Dumaguete/ApoIsland/Dauin or Moalboal in Nov

[ashleybadger]

Hello,
my husband and I are planning a dive trip to the Visayas this November. We have 11 full days to play with and have decided to spend 5 of them in Malapascua. That means between transfers and everything we have another 5 days to spend in another location. I've done a lot of research and it looks like both Dumaguete/ApoIsland/Dauin and Moalboal would both be great choices and we're having trouble deciding where to head. We're both AOW in our 20s with a moderate number of dives. We haven't done a lot of muck diving so I'm not sure it's our thing and though we have a camera, it's not our primary concern to get great photos. We'd really love wall and drift diving and would like to see some healthy corals. Any thoughts on which to go to, and which is best during November? We're looking at Mike's to stay at in Dauin but could use some recommendations on places in Maolboal.

Thanks!
Ashley

[knifebox]

Great drift dive in Coconut Point in Apo Island. You can probably spot a few pelagics as well.

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[ocdiver1]

I like Dumaguete a great deal, but then muck diving for macro critters is my fav kind of diving. As to Moalboal, just personally I don't think it has as much to offer as many other places, outside of diving Pescador Island. I'd recommend Dumaguete for the best overall diving experience..it will introduce you to the muck world (plus you might like it!) and give you more varied options to try in day trips to Apo and Siquijor where you can get in some good drift/wall diving. You've got one other easy destination to consider geographically from where you are already going..Bohol, but I'd still recommend Dumaguete. Great choice for a first stop in Malapascua..that's my favorite dive destination in the Philippines.

[Centrals]

....We're both AOW in our 20s with a moderate number of dives. We haven't done a lot of muck diving so I'm not sure it's our thing and though we have a camera, it's not our primary concern to get great photos. We'd really love wall and drift diving and would like to see some healthy corals.
Alona Beach(Bohol) probably suit U2 better. Choices of dive operators, resorts, restaurants, watering holes etc etc and a bit of sight seeing to throw in as well eg. Chocolate Hill and Tasier monkey.
Getting back to Cebu from Bohol is quicker than Dumaguete

[Kenr]

I agree with Centrals. If you are flying in and out of Manila and assuming you are into experiencing some world class muck diving, Anilao is the place to go.

[ashleybadger]

Thanks for the feedback so far everyone. We plan on flying into Manila and then heading straight to Cebu in order to hit Malapascua. We don't really want to interrupt our diving with another flight so I think we're definitely going to focus on places reachable from Cebu via bus/taxi/ferry. I've definitely seen mention of Bohol around but is the diving superior to Moalboal? I've seen varying opinions with more leaning towards Moalboal but perhaps this is time of year dependent? Watering holes are nice but we have them at home, first class tropical diving we do not! :)

[ocdiver1]

Id say Bohol is superior to Moalboal with the added benefit of far more to do above water. You could still go Malapascua to Dumaguete in one day without flying...drive to Cebu, afternoon ferry to Dumaguete.

[Centrals]

If the weather forecast is bad(typhoon season now) go to Moalboal otherwise either Bohol or Dumaguete is so much better unless the sardines are back at Moalboal.
There are also operators based on Mactan Island which is where the International Airport situated.

[jbb]

Alona Beach(Bohol) probably suit U2 better. Choices of dive operators, resorts, restaurants, watering holes etc etc and a bit of sight seeing to throw in as well eg. Chocolate Hill and Tasier monkey.
Getting back to Cebu from Bohol is quicker than Dumaguete

I would make the same recommendation. You could get from Malapascua to Bohol in one day if you start early and shorter by a couple of hours if you take van or car. I've been to Malapascua 13 times then Apo Island, Dauin and Bohol 3 times each. But I've never dived Moalboal. I have photos of all on Flickr with locations tagged.

[travelpro]

Another vote for Bohol

[divetheplanet]

I haven't been to Bohol, but the misses and I went to Moalboal in March and it thought it was great. Night dives on the house reef are a must. We dove with Savedra. Good shop, well organized, and responded favorably to our dive site requests. We have all our own gear, so I can't comment on the rental stock. No rush on the dives. I think only 2 were less than 60 minutes.

[Rogersea]

I live in Moalboal, one of my favorite places for weekend trips is APO ISLAND(easy to reach). If the weather improves(it has been really windy for the last 4 days) my friend and our families are going to APO for a few days starting on the 6th of August.... We normally stay at the APO Island Resort....

The Island is really rustic and I am sure you have heard about the electricity so I can usually only stay a max of 3 days and then am ready to head back.....

Cheers,
Roger

[Krazytomdiver]

I prefer Alona Beach for it's variety of diving,sightseeing,security and nightlife. All the other places are good but for all around vacation enjoyment,I have found nothing close to Alona Beach.


"living life without a hard bottom"
KT

[Interceptor121]

You need to consider the transfer times carefully. Malapascua to dauin is around 11 hours. We had the same idea this Xmas and aborted it and went for moalboal+dauin
I believe malapascua + Bohol is more manageable. As sardines are not in pescador anymore I would favour Bohol to moalboal, the drive Cebu moalboal takes actually slightly longer than to get to Bohol by ferry
There is a ferry that goes from Cebu to tagbiliran and then continues to negros which adds another 2 hours to your journey if you had to get to dauin
However malapascua+dauin is the best of visayas if you don't mind to spend a whole day travelling that is the way to go
I think dive explorers maintain a very useful map of transfer times and even offer speedboat transfer that are faster than ferries

[Rogersea]

If you are looking for places to stay in Moalboal, you can check out CABANA or Sole Mare both have same owner... If you like, You can pm me for details.

Cheers,
Roger

[ac]

Bohol is much better than Moalboal. It will take you a whole day to get from Malapasqua to Moalboal but only 6 hours to get from Malapasqua to Bohol.
Skip Macatan Island diving altogether too much $$$ for too little visibility.

[Centrals]

It will take you a whole day to get from Malapasqua to Moalboal but only 6 hours to get from Malapasqua to Bohol.
Are you sure?
I once travelled from Malapascua to Moalboal in about 6 hrs.

[Samppa]

Hi all, this seems like right topic to join in:coffee:

How many days should I prepare to spend in Moalboal, Dumaguete/Apo Island/Siquijor area to cover most of the divesites worth visiting?
I have 3 weeks vacation booked starting from end of september, arriving to Manila. First week i'm planning to spend in Coron and then take a flight to Cebu. Initial plan is then to take bus to Moalboal and spend maybe 2-3 days there (hoping to see some sardines) but after that everything is still open... What would be the easiest way (public transport) to get to Dumaguete area without going back to cebu? Roger mentioned earlier that Apo Island is easy to reach from Moalboal. How about the rest? I'm prepared to stay all and all 8-9 days in Cebu area.
In terms of diving i'm mostly interested about walls, drifts and wrecks. Not that enthusiast about small macro but of course enjoy that also. On my last trip I went to Malapascua and Bohol already so those are for future trips :-)

-Sami

[Rhoody]

@ OP. if you go to dauin you can get a 20% discount until december on dive packages with mikes beach resort/adventure dive shop. 3 dives (Dauin and Apo) 3 meals.

@samppa from moalboal you take a ceres line bus to Bato or Lilo-An, from there cross to Negros. you'll end up either in Tampi or Sibulan. there you either take again a bus, get a trike, or have your resort pick you up. All operators in Dauin or the shops in Dumaguete offer usually daily trips to Apo with 3 dives, leaving at 8 or 9 back in Dauin at 4.

[Wiggsy]

I've run three trips consecutively to Atmosphere Resort Dauin (Dumaguete) and cannot find fault in any aspect of the resort or the diving. The Perfect mix of muck diving and blue water coral diving as well. I regard this as the best dive resort I have ever seen. I wrote an article for Sportdiver magazine (Australia) and you can find it low res. at http://www.divetheblue.net/pdf/151artWiggs.pdf . We also snorkelled with 3 or 4 Whale Sharks over at Oslob, but that is another story.

[paolov]

We also snorkelled with 3 or 4 Whale Sharks over at Oslob, but that is another story.


so wheres the story on Oslob adventure?

[Wiggsy]

THE WHALE SHARKS OF OSLOB: Alan Wiggs
In my thirty three years of diving, I had previously only dived with a Whale Shark on one occasion – a quick off-season glimpse of a giant spotty shape in The Maldives was all I had to go by (a Whale Shark in July…?) No photos, just fading memories of the largest fish in the world rapidly disappearing into the hazy distance. My second encounter with Rhincodon typus at a little fishing town in The Philippines was to provide an entirely different experience, up close and personal with no fewer than four of these magnificent creatures.
June 28, 2012 sees me once again being lucky enough to lead a group of divers and families to Atmosphere Resort, Dumagete, on the Philippines island of Negros (it’s a tough job but somebody’s gotta do it!) This was to be our third expedition to this paradise in the Central Visayan Islands and after the success of earlier trips, we knew what to expect – superb diving with great biodiversity and gourmet cuisine at one of the best dive resorts in Asia. We were welcomed warmly and soon settled into our luxurious home on the beach, looking across to Apo Island glistening in the warm sunshine. Open Water Course candidates soon found themselves bubbling in the pool, while more experienced divers set up gear in readiness for the first dive at the house reef. Snorkellers acquainted themselves with the thriving fish life off the beach, playing with Clown Fish, pointing at slithering Snowflake Moray Eels or being buzzed by a frighteningly large Titan Triggerfish with a bad attitude and a mean set of teeth! Photographers charged batteries and greased o-rings, anticipating the magical dives to come out at Apo Island, while less energetic expeditioners relaxed by the pool or organised tours of local lakes and waterfalls.
We soon got used to glassy calm seas and hot sunshine day after day – the perfect escape from Melbourne’s dreary winter. The diving along the Dauin coastline south of Dumaguete is gaining quite a reputation for macro delights with a mixture of muck diving interspersed with healthy coral bommies – it has been described as “Lembeh with visibility”! One can expect to see various Frogfish; Ornate Ghost Pipefish; fields of Garden Eels and Nudibranchs as well as solitary Great Barracuda and pulsating schools of Red Toothed Triggerfish. And only 30 minutes away, Apo Island offers the classic blue water experience – pristine fields of hard corals, loads of Green Turtles, spiralling schools of trevally and, on the last dive, a free swimming Whale Shark. Unfortunately for me, I was restricted to the surface (or near it) as a badly broken arm in a fibreglass cast made SCUBA diving a highly risky proposition for me. A chat with diving doctor John Roth highlighted all sorts of issues including the likely increased risk of DCS, not to mention the dangers of being in a hostile environment with a rather incapacitated body part! So, I was regretfully relegated to watching the crystalline bubbles mushroom up from below. But I enjoyed the swims in the shallows, including being immersed in a school of tiny Klein’s Butterflyfish at Dauin South that actually pecked at the hairs on the back of my hand! When you are still and quiet with no tank and noisy bubbles, it is quite amazing what you see!
Highlights of the trip were many – the Filipino people themselves who were universally friendly, kind and generous with their smiles. But one of the most incredible experiences of this trip (and any trip) was to be found at the fishing village of Oslob, on the nearby island of Cebu. Starting around October 2011, local fishermen developed an unusual relationship with a large number of Whale Sharks (or “Butanding” in the local dialect). The Whale Sharks feed on shrimp (or “uyap”) over the local reefs and had started to follow the fishermen catching juvenile shrimp during the evenings. The shrimp rise with the moon and move into the shallows, followed by feeding Whale Sharks that move right into the shoreline. A few handfuls of uyap casually offered to the Whale sharks established a pattern of behaviour which has continued since.
The fishermen soon realised the tourist potential this attraction offered, and it wasn’t long before the word got out. Things rapidly got out of hand and soon Oslob was bursting at the seams. There were reports of up to 2000 people arriving in one day; clumsy touching and harassment, and finally a photo of a young lady standing (yes… standing) on the back of a Whale Shark (no matter that the aforesaid photo wasn’t actually from Oslob – the reality was that it could have been). Atmosphere Resort and the Dumaguete Dive Association acted quickly to boycott the site early in 2012 as clearly something had to be done. Management guidelines were introduced that were amongst the most stringent anywhere, though application and reinforcement were slow to develop. One of the biggest steps was to simply reduce numbers by hiking up Marine Park fees, effectively pricing out a lot of the locals (sad in some respects, but there were just too many people!) An Education Centre was set up where snorkellers were briefed on guidelines which include the obvious ones such as no touching; no flash photography and a minimum distance of 5 metres from fuselage and 6 metres from the tail. Power boats of any kind were prohibited in the Marine Park and the restriction of 30 minutes in water also acted to reduce crowding, with the feeding closed off each day at 1:00 p.m.
By early July 2012, Gabriele Holder, Dive Manager at Atmosphere Resort, was cautiously satisfied that the situation had improved and we were the first group to be given the chance to snorkel with the Whale Sharks of Oslob. We were offered this experience as a day trip with a mixture of minibus and ferry transfers over to Oslob on the island of Cebu – roughly 2 hours or so each way. Atmosphere Resort has adopted the WWF policies of no SCUBA, though this would be of doubtful benefit in any case as the Butanding are very much at the surface.
Oslob has set up a small cottage Whale Shark tourism industry, and various small stalls sell sharky T-shirts and trinkets from leaf thatch shelters. And just off the beach one can see the dugout canoes, and the occasional glimpse of the rounded dorsal fin of the Butanding. We geared up, were briefed at the centre and fumbled aboard the tiny outrigger canoes that were to be our diveboats for the morning. Upon sliding below the glassy surface, we found four Butanding in our field of view - we tried to observe the five metre rule but they often came in closer and one risked backing into the path of one whilst moving away from another! There was absolutely no crowding whatsoever. There were only a few groups of snorkelers in evidence and they were scattered down the bay into 3 or 4 feeding stations hundreds of metres apart. With some twenty (yes twenty!) Butanding in the bay that morning it was easy to disperse the groups. What I saw left me with few concerns regarding management – I have heard of worse crowding and management at Donsol and the whole situation was handled well by the local ‘shark-spotters’. Indeed, they seemed to display genuine concern, even affection for the magnificent creatures. It was inspiring. Beautiful. Unique. Athough we were only allowed thirty minutes in the water, this was thirty minutes immersed in their presence, closer than I had expected with the Whale Sharks coming to us rather than we to them.
There has been some understandable controversy over this feed, which I guess is fairly typical of similar interactions, including other shark feeds at various dive sites around the planet. It must be recognised that this is a fairly artificial experience, as the Butanding are ‘held’ in the area by the intermittent feeding from the local fishermen. The few handfuls of shrimp only supplements rather than replaces their normal feeding patterns but there are understandably concerns as to whether this may interrupt their natural migrations. Steve de Neef, Atmosphere’s Photo-Pro, is currently researching with LAMAVE (Large Marine Vertebrate Project) and has identified as many as 47 Whale sharks moving through the area, with between six and nine staying as residents. So, there is at least some evidence that many of the sharks are moving on. But, Steve also photographed “Fermin”, a large male with a worrying set of parallel gashes that appear to be the result of a boat propeller. Although only outrigger canoes with paddles are allowed at Oslob, it is possible that the association of “boat equals shrimp handout” could have led to this conflict with a power boat outside the Marine Park.
Another issue is the concerning precedent this sets, as there are now reports of a similar activity developing at Moalboal. So, where does it all end? While this may not be a perfect relationship, it certainly is preferable to what happened only a few years ago, when some of these Whale Sharks may well been captured and butchered for village consumption, despite being ‘protected’. This protection has proved inadequate in many parts of The Philippines and in 2010 a Whale Shark was found dying in the shallows of Tingloy province with every fin hacked off. Another found in June 2011 had been stabbed six times with its tail cut off. Still known as “Tofu Shark” in some parts of Asia, what we see at Oslob is certainly a more sustainable approach, though the costs and benefits need to be weighed and more research must be done. And on the positive side, the presence of so many sharks in one place provides unique opportunities for scientific research.

Yes, it is at the very least, an intrusion. But so is boatload after boatload of divers day after day hitting Blue Corner at Palau, or Barracuda point at Sipadan. We dominate, we intrude – everywhere from the slopes of The Himalaya to the penguin rookeries of Antarctica. But tourism might yet save the penguins of Antarctica, the Trevally at Sipadan or the Whale Sharks of The Philippines. By the time this article hits the stands it may all well be over, either the Butanding may simply have moved on or regulations forbidding their feeding may be introduced.

We returned to a freezing cold three degree Melbourne winter morning amazed by what we had witnessed. The Butanding were just the icing on the cake for another superb trip to The Philippines – an unexpected bonus that we hadn’t signed on for. Dumaguete, the town of the gentle people, and Atmosphere Resort will always be one of my favourite options, Whale Sharks or no. But, if you get the chance, go and make up your own mind……..

[Sweetooth]

A friend and I would be on a vacation for 3 weeks and decided to cover Moalboal (Turtle Bay Dive Resort)(Malapascua Beach and Dive Resort or Ocean Vida?) , Dumaguete ( Atlantis Resort) then Bohol (Ananyana or Alona?), then to Coron (Sangat Island Reserve) to end our trip. I am OWSI and my partner is an AOW, who is a well travelled diver. How many nights should I stay where and spend more time? Any dive operators recommended for quality dives? We love pelagics and macro, and yes we love our UW cameras too. Please advice.

[Centrals]

A friend and I would be on a vacation for 3 weeks and decided to cover Moalboal (Turtle Bay Dive Resort)(Malapascua Beach and Dive Resort or Ocean Vida?) , Dumaguete ( Atlantis Resort) then Bohol (Ananyana or Alona?), then to Coron (Sangat Island Reserve) to end our trip. I am OWSI and my partner is an AOW, who is a well travelled diver. How many nights should I stay where and spend more time? Any dive operators recommended for quality dives? We love pelagics and macro, and yes we love our UW cameras too. Please advice.
You have selected all those expensive resorts!
A lot of travelling to cover all the places.
Moalboal is the less interesting with the no show of the sardines! I will give it a miss.
Malapascua, Bohol, Dumaguete and Coron should be enough to keep any divers happy for 3 wks. 4 days of diving on each FOUR places + travelling won't give you any time for relax.