Scuba Diving in Pescador Island (the Philippines)
I had to complete the story of my scuba diving adventure in Moalboal (the Philippines). A blog post of the scuba diving in Moalboal was posted a long time ago, Moalboal: the Sardine Run after the Storm. It was incomplete without a post about Pescador Island. The Island was a marine sanctuary in the Tañon Strait. It took less than 20 minutes to reach the Island from Panagsama beach in Moalboal. Pescador was a Spanish word that means “fisherman,” named after the abundance of marine life surrounding the Island. The famous “Sardine Run” was around the island until they moved near to the coast. Unfortunately, the inhabitant island had rocks around its beach that kept the boat unable to land.
There are four dive sites around the Island. However, the most popular one is called “the Cathedral,” although some scuba divers who’ve been there said it should be named as “the Chapel.” We went to Pescador Island on the following day after the storm. We thought the dive will be canceled after the storm, but diving business in the Philippines still kept ongoing.
We did two dives around Pescador, at the dive sites Cathedral and Drop-off. The sea was calm, but lots of leaves, wooden logs, and branches were floating around the Island. I guess they were carried by the stormwater into the sea. I was in doubt seeing this floating debris, it did not look safe enough to jump into the sea. Our divemaster who led the scuba divers group convinced us that below the surface, the water would be calm and less storm debris. He was right. We jumped into deep water, and there was hardly marine debris from the storm. The water was peaceful and beautiful colorful corals was our first sight.
Surprisingly there were still numerous fishes from scorpionfish to the small coral fishes that I had no ides of their species names.
The second dive at a dive site called “Drop-off” was impressive as well. There were more soft corals than the fishes, could not help to take lots of pictures of these colorful corals.
It’s possible as well to snorkel around the island by taking a boat trip from Panagsama beach. If you were lucky, you might have seen turtles as well, unfortunately, we did not see any during our dives. Overall, I recommend to scuba dive in Pescador Island, as for snorkeling, it’s best not to snorkel after the storm 🙂
indahs: dive, travel & photography 