Diving in Coron

Coron's dive map was drawn in one morning. On 24 September 1944 US Navy carrier aircraft found Japanese supply ships at anchor around Coron Bay and Busuanga, where they had gone to shelter from the raids on Manila Bay1, and the ships that sank that day are the reason divers fly here. Most of the hulls lie between 10 and 35 metres, so wreck diving at Coron is mostly recreational-depth diving, with one deep exception.

The wrecks come in four grades. The Lusong gunboat bottoms at about 12 metres with one end breaking the surface at low tide, and the East Tangat gunboat lies inclined on the reef from 3 metres down: shallow steel with open swim-throughs. The Okikawa Maru, a tanker off Concepcion, is the long shallow big-ship dive, her decks at 10 to 16 metres and covered in coral. The Akitsushima, a seaplane tender on her port side, is the one real warship among the hulls divers usually visit, her crane still reaching out across the sand, and munitions still lie on and inside her. The Irako is the deep one. This provision store ship has her bottom at 40 to 43 metres by report and her deck at about 28 to 35, and bomb damage squeezed some decks to about 1.5 metres of headroom.

Several hulls have changed name since divers first visited them. The freighter now called the Olympia Maru was dived for years as the Tangat wreck, the ship once called Olympia is now the Morazan, and the tanker off Concepcion was dived as the Taiei Maru for decades before it became the Okikawa Maru. The Morazan is still argued over, published elsewhere as the Ekkai Maru, and the two gunboats carry no established name at all.

Away from the steel, Barracuda Lake on Coron Island is the dive some divers name as the one not to skip: a short climb over the karst, then a descent through layers where the water is reported to warm as you go down, past bare rock walls with almost nothing living on them. Cathedral Cave, at the island's southern tip, is entered through a cliff face and is for calm seas only, because surge can injure a diver. Siete Pecados is the shallow reef day, and the Kyokuzan Maru off northeast Busuanga is a full-day trip for two dives. On the wrecks themselves look for black coral on the Olympia Maru and the Lusong gunboat, a shoal of bigeye trevally pouring round the Irako, batfish, lionfish and turtles. Dugongs feed on seagrass off Calauit in north Busuanga and are watched through an organised programme, not met on a dive.

Plan around the tide as much as the month. It sets visibility and current, the current runs hardest around full and new moon, and the operator orders the sites by it, so the sequence is not yours to choose. Diving runs all year in water of 27 to 30 C, with December to April the settled window and July to September the wettest and least reliable. Bay visibility is often mediocre and the lake and the open-ocean sites are clearer. A 3 mm suit does the job, and 5 mm suits repetitive deep wreck days in February. Nitrox suits repetitive 25 to 35 metre days, and not every shop stocks it.

Boats are wooden outrigger bancas. The run to the main group of wrecks is about 90 minutes from Coron Town and 15 to 30 minutes from a resort nearer the wrecks, so basing is a choice between the town's range of shops and shorter boat rides. Busuanga's airport is about an hour from Manila and 30 to 50 minutes from town by road. Ferries from El Nido get cancelled often enough that divers advise flying or budgeting a spare day.

Certification follows the shallowest depth you have to dive. The two gunboats, the Morazan (25 metres at most) and the Okikawa Maru's decks (10 to 16) suit Open Water divers from the outside. Every other wreck lies mostly below 18 metres with overhead, and the usual recommendation is at least Advanced Open Water plus a wreck specialty: that covers the Olympia Maru, Kogyo Maru, Akitsushima and Irako. Entering any big hull takes the wreck specialty, the Akitsushima allows no swim-through without it, and the Irako's engine room is for trained, equipped divers. Some shops take freshly certified Open Water divers into wrecks anyway, so ask what an operator will and will not take you into, and be ready to refuse an entry underwater.

Nothing comes off these wrecks. Under Republic Act No. 10066 anything on an underwater site more than fifty years old is state-owned cultural property2. Coron Island has older protection too, declared a national reserve in 1967 and a tourist zone and marine reserve in 19783. The island, its lakes and a large area of the surrounding sea are Calamian Tagbanwa ancestral domain4, so Barracuda Lake and the shore sites are visited on the community's terms. Expect an entry fee at the lakes on top of the dive price; the amounts change.

Settle the evacuation plan before you book. No working recompression chamber is confirmed in Coron. The state tourism agency has had a chamber on order to Coron from Zamboanga since October 2025, testing and commissioning included, and no opening has been announced. The nearest chamber reported working is Ospital ng Palawan in Puerto Princesa, in the same province, but no airline flies Busuanga to Puerto Princesa direct, so the scheduled route runs through Manila. Coron District Hospital has no recompression capability. Carry insurance that pays for hyperbaric treatment and evacuation, and ask your operator where the plan stands on the day you dive.