Pescador Island, Moal Boal, Cebu, Philippines

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Wow! Need I say more? Pescador Island is certainly a place you can enjoy diving. It has such a diversity in a dive spot that it can be recommended for every diver from your first couple of dives to experienced divers like my self. 




Diving on the reef is exceptional. The reef consists of a shallow coral plateau that leads to impressive drop-off with a steep wall which is where my dive started. Around 25-30 meters down this steep wall, we entered in to and started exploring some amazing cave formations. The visibility was amazing even at this dept and cave diving is always really cool. It always gives me a bit of chill entering into caves and confined spaces, especially underwater. But starting off with this gave me an extra punch of adrenaline to use for the rest of the dive. .



Once out of the caves you slowly move up to more shallow waters. The reef is gorgeous and turns more and more beautiful as the color and light become stronger. The reef is covered with hard and soft corals. Soft corals do not produce exoskeletons made of calcium carbonate. They are very delicate and should not be touched.



The magic blueness of the sea is mesmerizing and the quietness only enhances the feeling of entering another world. You become very sensitive to small sounds like the chewing sound made by colorful parrot fish when they eat hard corals. Because Pescador Island has a very steep reef with a depth of 60 meters the fascination with this bottomless void also plays into the experience.


You just let the experience engulfs you and enjoys the encounter with the inhabitants of the reef. Pescador Island is part of the Coral Triangle. This is a 5.7 million square kilometer reef triangulating the Solomon Islands, Papa New Guinea, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines. This gives you amazing diving options all over the place and a lot of spots that should not be missed. 



My very favorite animal to encounter when diving is the turtle and I was lucky enough to meet one on my dive. She was just chilling and playing it cool and didn’t mind a bit of company. She did join us for a while before deciding she would find a nice resting spot on the cliff of the reef. She really just was the frosting on the ice-cream of a perfect dive. 


While you are here do not miss the hypnotic experience to swim, snorkel or dive with the millions of sardines that roam the sea here. Close to the shore alongside Panagsama, millions of sardines congregate in a huge shoal at between 5 and 15 m depth. It is called a sardine run and it is a mesmerizing, pulsating and hypnotic experience. Because sardines live in schools they follow each-other which makes the experience a chaotic sunbeam, reflexion, sardine whimsy.


If you have the chance dive down and watch them from below and chase them around a bit to really get the experience of watching millions of fish moving around with a joint consciousness like one big animal with millions of small nano-cells all abiding its smallest though.  It is a quite extraordinary experience. 











* All photos are private and taken by me.
Location: Pescador Island, Philippines

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