Spanish Tower

The ruin on the shore is what you line up on. Entry sits in front of it, at the island's northern end, and the reef under the boat is a coral garden from about three metres down: toadstool leathers, devil's hand corals, maze corals, and sea anemones with Clark's anemonefish tucked into them. Feather stars sit open on the coral tops.

The guide picks the direction. Nothing in the shape of the site decides it. One version drops onto the slope first, works the large boulders and coral formations below ten metres, and finishes by ascending into the shallows. Another takes the steeper face on the left shoulder, running from north around to the southwest. Both put the interest in the same band, roughly ten to twenty metres. The profiles bear it out: one fifty minute dive here averaged twelve metres.

Below ten the slope steepens and the rock is pocked with small caves and grottoes. Three moray species have been recorded in them, which is what crevices like these hold. A torch is what turns them from dark holes into something worth stopping at. Further along, the dive path runs toward the buoyed sanctuary, and there it stops.

Pamilacan is a full day out, an hour of open water each way, and the two dives you get are picked to be unlike each other. This is the gentle one. It sits on the sheltered flank, it is graded for good Open Water divers, no drift experience is asked for, and the shallow end works with nothing but a mask. Dakit-Dakit, the other half of the usual pairing, is the exposed drift on the far side and starts deep. Nothing here is trying to be that dive.

The species list is the plain kind: Moorish idols, regal and Lamarck's angelfish, panda butterflyfish, peacock grouper, checkerboard wrasse, broadclub cuttlefish. A zebra lionfish and a banded pipefish are on the record here too. Nothing rare has turned up. That is not a complaint, it is the register of the place, and a busy legible Coral Triangle reef at ten metres is a good thing to be.

Green turtles are the animal divers remember from this dive. Meeting one is not a given.

The watchtower stands on the shore above the entry. It is triangular, built of rubble, with cut coral blocks lining the portal and windows and round buttresses at each of the three corners1. Embedded trusses and a triangular pillar in the middle point to a second floor that was probably wooden. It belongs to a chain of towers that also takes in Loay, Baclayon, Panglao and Tagbilaran.

No construction date has been established for it1. What is dated is its protection. The Pamilacan Watchtower is a National Cultural Treasure, declared on 29 August 2011 within the Bohol Watchtowers Collective alongside the towers at Punta Cruz, Dauis, Panglao, Loay and Balilihan2. On 23 May 2024 the National Museum of the Philippines turned over the treasure marker on the island itself, the first of its Bohol turnovers held on an island, under the National Heritage Act of 20092.

The crossing decides the day, not the reef. Pamilacan sits about eighteen and a half kilometres off the Alona strip, forty to sixty minutes each way in a bangka, and once you are there is no shore exit and no dive operation on the island. Plan gas conservatively for that reason. The depth here is modest and is not what drives it.

Current is graded from mild to strong on this flank and one logged dive here ran as a drift. Carry an SMB and expect to use it, because the ascent will not always happen over the point you dropped in on. Afternoons run stronger, which is one argument for taking this site early in the day.

The grottoes below ten metres are for looking into. Nobody swims into them, and unlit they hold nothing at all. A torch is the one piece of kit this dive genuinely asks for.

The dive path leads toward the marine sanctuary and diving inside the buoyed zone is prohibited. It comes up in the briefing and it is not a hazard. There is also a marine fee on top of what you pay for the diving, quoted differently from one centre to the next, so settle it on Panglao before the boat leaves.