Basura
Also known as: BaSura, Muck & Macro
A shallow Anilao muck slope named for the rubbish on its bottom, currentless, worked slowly with a camera, and one of the area's best night dives.
Last updated August 2026
The dive
Basura is Tagalog for rubbish, borrowed from Spanish, and the name is a description of the bottom. Sand, silt and rubble on a slope that falls gently to about 21 metres, with man-made junk lying in it, and the junk is the reason anybody comes. On ground this bare, anything solid is somewhere for an animal to move into. Igloo-shaped concrete stands on the sand too, put there deliberately as artificial reef.
You go in shallow and you stay shallow. One logged dive here ran 78 minutes and touched 21.6 metres exactly once; the rest of it was the slow, low, hands-off crawl that muck diving is. Hover, look, move a metre, look again. There is nothing to navigate by and no terrain to follow, and what you come up with depends heavily on whoever is spotting for you, which local divers will tell you before the briefing does.
Current barely registers. That is most of why dives here run long, and why divers who have worked the exposed sites out on the strait describe this one as the easiest going of the lot. It is also why the site keeps being dived in the afternoon and after dark1, when the rest of the coast has finished.
What makes it special
Ask around for the best night dive in Anilao and this site keeps coming back, from divers with no particular reason to agree with each other. One of them called it the best night dive he had ever done, then described the catch in the same sentence: a dive with more than a dozen bobtail squid, and the next one with none at all and a single ornate Kalinga nudibranch instead, which is an animal people plan trips around. That is the honest shape of the place. It varies enormously and it is worth going back.
The other thing worth knowing is that Basura used to be the best of its kind here. In 2005 it was what Anilao's underwater photographers rated the top muck dive in the area. By 2007 concrete artificial reefs had gone down on the slope; they worked, coral grew on them and fish stock rose, and a local photographer tied that same success to the disappearance of much of what macro divers had been coming for2. Secret Bay was found in 2008 and took the title outright2. His verdict in 2013 was not that the site was finished but that it had got harder: no longer a critter fiesta, still a treasure trove for anyone who knew where to look, with the subjects having learned to hide.
The single best thing anybody has written down about diving here is a school of shrimpfish. A visiting biologist working the sand on a night dive in 2007 ran into more than a hundred Aeoliscus strigatus at once, which swarmed him and his buddy and then scattered for cover1. No account since records the school, so take it as what this bottom can produce and not as what it will.
Know before you go
Fine sand and silt worked at close range is the method here and it is also the only thing that can ruin the dive. Get the buoyancy settled on the way down, before you start looking for anything, because sediment lifted off this bottom stays up for the rest of the hour and takes the site away from everyone diving behind you.
Muck is where the camouflaged animals live. Stonefish, scorpionfish and bobbit worms all sit in ground exactly like this, and a photographer framing a macro shot is low, still and close to all of them. Look at the sand before you go near it, hover instead of settling on it, and move nothing to get a better angle. The debris and the concrete are the other argument for keeping gear clipped and stowed on a dive spent inches off the bottom.
Take a torch and a backup even if the plan is a day dive, because plans on this coast change with the weather and this is the site a shop falls back to. Agree the exit at the briefing.
The road to Manila begins about a kilometre from this dive, and on this coast that is the only leg of an emergency plan anybody can shorten. No chamber anywhere in Anilao can be shown to be in service. Treatment means driving to Metro Manila, some 140 kilometres, which nobody manages in under two and a half hours and most take three over. Against that, five minutes of banca between here and the beach costs almost nothing, which is the one advantage a town-end site holds over the rest of them. Sort two things out before you get on the boat, an insurance policy that will pay for hyperbaric treatment and the trip to reach it, and an answer on what oxygen is aboard. Ahead of the trip, put DAN Asia-Pacific Diving Emergency Service into your phone: +61 8 8212 9242.
Why Dive Basura
What makes this dive site stand out.
- Named for the rubbish
Basura is Tagalog for rubbish, and the debris on the slope is what the animals live in
- One of Anilao's night dives
Divers asked to name the area's best night dive keep returning this one
- Placed concrete on the slope
Igloo-shaped concrete stands on the sand, put down deliberately as artificial reef
- Shallow and currentless
A logged dive ran 78 minutes here, and the current barely registers
- A muck site past its peak
Rated Anilao's top muck dive in 2005, displaced by Secret Bay in 2008
Depth & Profile
Location
13.7566°N, 120.9198°E
Conditions & difficulty
Summary
No current to speak of, no navigation problem, no overhead and no depth to manage. What the site asks for is buoyancy over fine sediment and the patience to work a bare bottom slowly. Doing it after dark is its own qualification.
Safety considerations
What can go wrong here, and what divers do about it. Conditions change - take the briefing from the operator on the day.
- Overhead: Fine sand and silt worked at close range is the whole method here. Sediment lifted off this bottom does not resettle inside a dive, and everyone behind you loses the site.Settle the buoyancy on the descent before you start looking, trim flat, and stay off the bottom.
- Marine life: Stonefish, scorpionfish and bobbit worms live in ground exactly like this, and a photographer lining up a macro shot is low, still and very close to it.Look at the sand before you go near it, hover instead of settling, and move nothing to improve an angle.
- Overhead: The slope carries man-made debris and placed concrete, on a dive spent inches off the bottom.Clip and stow anything that dangles, and leave the debris where it is.
- Conditions: Most of what this site is known for happens after dark, and there is no structure to orient on when the torch is the only light.Torch plus a backup, an SMB, and an exit agreed at the briefing before anybody gets wet.
- Remote location: No chamber anywhere in Anilao can be shown to be in service, and a shallow, easy site is where that question goes unasked.Insurance that pays for hyperbaric treatment and the journey to it, and an answer on what oxygen the banca carries.
Marine Life
Regulations
No protected-area designation covers this slope. The four no-fishing sanctuaries in these waters are Arthur's Rock, Twin Rocks, Cathedral Rock and Batalang Bato, and reef monitoring on this coast has never surveyed Basura among them. The municipal marine reserve is defined by the coastline of two other barangays, and this site is in neither. Mabini charges a conservation fee per diver per diving day under a municipal ordinance, and it usually reaches you on the accommodation bill. Ask the operator what it currently comes to, because published figures disagree.
Frequently Asked Questions
How deep is the dive at Basura?▾
About 21 metres at the deepest, and almost none of the dive is spent down there. The figure that carries came off a dive computer: 21.6 metres on a 78 minute dive in April 2025, water at 28 degrees, on nitrox. An operator table for this coast publishes 20 metres, and a table like that reads as the maximum of the dive as that shop runs it, not as the depth of the ground, so it sets a floor and not a ceiling. Nothing first-hand gives a figure for the shallow end, so this page publishes no minimum. In practice the slope is shallow enough that depth is the least interesting thing you will think about.
What does Basura mean, and is there really rubbish on the bottom?▾
Basura is Tagalog for rubbish, taken from Spanish, and the site was named for what was lying on it. A diver who worked the sand here in 2007 described exactly that, garbage on the bottom and animals living in it, and made the point that on ground this bare anything solid is somewhere for a critter to move into. What is down there today has moved on from that description in at least one way, because concrete was deliberately put on the slope as artificial reef from about 2007. Nobody has written a careful account of the bottom since 2013. Go expecting a muck dive over a used bottom, not a coral reef, and the name will have told you the truth.
Is Basura still worth diving, or is it past its best?▾
Past its best, and still worth a dive on a longer trip. Two things are worth being straight about. The decline here is dated and documented, not a rumour: the change happened between 2005 and 2008, and somebody diving the site wrote down both ends of it. And nothing careful has been written about the slope since 2013, so anyone telling you what Basura is like in a given year is going on their own last dive there. What has held up across the whole of that period is the night diving, which is what the area's divers still name this site for, and it is the strongest reason to put it on a plan today.
Is Basura a good night dive?▾
It is one of the two or three sites the area's own divers name when the question is put to them, and they name it without agreeing on much else. One called it the best night dive he had ever done, and in the same breath described the variation: a dive with more than a dozen bobtail squid, then a dive with none of them and a single ornate Kalinga nudibranch instead. Bring the expectation that it will be different from whatever you were told. The practical arguments in its favour are that it is shallow, close to shore and effectively currentless, which is a friendlier combination in the dark than most of this coast offers.
Is Basura inside a marine protected area?▾
No, and three separate things establish that rather than one. Reef monitoring on this coast names the protected areas of Mabini and Tingloy as four, Arthur's Rock, Cathedral Rock, Twin Rocks and Batalang Bato, and Basura is none of them. The municipal marine reserve is written in terms of the coastline of two named barangays, and this site sits in a third. And a diver who knows the site recorded in 2013 that it was unprotected, and that small-scale bottom trawling went on along that shore most mornings. That is one observer's account from over a decade ago and it is not an accusation against anybody, but it does explain why the fee every diver pays across these waters exists. Claims elsewhere that the site is now cleaned up and protected by the community have nothing behind them.
How reliable is the species list for Basura?▾
It depends which part of it you are reading, and the difference is worth knowing. The long list of nudibranchs and small invertebrates comes from one diver's log of a single dive in April 2025, with the names picked from a fixed menu rather than worked out from the photographs, and the photographs have not been checked by anybody. Read those as what one diver reported, not as a record. Two older entries are a different kind of claim: a school of over a hundred shrimpfish counted first-hand on a night dive in 2007, and a hairy frogfish season, roughly December to May, recorded by a photographer who dives the site regularly. Muck sites reward low expectations anyway. Nothing on any of these lists is a given on any dive.
Basura or Secret Bay?▾
Secret Bay if you are picking one, and the reason is not a matter of taste. It took the top spot in Anilao off this site in 2008 and has held it since, and it has the black sand, the hot vents and the octopus record to justify that. Basura earns its place on a longer trip. It is on the opposite shore, at the town end of the coast rather than out on the peninsula, so it is often diveable on a day the crossings are unpleasant, the boat ride is about five minutes, and it is the stronger of the two as a straight night dive by the count of divers who name it. The other reason to do both is that they are the same kind of diving on different ground, and comparing them is most of the point of a muck trip.
References
- 1.Reefs.com, March 17, 2015 — Diving the Reefs of Anilao, Philippines
- 2.PaparazSea, December 30, 2013 — Turn Garbage into Gold at Basura Anilao
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