MAGIC ISLAND DIVE RESORT
Diving in Moalboal, Cebu
MAGIC ISLAND DIVE RESORT
Diving in Moalboal, Cebu
MAGIC ISLAND DIVE RESORT
Diving in Moalboal, Cebu

Diving in Moalboal

Moalboal has a vast array of marine life, from the very tiny Denise Pygmy Seahorse, to the sexy and elegant Thresher Shark that is often spotted hunting the huge school of Sardines that reside at Panagsama Wall. The Sardine bait ball is a spectacle all by itself, with well over a million sardines making up the school. Watching them shift and change shapes as the predators swoop in to catch a tasty mouth full is just mesmerizing.
Pescador Island is just a 10 minute boat ride away. This little uninhabited islet rises up out of the Tañon Strait, creating a perfect place for marine life to flourish. Its huge walls drop down to 60 plus meters, with colorful soft corals and Gorgonian Sea Fans clinging to the rocky face, and all the tropical fish you can think of. On the West side of the islet, you have ‘The Cathedral’ a huge cavern that has numerous large entry and exit points, looking back out of the cavern it has the eerie appearance of a skull.

Moalboal has 31 beautiful dive sites to choose from. Here is a description of the highlights:

5. Fish feeding
Depth: 5 t- 35 meters / 15 – 115 ft.
Visibility: 15 – 30 meters / 50 – 100 ft.
A simply fantastic slope full of corals. Between all these corals the turtles are sleeping, big fish are looking for a meal, shrimps and crabs are hiding in anemones and soft corals, and so on. Ghost pipe fish are seen here a lot. By the way: we do not feed the fish!

8. White beach
Depth: 4 – 35 meters /15 – 115 ft.
Visibility: 15 – 30 meters / 50 – 100 ft.
This slope is extremely colourful because of the great diversity of soft and hard corals and also all sorts of anemones, each with their own specific inhabitant. You can also meet potato groupers, snappers and turtles.

19. Sardine Bait Ball
Depth: 3 – 40 meters / 10 – 130 ft.
Visibility: 15 – 25 meters / 5 0 – 80 ft.
An excellent dive for beginners and for the divers who love small things. You start the dive at 15 metres and slowly ascent to 10 metres. The chances of seeing a school of sardines being chased by tuna fish is high. There is always a chance that a whale shark will pass by.

24. Talisay Wall
Depth: 5 – 55 meters / 15 – 180 ft.
Visibility: 15 – 30 meters / 50 – 100 ft.
A variable dive with a slope and wall. There a several caves to be found and explored. Lots of black coral, bat fish, barracuda, mandarin fish and sometimes a turtle. Because of the combination of slope and wall, this is also a great place for a night dive. Want to join us?!

27. Magic point, our house reef!
Depth: 5 – 55 meters / 15 – 180 ft.
Visibility: 15 – 25 meters / 50 – 80 ft.
Schools of jacks and tuna hunting on a prestige reef covered with hard, soft and fan corals. We also have our frogfish, a black, yellow and grey one. There are always turtles around and even while snorkelling you’re bound to see them. We’ve even seen a whale shark and several white tip reef sharks on our house reef. During a night dive you can see decorator crabs, cuttlefish, nudibranchs, snake eels, sea snakes and many more.

28. Goby Point
Depth: 5 – 10 meters / 15 – 30 ft.
Visibility: 10 – 15 meters / 30 – 50 ft.
Big rocks on a sandy bottom with masses of small life like boxer shrimps, signal gobbies, nudibranchs, pegasus and much more. The perfect afternoon dive!

30. Pescador Island east
Depth: 5 – 65 meters / 15 – 200 ft.
Visibility: 20 – 40 meters / 65 – 130 ft.
The dive starts at a plateau that turns into a sloop which is covered with all kinds of hard and soft coral. If you take a good look, you’ll find a lot of scorpion fish, razor fish, sweetlips, potato groupers, snappers, schools of tuna and barracuda. The dive ends on a plateau. Look carefully and you’ll find a lot of small marine life here.

31. Pescador Island Cathedral
Depth: 5 – 65 meters / 15 – 200 ft.
Visibility: 20 – 40 meters / 65 – 130 ft.
There is an unbelievable variety of corals, frog fish, schools of lion fish, barracudas, tuna and snappers, etc. There is a magnificent cave that has a heavenly view of the surface so it’s easy to see why it’s called the Cathedral. Occasionally you will meet sharks and at the northeast side there is a plateau where you can find nudibranchs, shrimps and lots of other small marine life. The wall is covered with soft coral which offers a home to octopus, moray eels, snake-eels, nudibranchs and many more.

FLUORO DIVING

This is a very different way to try a night dive. You use a special UV light torch and a special lense over your mask which allows you to see the fluorescent colors emitted by the fish or coral when under UV light. For some strange reason, unknown to science, many marine creatures fluoresce under UV light, which is usually invisible to the human eye. The reef turns into a whole new spectrum of colors; the once dull brown hard coral is now glowing bright red, and Moray Eels are no longer camouflaged but shining yellow like the sun. It’s like being in down town Tokyo at night time! A sight not to be missed.

THE MANDARIN FISH

Another great attraction on our house reef is the Mandarin dive. Just 40m away from the front of the dive center and only 4m deep, live the Mandarin fish. A very small, colorful and bizarre looking dragonet. The Mandarin is famous for the elaborate show it puts on in the evenings. Every day, except during full moon, these tiny little fish, which are usually very shy, come out of hiding to mate. They chase each other around as if they are dancing amongst the corals, eventually attaching to one another and rising up off the reef before releasing a cloud of eggs and sperm. The goal is to see if you can get a photo at that exact moment, which is a lot harder than it sounds.
Read the blog of Nick and Caroline of Scubaverse about their Mandarin dive here.

THE BLACKOUT DIVES

Another great way to change up a night dive. This dive involves heading out to the open ocean during the night time hours, jumping in, descending down a few meters until you are comfortable and looking to see what swims into your view. It can be quite eerie floating there surrounded by total darkness except for the thin ray of light that shines from your torch, and at the same time it can be quite amazing what weird and wonderful things may float by or be attracted to you.

THE WHALE SHARKS

The Philippines are not known as the best place to see big underwater life, but we often have some spectacular encounters. Whale sharks visit Moalboal all year round because the waters here are very rich in the plankton they feed on. They range from 7 up to 14 meters long! Dolphins are around all year too, but whether they appear is, of course, up to these intelligent animals.

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