Diving in Cabilao

Divers do not report them. Schooling scalloped hammerheads were the island's fame in the 1990s, and they are reported as fished out around 1999 and 2000. The date comes from a single journalist's account of a week on the island in 2019, with a vague recollection of twenty or more years earlier behind it, so 1999 to 2000 is a reported window and not a documented one. What is well supported is the absence since: dive reports from 2007 onward, including a structured record from 2013 and an eleven-dive stay in 2017, list no sharks, and the largest animals mentioned are turtles and wrasse. Tour and catalogue copy still sells a December to April hammerhead season. Do not plan a dive around it.

For wall and macro diving, yes. The west coast is a gorgonian wall hung with sea fans, barrel sponges and soft coral, with two species of pygmy seahorse on the deeper fans, and the north and east add ghost pipefish, frogfish, sea moths and night dives. Green turtles are routine. Divers who rate it highly say so on coral and colour, and say in the same breath that there are no big fish. If pelagics are the point, this is the wrong island.

They are different trips. Balicasag is known for its jackfish school and coral slopes and is usually dived as a boat day from Panglao. Cabilao is an island you stay on, and what it offers is coloured walls and macro with no big fish. Several divers rate Cabilao's reef above Balicasag's, though most of those comparisons were made before Typhoon Odette. If you want to be somewhere quiet with nothing to do but dive, Cabilao is the one; if your week is already based on the Panglao strip, Balicasag is the easier add.

Reportedly yes in the shallows and much less on the deep wall, though the only post-typhoon account is one observer's four dives at three sites between 31 July and 3 August 2025, made to look at hard coral. The reef flat at Lighthouse 1 and South Point was mostly rock and rubble with algae where hard coral stood before 2021, with sparse small recruits at nine to twelve metres, while Gorgonia Wall was still a very nice wall with large sea fans at around 27 metres. The glowing coral descriptions of Cabilao all predate the typhoon, so expect less hard coral in the shallows than older trip reports promise.

Ask your resort what it expects; the real question is depth more than the card. The west-coast walls continue past recreational limits, so your certification depth limit is a decision you take on the surface. Open Water divers have plenty at the top of the wall and on the sand, slope and coral-block sites, which suit a newly certified diver. The deeper fans that hold the pygmy seahorses sit around 25 metres, beyond the Open Water limit, so Advanced training opens up the macro the island is known for.

Three or four, a figure divers have repeated for years. The island has a modest set of sites, all close, and no single attraction that holds a diver for a fortnight, the way a shoal or a shark station does. There is a restored Spanish-era lighthouse with a small museum and quiet roads, and not much nightlife. Longer stays suit divers who want exactly that, or who pair it with Panglao, Dauin or Moalboal.

Every route ends in a boat, because the island is not bridged to Bohol the way its neighbours Sandingan and Pangangan are. A resort transfer from Tagbilaran or the Panglao airport takes about two hours door to door by van and banca. Independently, a bus from Tagbilaran's Dao terminal toward Talibon or Tubigon runs about an hour to the Moalong bridge for around 120 pesos, then a tricycle to Mocpoc pier for about 100, then a boat; when no scheduled crossing is running, a boat hired straight to the resort cost about 1,000 pesos in 2025. A bus to Loon port and a banca from there is another option, and a public banca has crossed the Cebu Strait from Argao, landing at Talisay pier.

It can be done and it is a long day. Panglao shops run the trip only when they can fill a boat, and the crossing is three hours by boat or about an hour and a half by road plus a short boat ride. Divers who know the island say the best way to dive it is to stay, which also gets you afternoon dives on the west wall, where the light is best.

It carries several labels and only one affects a diver. A 1978 proclamation named the island a tourist zone beside Panglao and Balicasag, which is a development control with no diving rule. The island also sits inside a mangrove swamp forest reserve, a forest instrument that does not govern diving. Online you will read that its protection was removed in 2017; that rests on a House Bill, and a bill is only a proposal and changes no law by itself. What can be checked is that the Expanded NIPAS Act of 2018 legislates 94 protected areas and Cabilao is not among the five in Bohol, while the environment department still publishes the reserve's profile. The reserve's standing today is unresolved. For a diver, what counts is local: two barangay-level no-take marine protected areas.

On Cabilao the resort and the dive centre come as a pair, so the choice of bed is the choice of operator. The resorts sit in Pantudlan and Cambaquiz and run boats that reach any site on the island in minutes. Because occupancy is low, private guides and private boats have been reported cheap, from 4 to 9 US dollars a dive on top of the dive price in 2018, and some resorts have few or no other guests. Ask about boat size, nitrox, which sites the boat will run on the day you want, and confirm directly that the resort is taking guests before you book.