Diver's Heaven

The drop is on the northeast shoulder and you land on a shelf and not an edge. It is sand and seagrass with coral heads through it, five to ten metres down, with Panglao visible on the surface to the north on a clear day. Green turtles work across this ground and they are the first thing most people see. Several on one dive is the ordinary count here.

Then the guide picks a direction off the current, northwest toward Cathedral or south toward Black Forest, and the dive becomes a one-way traverse of two or three hundred metres. Between ten and fifteen metres the reef crest takes over, marked by brown daisy coral and by bucket sponges big enough to navigate by, and this band is where most of the dive is spent. Below the crest the ground falls into ledges and overhangs with soft corals underneath, gorgonians and sponges on the face, and the fish change with it: fusiliers in dense schools, midnight snapper off the slope, redtooth triggerfish, and the island's column of bigeye trevally on a good day.

The finish is the shelf again, at the other end from where you started, with the turtles still on it.

Nothing here is named, and that turns out to be the point. Balicasag's other four sites each sell a feature: a black coral stand, a run of overhangs, a no-take zone, a rock with a stick on the beach behind it. This slope sells density at a depth anyone can hold. The operators' own interest rating stops at 25 metres, the shallowest cut-off on the island, and two of them independently call it their divers' favourite at Balicasag, which is a different compliment from calling it the famous one. The word they all reach for is aquarium.

The turtles are the substance behind that. They live on that shallow shelf and do not just pass through it, they graze it at five to ten metres, and six separate accounts of this dive mention them. On a site where the best of everything sits above twenty metres, that puts the animal people came for in the part of the water column where a new diver is most comfortable and where the light is best.

The third thing is the weather, which cuts both ways. This shoulder is sheltered from southwest swell, so from about June to October it stays diveable when the exposed faces do not. That is why you are here, and it is also why there are ten or fifteen boats on the mooring with you.

Turtles at five to ten metres, in sun, on a pale shelf. That is the shot this site gives up more readily than any other on the island, and it needs no depth and no luck. Wide angle works over the seagrass and along the crest, where the bucket sponges give scale.

The macro is on the slope and it rewards a guide who is willing to go slowly. Ribbon eels come out of the sandier ground, frogfish turn up on the face, and the ledges under the crest hold soft coral and scorpionfish. The one thing to plan around is the boat count: in the monsoon months the shallows carry other groups and their bubbles, so the early slot is worth asking for.

Easy describes the profile, not the water. This site and the north point carry the widest current grading on the island, running from nothing to strong, and the operator that calls the diving quiet and comfortable says in the same breath that strong current happens. Listen to the briefing, not to the reputation.

The northwest track is the one to watch a computer on. The slope steepens as it runs north, so the ground drops away underneath a dive that feels unchanged, and there is nothing down there worth the depth. Everything the site is known for is above twenty metres and most of it is above fifteen.

Expect company between June and October. The same shelter that keeps this slope diveable puts most of the island's boats on it, and a normal picture in that window is ten to fifteen bangkas moored at once. Surface where the guide puts you and send an SMB up first.

Nobody chooses this site, either. Balicasag assigns a dive to a booked slot, so what you can influence is the month, not the request.