dynamite is used in the islands, per MONTH, but apparently not in this particular location. Phew!

WASHING MACHINE:

From Verde, we were off to a curious site called the Washing Machine. It is sometimes also referred as "Mini Canyons". Both are accurate descriptions of the site.

The site is essentially a series of parallel canyons, obviously broken by a series of ridges. The canyons are interconnected, giving the impression of a maze. The kicker is that when a current is running (as it was now), the current is funneled into one canyon, there to travel the length of the canyon and get amplified before it hits the next canyon, but then obviously flowing in the OPPOSITE direction!

This essentially leads to a diving experience wherein one expends significant energy getting from one end to the other against the current, only to cross over to the next and get hurled at breakneck speed to the end of that. The process is then repeated until the diver has had enough, runs low on air, or is beaten to a pulp :-)

The site was very healthy, with lots of things to see, but as you can imagine, it is not for everyone. While the site was interesting, and the special effects breathtaking (in every sense of the word), it is not something I would care to go through again while trying to protect a housing, a Nikonos and two strobes from rocks, flying divers and other hazards! I would have preferred a second dive at Verde, but there you have it. Live and learn :-)

Little stuff matters, too

A sea slug laying eggs in the coral

CANYONS:

This site, widely touted as the best dive in PG, was our first dive the next day. It is a much more open site, with lots of canyons and ridges, but much wider than the ones at Washing Machine.

Lots of healthy coral grow on a granite substrate, and there are huge sea fans and clusters of soft coral. The fish life here is larger, with several giant trevally and tunas making an appearance, and it is here that one can sometimes see gray reef sharks, whitetips and blacktips. Regrettably, none of these came out to play that day, but the site was still beautiful. In many ways, Canyons is similar to the Similan Islands in Thailand. There were a couple of big fields of garden eels, the most infuriating photographic subject next to clownfish, and lots of morays as well.

WRECK OF ST. CHRISTOPHER:

The wrecks that divers visit in PG are all artificial. That is, they are wrecks all right, but they were sunk on purpose. Most are in the bay just off Sabang Beach, and thus only a 1-minute banca ride away, if one is too lazy to just swim out there and drop down. The St. Christopher is an old fishing boat, approximately 20 meters long and 8 wide. It is of an entirely wooden construction, and much has already rotted away. It sits in 25 meters of water with not much else nearby, and so it is a fairly short dive, especially with a deep dive like Canyons under the belt a few hours earlier.

But the St. Christopher will always stand for me as one hell of a dive, because it gave me one of my best experiences ever as a photographer:

The St. Christopher

Frogfish face

Imagine descending on a wreck that can actually be contained by a wide-angle lens, in visibility clear enough to make such a picture feasible. As you absorb yourself in this task, you are surrounded by friendly batfish and tangs, some almost brushing you, and when you have feasted your lens on this spectacle, the divemaster leads you to two huge frogfish, sitting on the wreck as if they had carefully selected the best spot to be in, should a photographer happen on them!

When you have finished, and NDLs are drawing near, you ascend along the slope that you know will eventually end on the beach itself, along the way meeting a friendly stingray, a cockpit from a Japanese Zero fighter, and a plethora of ARF. Very nice indeed!

SABANG WRECKS AND SABANG BAY:

There are two more wrecks in Sabang bay. One is a yacht that was sunk just a few years ago, held in place by a cradle that lets it sit upright on the sand. The wreck itself does not have that much growth on it yet, but is home to a large school of batfish and tangs. Again, it is a neat photo subject because of its size and the visibility in the area.

The other wreck is a large wooden banca, similar to the St. Christopher but not anywhere near as large.

This dive is, to my way of thinking, much more memorable for the swim back to shore. This time, you are left at the site and required to make your own way back to the dive shop, necessitating an ascent along the slope all the way to the beach. Along the way, you come across patches of coral and schools of fish, and pipefish are very common all over the sandy bottom. There are, again, large fields of garden eels and other diversions.

Sabang Wreck

Garden Eel under the Floating Bar

As a special bonus, you can make a safety stop in almost exactly 5 meters, directly underneath PG's famous floating bar, permanently anchored about 100 meters into the bay. Bikini-clad nymphs and muscle-bound beach lions interact in the water between drinks, blissfully unaware that the divemaster is selling tickets to the show 5 meters beneath them :-)))

Or so I was told. I, of course, take my diving much more seriously than that, and spent a few minutes with a garden eel I have never seen before, gold flaked and very cooperative ;-)

BORACAY:

The island of Boracay is famous for having what is often touted as one of the world's top 10 beaches. With almost 3 kilometers of bright white sand the consistency of powdered sugar, located in the middle of the clear waters of the Sibuyan Sea, Boracay is on the "map" of virtually all travelers in Asia as a place that one must visit. It has been on my list for almost 8 years since I first heard of it.

Boracay has suffered an image problem, due to the unchecked growth of tourism, unaccompanied by the necessary infrastructural improvements, especially with regard to sewage treatment, but this has been successfully addressed and rectified over the last couple of years. It is still, with a few exceptions, a backpacker paradise, with little in the way of sophisticated nightlife, large shopping malls or even resorts.

We did manage to book a decent hotel, the Pearl of the Pacific. This hotel, its neighbor, Waling-Waling, and the newly opened Boracay Regency, are the only hotels on the island worth more than 2 stars. The rest are typically concrete block bungalows and downwards.

The beach was certainly beautiful, fully worthy of its reputation, but with way too many super-annoying vendors of all the usual paraphernalia and junk of beach life. Wandering masseuses (of the decent kind) make it bearable, though, offering 1-hour massages for 120 Pesos, about $3 :-)

Calypso, the only PADI 5-star IDC center on the island (out of probably 50 dive shops), has a small satellite facility at the Pearl, so without checking further, I simply booked with them. I was impressed by their rental gear (which I have come to rely on in the Philippines, given the ridiculous baggage allowances for inter-island flight). Brand-new ScubaPro regulators and BCDs, Mares fins and Mares accessories, good-looking tanks, and a competent staff. The divemaster was a freshly minted instructor, a South African who found it endlessly amusing that the slogan of the Boracay Foundation (the environmental watchdog) is, "Boracay Beach - Let's Keep it White" :-)) Since there were few tourists on the island when we were there, I dived with him and had a lot of fun.

All diving in Boracay is from bancas, the ubiquitous outriggers, but the dive-bancas in Boracay are quite oversized, and easily accommodate 10 divers. Like almost everywhere else in the Philippines, the furthest site is maybe 20 minutes from the beach, so it is possible to fit in dives even if you are with non-diving family, without upsetting the family harmony too much :-)

Boracay is not known for high-voltage diving, but there is one site, Yapag, which every guide touts as a must. So naturally I was excited to learn that the first dive was scheduled for that site. Unfortunately, when we arrived, the current was causing visible disturbance on the surface, indicating that a real ripper was passing below, and it was decided to abandon and move to another site called Bat Caves. I was not too disappointed with this, as my goal was photography, and very strong currents don't mix well with cameras.

Ever wondered what the inside of a moray eel looks like …?

Bat Caves was pretty much a waste of time. The only attraction is a cavern (depth: 0-6 meters!), which you can swim into and surface. Surfacing is quite neat, because you enter a very large dry cave with a few sinkholes providing natural light, and lots of bats flying around overhead. Before the nice rental gear got too guano-stained, we exited, and spent the next 30 minutes searching for anything else worth seeing.

It was hard going, but at least I did find a black garden eel, popping up and down its hole literally 30 centimeters in front of the camera! This most unusual behavior was delightful from a photographer's point-of-view, but since I had only taken the Nik V with the 28 mm lens, I doubt that the pictures will be phenomenal. We shall see. Bat Caves is NOT recommended for anything but total novices.

The following day, I was booked for a Yapag dive in the late morning, the shop's second dive of the day. When I boarded the banca, I learned, much to my disappointment, that the group already onboard had just returned from Yapag, and were not inclined to going back! Miscommunication between the main shop and the satellite had caused this most unfortunate incident, but I was assured by the other divers that Yapag had not been spectacular that morning, and that I wouldn't be missing anything. Instead, we proceeded to a site called Friday's Rock, only 10 minutes from the beach.

Friday's Rock is actually two rocks, submerged at a max depth of 18 meters. The water was crystal clear, and the site was not bad at all. Lots of soft coral, morays and garden eels, nudibranch, a large school of juvenile catfish, and the usual assorted reef fish, made this a very enjoyable, unchallenging dive. Good going for the camera, too. The only fly in the ointment is that some areas of the site are used for fish-feeding, something you can't seem to avoid in the Philippines. This means that in areas of the site, you are mugged by large bands of black damselfish (I mean hundreds and hundreds of the creatures), bloody annoying.

Nudibranch Eggs

Yapag scene

For my last dive the following day, I had made it unmistakably clear to the shop that I wanted to dive Yapag, even if I had to charter the whole damned banca for myself. This, I was assured, was not necessary, and they were in fact endlessly embarrassed by the cock-up of the previous day, so I boarded the Yapag-bound banca early in the morning on slack tide.

It is time to describe Yapag, and why it is not always possible to dive this site. The site is a deep wall that STARTS at 36 meters, with the bottom approximately 60 meters deeper that that! Located in the narrow strait between Boracay and a neighboring island whose name escapes me, the site is regularly visited by very strong currents.

When this is the case, no-one dives Yapag, not because the current itself is a challenge, but because calculating the area in which to start the descent and still get to the wall is very difficult. Start in the wrong place, and you will never see Yapag.

It had been well worth the wait to dive this site. Moments after hitting the wall, as it were, I was transported right back to Ngemelis Wall in Palau! The visibility was maybe 30 meters, there was absolutely no current, and I was surrounded by huge amounts of pyramid butterflyfish and red-toothed triggerfish, exactly like in Palau.

The wall was festooned with enormous gorgonian seafans, and there were even a couple of white-tip reef sharks and a school of black snappers to give that Palau-feeling. Grey reef sharks are often spotted here as well, but regrettably none was present on that day. With only one dive per day under my belt, and being alone with another instructor, we had decided to go a little bit over the limits of the computers, and stayed until both our Aladin Pro Nitrox computers gave us 10 minutes of decompression time to surface.

The dive was so smooth and serene that we both surfaced after a dive to a maximum depth of 43 meters for 15 minutes plus decompression, with about 100 bar left in our tanks. A most befitting end to the trip, and I came back to the family grinning from ear to ear! When told of the sharks, my Korean mother-in-law was visibly starting to wonder whether her daughter had made the right choice, and her husband wanted to know when he might be able to go fishing there :-)

Nudibranch

Friday’s Rock scene

On balance, Boracay can not be called a dive destination, but is a good and very safe family vacation spot with the odd bit of top-quality diving thrown in, provided you are comfortable with the type of diving Yapag offers.

CLUB NOAH:

Club Noah is located in the northeast area of the province of Palawan, the westernmost part of the Philippines. The island is home only to the resort, a marine research station, and a lot of jungle.

Getting there is a bit of a trip, although it certainly doesn't take as long as getting to, say, Sipadan. A 15-seater commuter aircraft flies from a private hangar in Manila to the airport of Taytay, a 1-kilometer airstrip with a bamboo hut at the end. From there, a 15-minute jeepney ride takes you to the river, where you board a speedboat for transfer to the ocean-going banca. The banca then takes you on a 45-minute ride to the island itself. Total travel time from Manila to the island is approximately 3 hours, and the most ungodly part of it is that the flight leaves at 0700 from Manila, meaning that you will have to get up at 0400 to make it!

THE RESORT: Nestled in one of the most beautiful bays I have ever seen (which is something), each room is a stand-alone hut or 2-storey family bungalow, set on stilts in the water. A stairway leads from each balcony straight into the ocean, enabling a quick swim whenever one feels like it. A nice little touch is the freshwater shower also found on the balcony. The rooms are well-appointed, with mini bar, king-size bed, separate bath and toilet. Very clean and well-maintained.

There are several restaurants, all serving buffet-based meals. Four bars, including one set half-way up the mountain (no elevators, sorry) make getting a drink easy, and the staff is delightful.

The resort offers snorkeling (lots of fish and small blacktip reef sharks all over the place), sea kayaking, bird watching (the feathered kind), lounging on the beach, island hopping picnics, spelunking, and diving. There are no annoying speedboats, jet skis or other noisy contraptions.

There are two diving areas, namely the area immediately in front of the resort, and another island approximately 15 minutes away by banca.

The area in front of the resort is relatively shallow (15 meters), and is mainly a fish feeding site. This has obviously been going on for quite some time, as it is impossible to get in the water there without immediately being surrounded by all kinds of fish looking for a handout. They include Napoleon wrasses, giant trevallys, groupers, yellowtails, jacks, and the occasional very small blacktip shark. The visibility is not that great, maybe 15 meters, depending on how much sand the divers kick up. I gave up, and swam off into macro-land, where I found many interesting subjects. Very colorful nudibranch, flatworms, grouper cleaning stations, lionfish, pipefish and suchlike were quite easy to find, and I looked despairingly at the gawking divers watching the fish feeding up above, thinking that if only they knew what they were missing :-)

A small grouper getting ready for a dental cleaning

Pipefish at Club Noah

The state of the coral was difficult to determine. For sure, Anilao offers much more colorful and varies reefs, and it was evident that quite a bit of blast fishing had taken place here in the past. Lots of hard coral, but not a lot of soft stuff, anemones and all the other elements that really add color. It is possible that blast fishing and the thrashings of the divers watching the feeding has decimated the coral as well. The visibility was still not that hot once you left the fish feeding frenzy, but that could be a seasonal thing.

The second area is at another island, and features a long sloping drop-off, turning into a wall in places. The coral was in a much better state here, and the fish life was quite prolific. Lots of macro subjects again, and the visibility was similar to the area in front of the resort. One dive here saw a very strong current, which made for a fun drift.

In general, though, I would say that if you do go to Club Noah, diving should not be your reason for going. While we had 4 pretty good dives, the diving could not hold a candle to Anilao, where spectacular visibility, coral and fish/macro life can be had for a fraction of the price.

ANILAO:

Anilao is the diving back yard of Manila, only 125 kilometers from the city - 2.5 hours' driving in Philippine traffic on a good day! Saturday afternoon, we hired a car and a driver and set off for Eagle Point Resort, on the very tip of the Batangas Peninsula.

The resort is nice, not overly luxurious, but with private bungalows right at the water's edge, overlooking the bay and the nearby islands. The weather couldn't really decide whether it wanted to rain or shine, so it finally settled on overcast, which suited us fine, since we haven't really spent a lot of time in the sun lately.

Sunday morning at 8, we were in the resort's dive shop, the Safety Stop, where we learned that, as usual in Philippine diving, most of the sites were about 5 minutes' banca-ride away! A "banca" is the ubiquitous Philippine boat, long and sleek, with two bamboo outriggers and a small engine. A crew of 3 man the boat and the lookout post in the bow, and (dare I say it ?) assemble your gear if you want them to. The rebel in me told me to let them go ahead, and they did a fine job for all 3 of us (only one of our friends could dive, the other being pregnant) :-)

A hermit crab in Anilao

Anilao is commonly described as a macro photographer's paradise, and since that is normally dive shop-speak for "shitty visibility", I had decided to leave the camera in Bangkok, for my first non-training dives without a camera in a long, long time (years!). That was a serious mistake.

The visibility was great, at least 30 meters, and although Anilao is generally sadly lacking in large animals (overfishing), there was plenty of material for hundreds of pictures! At least 5 nudibranchs I have only seen in coffee-table books taunted me with their presence within the first 10 minutes of the dive, followed by 2 mantis shrimps lying out in the open, a large number of fantastic scorpionfish, and at least 6 species of clownfish. A couple of morays, including a fimbriated moray, rounded off this macro showcase.

A short surface interval on a little desert island, and off to the next dive. Again, visibility was awesome, and the current was slight. This dive was on a very short wall, maybe 50 meters in length. Started the dive over the sand (always take a detour out over the sand when wall-diving), and was rewarded with a titan triggerfish in a good mood, as well as 2 more species of nudibranch. Lots of clownfish, of which some were in a very aggressive mood, and I had a small boxing competition with a few :-)

We traveled the length of the wall twice at different depths, then went over the plateau and into a beautiful coral garden. The coral on all the sites we saw was spectacularly healthy, with lots of coral types I have never seen before. This was a small surprise, given what one always hears about dynamite and cyanide fishing in the Philippines.

Gold flaked moray

Lionfish

The last dive of the day (and the trip, since we had to fly back Monday) was at a site called Cathedral. It claims to be the best-known dive site in the Philippines, possibly because the previous President, Fidel Ramos, an avid diver, placed a cross here, which is getting a nice coral encrustation. This site is a fish-feeding site, where one can get mugged by 500 or so black damselfish, whether one brings food or not. We did (bring food and get mugged), and that was fun for about a minute. Then on to the two seamounts with the small canyon between them. This site is closer to land, and so the visibility is not as good, but still a respectable 15+ meters.

Bigger fish here, including a school of trevally, lots of nudibranch and another mantis shrimp. Again very healthy coral, despite the fact that this is normally one of the most frequently used training sites, lots of scorpionfish, including one lying on the cross itself.

The resident instructor at the Safety Stop has one of the most awesome training facilities I have ever seen, and I believe it must be unique: The pool in which he conducts confined water classes is a salt water pool, HUGE, into which he has introduced batfish, pufferfish, coral, butterflyfish - and 10 small blacktip reef sharks!

He buys them from the fishermen, who would otherwise fin them and throw them overboard, and when they grow big enough, he lets them go. He is on his 3rd batch of sharks, and claims that the students love them! What a great introduction to sharks. If you don't want to dive with them, you can naturally elect to do your dives in the fresh water pool, but few do. When he is not conducting training, the pool is open to snorkelers, and is a huge success with kids. Full marks in my book.

Yet another of the many colorful types of nudibranch to be found in Anilao