I lived in the Philippines for four years and managed to visit a few sites. My top four sites are:
1. Malapascua Island
Not so many good dives but one VERY good. Monad shoal where you can see and swim with tresher sharks on a more or less daily basis. You need to do an early morning dive since the treshers go to this small shallow area (about 20-25 m where the surroundings are hundreds of meters.) to be cleaned by cleaner fish and cleaner shrimp.
2. Apo Island outside Dumagete, Negros Oriental. Poor facilities but excellent diving. Lots of turtles, snakes, firefish and giant schoals of Jacks. Good drift dives.
3. Puerto Galera
Very good facilities. I recomend Asia Divers where I always stay. Many, many good dives (maybe 40-50 different dives). Good for techies. Several world record tech dives. Safe diving and excellent place for a new certification.
4. Boracay and Maningning
Boracay is supposed to have one of the best beaches in the world. Only one good site at main island. That is Yapak. Early morning dives can be fantastic. I once met 3 grey reef sharks and around 15 1.5+ m dogtoth tunas. Maningning is about 2-3 thre hours away and very remote. Not many divers at all. In one dive my group saw napoleon wrasses, hammerhead shark, tresher shark, whitetip reefshark, blacktip reefshark and eagle ray to mention only the more exiting animals. The visibility was estimated to 60 m that day. Our only problem was that the fish saw us and avoided us. The trick was to go shallow on top of a 8-10 m dropoff and just look down outside now and then. Outside this wall it was 55-60 m and we could easily see all the way down.
Please let me know if you will need any further info or advice on divecenters.
1. Malapascua Island
Not so many good dives but one VERY good. Monad shoal where you can see and swim with tresher sharks on a more or less daily basis. You need to do an early morning dive since the treshers go to this small shallow area (about 20-25 m where the surroundings are hundreds of meters.) to be cleaned by cleaner fish and cleaner shrimp.
2. Apo Island outside Dumagete, Negros Oriental. Poor facilities but excellent diving. Lots of turtles, snakes, firefish and giant schoals of Jacks. Good drift dives.
3. Puerto Galera
Very good facilities. I recomend Asia Divers where I always stay. Many, many good dives (maybe 40-50 different dives). Good for techies. Several world record tech dives. Safe diving and excellent place for a new certification.
4. Boracay and Maningning
Boracay is supposed to have one of the best beaches in the world. Only one good site at main island. That is Yapak. Early morning dives can be fantastic. I once met 3 grey reef sharks and around 15 1.5+ m dogtoth tunas. Maningning is about 2-3 thre hours away and very remote. Not many divers at all. In one dive my group saw napoleon wrasses, hammerhead shark, tresher shark, whitetip reefshark, blacktip reefshark and eagle ray to mention only the more exiting animals. The visibility was estimated to 60 m that day. Our only problem was that the fish saw us and avoided us. The trick was to go shallow on top of a 8-10 m dropoff and just look down outside now and then. Outside this wall it was 55-60 m and we could easily see all the way down.
Please let me know if you will need any further info or advice on divecenters.