Diving in Tubbataha Reefs

Tubbataha is a no-take atoll park alone in the middle of the Sulu Sea, 92 nautical miles from Puerto Princesa, with no town, no harbour of its own and nobody living on it. You get there on an overnight crossing aboard a liveaboard, for part of the year, and the trip is planned months out. Nothing about it resembles a dive day.

What the reef is known for is written into its World Heritage listing: it holds the highest population densities known in the world for whitetip reef sharks1. Grey reef sharks, humphead wrasse and both green and hawksbill turtles are named in the same statement. The property is two atolls, North and South, plus Jessie Beazley Reef, an emergent coral cay about 12 nautical miles beyond the North Atoll. Around all of it the open sea averages 750 metres, and the reef edge falls into that from 12 to 15 metres past the 100 metre mark. So the diving is wall diving: a drift along blue water at 20 to 25 metres, then a multi-level back up to the reef top for the last third. This is not a macro coast.

The legal chain behind the reef is long and each link changed something. Presidential Proclamation 306 established a 33,200 hectare marine park on 11 August 1988. UNESCO inscribed it on 11 December 1993, Ramsar listed it as Site 1010 on 12 November 19992, and Proclamation 1126 added Jessie Beazley Reef and renamed it a natural park on 23 August 2006, with UNESCO extending the property to match on 26 June 2009. Republic Act 10067 gave the park its own act of Congress on 6 April 2010, with a ten nautical mile buffer zone and criminal penalties behind the rules, and in July 2017 the IMO made the park an Area to be Avoided under its PSSA scheme, which routes commercial shipping around it. Two areas are in force at once and both are correct. The Philippine statute covers 97,030 hectares, while UNESCO and Ramsar both record 96,8282.

Park monitoring runs at fixed stations at 5 and 10 metres, and it is what the biodiversity figures rest on. The current counts are over 800 fish species, 15 of them documented as new in 2025, and at least 360 corals, representing 80 of the 119 coral genera known worldwide. The same monitoring carries the harder half of the story. Shallow coral cover held steady between 2022 and 2025 with diversity rising, while at the deeper stations coral cover fell gradually after repeated bleaching and typhoons, and fish biomass and density fell with it, most visibly in the schooling and pelagic groups. Water temperature exceeded 30 degrees for a third consecutive year in 2025. Divers say the same thing without being asked: June 2025 and 2026 trip reports describe hard coral in decline and thin reef colour.

Nothing large is guaranteed here. Whitetip and grey reef sharks and turtles are the constants, usually met at cleaning stations, and full weeks pass with no manta, no hammerhead and no whale shark. Bumphead parrotfish school on the reef tops, titan triggerfish defend nests and give Triggerfish City its name, and the marbled fantail ray (Taeniura meyeni) turns up on the sand at the foot of the walls. Sea fan fields carry pygmy seahorses, and staghorn coral (Acropora muricata) covers enough ground on the South Atoll to have named a dive.

Two ships hit the reef in 2013 and only one of them is remembered. The USS Guardian, a US Navy mine countermeasures ship, ran aground on the northwest side of South Shoal in the South Atoll at 2:20 in the morning on 17 January. Nobody was injured and no fuel or oil leaked3. The ship was dismantled and lifted off in sections, the last piece removed by 30 March, a joint assessment put the damage at 2,345.67 square metres, and the Philippine government received PHP 87,033,570.71 in compensation on 20 January 20154. On 8 April 2013 the Chinese fishing vessel Min Ping Yu grounded in the North Atoll and damaged 3,902 square metres, about two thirds more reef5. Nine years on, the park recorded that neither area had fully recovered.

The dive map annexed to the current tourism rules carries legal force, and it names seventeen dives6. Eight of them sit on the North Atoll, among them Shark Airport, Washing Machine, Wall Street, Amos Rock, Seafan Alley, Terraces, Malayan Wreck and South Park. Seven are on the South Atoll, where Delsan Wreck, Black Rock, Triggerfish City, Staghorn Point, Ko-Ok, T-Wreck and South West Wall lie. The two at Jessie Beazley are JB West and JB East. Roughly 30 percent of the atolls' circumference is visited by divers at all, so most of the park is never dived by anybody.

You are booking a berth on a vessel, months ahead, not a dive. There is no shore entry, no day boat and nowhere to stay inside the park, so the decision in front of you is which week of which year.

No law closes the park. Nothing in Republic Act 10067, the 2024 implementing rules or the 2025 tourism rules sets a date, and the park authority explains the window by weather instead: rough seas from November to March under the northeast monsoon, then moderate northeast winds between mid-March and June that produce calm conditions and allow regular visits5. Commercially the trips concentrate between mid-March and mid-June, and that is the range most operators publish. The real edges are wider and they move: in 2024 the first vessel entered the park on 20 February and the last left on 29 July7. Any fixed date range you are given describes one season's schedule. It is not a gate, and international flights should not be booked on the belief that the park shuts.

Fly to Puerto Princesa. Most trips leave from there; a minority start elsewhere, including an eight day route out of Negros that calls at Cagayancillo, the Palawan municipality the park legally belongs to. Vessels embark between six and eight in the evening, with waivers, a park briefing and a coast guard check before they are cleared to sail, and nobody dives on embarkation day. The crossing runs 10 to 12 hours. The usual product is six nights and about sixteen dives, first dive on the morning of day two, up to four dives a day including a sunset dive, and whole days on one atoll before repositioning to the other, with Jessie Beazley taken as a single stop on the way in or out. Berths are scarce enough that divers talk about booking a year ahead.

The statute does not set the conservation fees. A resolution of the management board does, which is why they move between seasons8. Under the schedule adopted on 28 May 2025 a visitor pays PHP 5,000 and a dive professional PHP 500, with a vessel fee of PHP 5,500 up to 100 gross tons, PHP 8,250 from 101 to 200, and PHP 11,000 above that. Fees are paid in Philippine pesos before each entry, at one rate for everybody, and minors aged 12 and below are exempt along with boat crew, owners and managers9. A trip cancelled before entering the park refunds 80 percent; a full refund needs force majeure evidenced by a coast guard or weather bureau advisory. Permits sit with the vessel, not with you: the operator holds an annual permit to operate and secures a seven day entry permit before each trip.

The rules that change how a dive is run are short and they are enforced. A dive professional leads every dive, at no more than eight divers to one professional. Two metres is the distance you keep from any animal, not the three that circulates6. Gloves are barred except on a medical certificate. Nothing anchors anywhere, so vessels tie to the numbered moorings shown on the annexed map. Decompression diving needs prior certification, training and equipment, and uncertified divers may not dive at all. There is no landing on Bird Islet, South Islet or the Jessie Beazley cay, no swimming or diving in the lagoons without the superintendent's authorisation, and vessels stay 100 metres off the islets. Guides may not carry a camera while working. Damaging the reef costs an administrative fine of not less than PHP 12,000 per square metre plus restoration at not less than the same rate8, and entering without authorisation is a criminal offence carrying six months to a year and a fine of PHP 100,000 to PHP 300,000. No maximum number of divers per day has been published: a carrying capacity study was underway when the current management plan was written and no result has followed it.

Water sits at 28 to 29 degrees and a 3 mm full suit is what repeat visitors wear. Good visibility runs 30 to 35 metres. Current is variable and not the constant washing machine some of the site names suggest, with whole trips reporting mild conditions and other divers turning a dive on it. Nitrox earns its keep across repetitive multi-day wall profiles and at least one vessel puts every guest on 31 to 32 percent. Titan triggerfish are the animal most likely to hurt you, aggressive on nest during breeding season, and one diver was bitten on the leg during a safety stop in June 2025.

Settle the evacuation question before you pay, because the boat is the wrong place to discover it. The park is about ten hours by sea from Puerto Princesa and there is no evacuation from the reef itself. In 2024 a crew member with appendicitis was reached by the coast guard only once his vessel was back near the city, and a guest who dislocated a hip was returned to Puerto Princesa for surgery7. Vessels themselves break down, with three needing a tow or escort in one season. Puerto Princesa appears on a national programme list of hyperbaric chamber locations, but do not treat a working chamber there as given. Dive conservatively for the whole week, hold insurance that pays for hyperbaric treatment, and treat the wall as bottomless, because for your purposes it is.

Two true atolls and an emergent coral cay rising from open sea that averages 750 metres deep. The North Atoll is oblong, roughly 16 kilometres by 4.5, enclosing a lagoon of sand and coral no deeper than 30 metres; the South Atoll is triangular; Jessie Beazley lies about 12 nautical miles further north-west. Reef flats break the surface at Bird Islet and South Islet, and everywhere else the reef edge falls away as a near vertical wall from 12 to 15 metres past 100. About 10,000 hectares of the park is coral reef and more than 87,000 hectares is the water around it.