South point
Also known as: Shark Cave, South Point Cabilao, Southtip
The southern tip of Cabilao, where a shallow coral shelf ends at a wall of caves and overhangs that falls past 50 m, with current over the point.
Last updated August 2026
The dive
Cabilao ends here. The island runs out into a shelf of hard coral in five to fifteen metres of water, and the water over it is rarely still.
That shelf used to be the reason to come. Big table corals, a landscape people wrote home about, and the shallowest part of the dive rated above everything under it. The one diver to publish a dated look since the typhoon found it flat in August 2025, rubble with a few small hard-coral recruits scattered between nine and twelve metres. Both versions are on this page, four years apart, and nobody has been back with a camera and a date since.
Past the lip the ground is gone. The face is cut with caves and overhangs, and whitetip reef sharks rest inside them at about twenty metres, occasionally, which is what the site's other name is about and not anything larger. Schools of fish patrol the reef along the top of the face.
It is a corner, so it moves. Most days the current is mild and you swim the face. When it runs, the dive turns into a drift and you surface somewhere other than where you went in.
What makes it special
The shallow top used to be the point of the whole dive, which is an odd thing to say about the site that carries the deepest wall on this island. A first-hand list of Cabilao's dives written in 2003 gets through the steep wall, the hard and soft corals and the many sponges in one line, then spends its enthusiasm on the reef top. A diver working through a multi-day trip picked out two sites from everything he did for their coral growth, and this was one of them.
What has not changed is the structure. Rock does not wash away, so the wall, the caves and the overhangs match those accounts exactly, and that shape, not what grows on it, is what makes this the island's most demanding dive. It is also the only Cabilao site with a genuine overhead environment sitting in the band where people actually dive, which is a different proposition from a fan-covered face you swim along.
Know before you go
Decide your floor before the boat leaves, because nothing here will tell you where you are. Moving water over the underwater ledges around Cabilao is known for costing divers track of their own depth until they are below what an Open Water card covers, and a fast ascent from there is how decompression sickness happens1. On a point that gets current, above a face that goes past fifty metres, that is not a general caution about diving in the Philippines. It is a description of this dive.
Ask what the shelf looks like now. The coral garden in the sales copy is the part a diver found flattened in August 2025, and the people on the boat will know better than any page does.
No bend gets treated on Cabilao, and none gets treated anywhere else in Bohol either. The province owns a hyperbaric chamber and the last report of it, dated April 2023, found the thing sitting unused over in Panglao. The resolution funding its repair had passed ten days earlier, which is evidence the chamber was broken and not evidence it now works1. Cabilao answers to the municipality of Loon, and its hospital, Congressman Natalio Castillo Sr. Memorial Hospital, sits in barangay Canhangdon. It replaces one the 2013 earthquake destroyed, was reported unfinished as late as March 2023, and nobody has said publicly what level of care it can give2. Definitive care is in Tagbilaran City, at Gov. Celestino Gallares Memorial Medical Center, and reaching it from Cabilao means a crossing off the island plus an hour or so of road. The last public crossing goes in the early evening.
DAN Asia-Pacific is the number that always works: +61 8 8212 9242. Have it on paper before the first dive, and check that your insurance will pay to get you off Bohol.
Why Dive South point
What makes this dive site stand out.
- A shelf on top of a wall
Hard coral from 5 to 15 m ends at a lip, and the face drops away past 50 m below it
- Caves cut into the face
Overhangs at around 20 m, where whitetip reef sharks are occasionally found resting
- The island's exposed corner
Current is normal on this headland and unusual almost everywhere else on Cabilao
- A shallow top that changed
Rated the best part of the dive up to 2019, and found as rubble in August 2025
Depth & Profile
Location
9.8593°N, 123.7670°E
Conditions & difficulty
Summary
Three things stack on one headland. The overhangs at around 20 m are an overhead environment, the water turns around an exposed corner, and the face underneath gives a diver nothing to judge depth against. The swimming itself is not hard.
Safety considerations
What can go wrong here, and what divers do about it. Conditions change - take the briefing from the operator on the day.
- Depth: The face under this dive carries on past 50 m and gives a diver nothing to judge depth against. Water moving over this island's underwater ledges is known for leaving divers below the limits an open-water card covers before they notice, and a fast ascent from there is what causes decompression sickness.Agree a floor before you get in and treat it as fixed once the shelf ends. Everything anybody describes from this dive sits between 5 and 23 m.
- Overhead: Caves and overhangs are cut into the face at around 20 m, small enough to look into and enclosed enough to count. Whitetip reef sharks rest in them, which is exactly why a diver puts their head in.Keep the exit in view, go in one at a time behind the guide, and hold trim clear of the roof and the floor.
- Current: The southern tip is open on both faces and the water turns around it. Mild on most days, and strong enough on others to make this a drift down the wall.Get the direction and the pick-up plan before you get in, and dive with a surface marker on you.
- Remote location: Bohol has no chamber a dive plan can rely on, and Cabilao has none at all. Definitive care means getting off the island first: a crossing, then roughly an hour by road, and public boats finish in the early evening.Conservative profiles, insurance that will pay for a chamber and the trip to it, and DAN's number written on paper and not only in a phone.
Marine Life
Frequently Asked Questions
How deep is South Point?▾
Two answers, and both belong on the page. The dive is 5 to 20 m: a hard-coral shelf between 5 and 15 m, a lip, and caves in the wall face at around 20 m where a guide will stop. The one dated computer profile published from this site reads 23 m, and that is the maximum here, because it is the deepest number anybody has tied to a dive they actually did. The wall is a separate question. It carries on well below that, and the single first-hand account that puts a figure on the base gives 50 to 60 m, which is a range and not a sounding. A round 60 also gets quoted, and that same round 60 turns up under four different walls around this island, so it is one habit of description repeated rather than four measurements. Plan a 20 m dive on a site whose rock goes past 50. The gap between those two numbers is the whole site.
Is South Point an Open Water dive?▾
The shelf is and the rest of it is not. Between 5 and 15 m there is a coral top that gives a complete dive on its own, and nobody on the island publishes a certification minimum for any of its sites, so no one will stop you booking it. What lifts the grading is what sits below and inside. The caves at around 20 m are an overhead environment, the face under them has no floor in view, and this corner is the one on Cabilao that reliably gets current. An Open Water diver holding to 18 m over the top has a real dive. An Open Water diver following a guide into an overhang at 20 m on a point that is running does not have a plan.
Why is South Point also called Shark Cave, and are there sharks?▾
The name is about whitetip reef sharks resting inside the overhangs at around 20 m, and both descriptions that mention them hedge it: occasionally, sometimes. Hammerheads were the reason people came to Cabilao in the 1990s, the fishing that ended them is dated to the turn of the century, and nothing since has produced a dated sighting anywhere around the island. Those reports attached to the northwest point and the Talisay side in any case, so the winter shark season that still gets sold was never about this corner of the island. One version of that copy puts the animals at 40 to 45 m. On a wall shaped like this one, that is a depth target for an animal that is not there.
Can you go inside the caves at South Point?▾
They are overhangs and short cuts in the wall face and not anything you penetrate, and guides work them at around 20 m. Whitetip reef sharks rest inside them, occasionally, which is the reason anybody looks. Treat an overhang as overhead anyway: keep your exit in view, go in behind the guide one at a time, and hold your trim so you are neither stirring the floor nor scraping the roof. A torch earns its place on this dive in a way it does not on the island's sand sites, because colour goes flat under a ledge even with 25 m of visibility outside it.
Did Typhoon Odette damage the coral at South Point?▾
The shallow shelf, on the only look published since. A diver making four dives at three Cabilao sites between 31 July and 3 August 2025 said the wall here has not recovered and is mostly rubble, with small hard-coral recruits at nine to twelve metres and very sparse. That is one person, one dive at this site, one day. Against it sit four earlier descriptions of a table-coral garden, the newest of them from before 2021 and the oldest from 2003, and none of those can tell you anything about now. What did not wash away is the shape of the place. The wall, the caves and the overhangs are geology, and they are what the dive is graded on.
How strong is the current at South Point?▾
Mild most days and always worth asking about, which is not how the rest of Cabilao dives. This is the island's southern corner, open on both faces, so water that slides past the sheltered west-coast sites turns here instead. When it runs, the dive stops being a swim along the face and becomes a drift, which is fine when the briefing has covered it and awkward when it has not. Settle the pick-up with the boat before you get in, and dive with a marker, because a drift here finishes somewhere other than the drop point.
References
- 1.Philippine Information Agency, April 10, 2023 — PDRRMC to fund operation of 'unused' hyperbaric chamber
- 2.Bohol Island News, March 19, 2023 — Aris wants Loon hospital done by March this year
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