The Philippines are known as the "diving capital of Asia". The warm ocean surrounding its 7,641 islands provides an ideal habitat for a wealth of underwater life. It is home to a wide variety of marine life such as corals, starfish, sea urchins and tropical fish. In the Philippines, you can enjoy a wide variety of diving experiences, meeting colourful coral reefs, rubbing shoulders with large and gentle whale sharks or searching for buried secrets in shipwrecks. Here is the top 8 of diving in the Philippines.

Sardine Storms

One of the world's most famous dive destinations is Moalboal, affectionately known by divers as the "home of sardine storm". Sardine storms can also be encountered regularly in Bohol and Dumaguete.

Heaven of Macro-photography

The diving community likes to call dive sites that require careful searching to find small creatures 'trash diving sites', and there are many divers and underwater photographers who enjoy this process. In the Philippines, the famous dive destination of Anilao is recognized by divers around the world as the haven of macro-photography for small marine life, with a huge variety of species, with new ones to be found every year.

Coral Gardens

In Tubbataha, Ani, and the Sumilon Islands, countless colourful reef fish are weaving and hiding among the coral gardens, with occasional turtles passing by and schools of silvery minnows swimming in the sunshine.

Thresher Sharks

The thresher shark is probably one of the "odd" sharks, along with the hammerhead shark. So far, only two places in the world are recognized as the best places to observe them. One is the remote Gulf of Mexico and the other is Malapascua in the Philippines, where schools of thresher sharks swim up from depths of over 200 meters almost every day.

Shipwrecks

As one of the main battlefields between the US and Japan in World War II, the Philippines has countless sunken Japanese and American warships and aircrafts, mainly in Coronation and Subic Bay, making it inarguably the world's top wreck diving destination in the minds of divers.

Manatees

For most divers, manatees are rare to see, for they prefer warm, shallow waters in the southern hemisphere. But Coron and Davao are some of the very few places in the world where manatees can be seen and are well worth visiting.

Whale Sharks

Dawson's Bay became known after divers spotted whale sharks there in the late 20th century. It is now known among divers as the "Whale Shark Capital of the Philippines" and is the only whale shark spotting site in the world on a par with South Africa.

Sheer cliffs

If divers descend slowly along the break, they can see reef fish and grouper lazily weaving along the cliffs. There are many Philippine cliff dive sites, with the Great Baricasa Break in Bohol as one of the most famous ones.