Bahura Reef

Roughly 30 m at the bottom of it, and the number is better anchored than most on this coast. Two separate operator charts arrive there independently while working in different units: one prints 30 m, the other a maximum of 100 feet, which is 30.5. Both describe how deep a shop runs the dive, not how deep the ground goes, so treat 30 as the shallow end of what is possible and expect slope below you. No dive-computer trace from this reef has ever been published, and one would beat both charts if it appeared. No minimum is given here because nothing sourced describes the top of the reef. A 40 m figure carrying this name belongs to Bahura Kanto, a different dive.

Yes, and that is the single most useful thing known about the site. At the top of its range the flow here is described as ripping, peaks around a full moon, and gets strong enough that boats will not sit at anchor on the reef for fear of taking damage. On slack water the same divers who issue that warning call it good diving without a caveat, which is not true of Mainit Point or Beatrice Rock. So the answer to the question is a tide table and a guide who reads it, not a certification level. Ask the shop which window they are planning for before the day is booked, and take the swap if the water is wrong.

No. Kanto is Tagalog for corner, and the two names cover two dives on the same stretch of reef. Operator charts list them as adjacent, separate entries with different maximum depths, 30 m for Bahura and 40 for Bahura Kanto, and the hand-drawn Anilao site-map series that circulates among divers carries a separate sheet for each. The practical consequence is a number: a 40 metre depth quoted under the plain Bahura name almost certainly belongs to the corner, and a range of 15 to 40 metres is the two of them run together. Bahura Corner is the same dive as Bahura Kanto and not a synonym for this one.

Nobody runs it after dark, and the water is why. One diver who had worked through ten of the area's night sites placed Bahura outside the set without qualification, and put Mainit Point and Beatrice Rock outside it in the same sentence. A tidal corner where boats already avoid anchoring in daylight is a bad place to be without light. Anilao's night reputation belongs to the shallow, sheltered ground on the far coast, and that is what to ask for.

A chance, on a narrow window, and worth nobody's booking decision. One diver's advice is to try Bahura or Mainit Point in the morning around a full moon, on the reasoning that the strongest water of the month brings them up. No species is named in that tip and none has been recorded here since. The wider truth is the area's own: Anilao is not a big-animal destination and reef sharks here are occasional, so let it be a reason to keep looking out into the blue on a morning dive, never a reason to pick the site.

Wide. Charts file it as a coral reef and pelagic dive and put a wide lens against it, which in a destination built on nudibranchs and frogfish makes it the deliberate change of pace on a week's schedule. Soft corals and sponges are thick across this group of reefs, the fish sit out in the flow instead of hiding from it, and clarity here is better than over the muck. One caution that belongs to the lens: titan triggerfish grow large on this reef and a nesting adult will chase a diver who rises through the water above its nest, so approach and leave along the reef rather than over it.

It is not, and that is provable here instead of merely assumed. Reef monitoring on this coast works a fixed list of nine sites and names four of them as sanctuaries: Arthur's Rock, Twin Rocks and Cathedral Rock in Mabini, and Batalang Bato, also called Pulang Buli, in Tingloy. Bahura is on neither list under any spelling, and neither is Layag-Layag a few hundred metres away, which is surveyed but unprotected. The charge that does reach you is the conservation fee, levied per diver per day in both municipalities and usually folded into the resort bill. Get the current figure from your operator, because published amounts contradict one another.

Metro Manila, and the trip there begins on water. No facility in Anilao can be evidenced as a working chamber. From this reef the legs stack up: about 20 minutes of Maricaban Strait, then a quarter to half an hour of banca to reach a pier, then 140 km of road at 2.5 to 3 hours before anyone is at a door. No honest end-to-end figure exists and nobody publishes one, so allow the better part of a day. The pickup is what this reef adds on top. When the boat is not anchored, a diver who surfaces off the mark waits before the first leg even opens. Buy cover that funds recompression and the travel to it, ask at the pier what oxygen the boat carries, and store +61 8 8212 9242, which is DAN Asia-Pacific.