In August and September 2023 I did a three week long dive trip to the Philippines with my friend John. We spent the first week at Anilao staying at Buceo Anilao Dive Resort and the next two weeks at Sabang (Puerto Galera). A t Sabang, we stayed at Capt'n Greggs and dived with them as well.

There are a dozen or more dive sites located within 10 minutes run from Capt'n Greggs.

Unfortunately we had a Super Typhoon hit the northern Philippines when we were at Anilao and lost some days diving there. We were also delayed a day in getting to Sabang.

Sinandigan Wall is located about 1.4 kilometres from the resort and about 400 metres south from the point at Lighthouse Headland. This is one of the longer runs to a dive site. A GPS mark for the starting spot for the dive site is 13° 30' 58.892"N 120° 59' 23.723"E (using WGS84 as the datum).

A satellite photo from Google Earth showing of Sinandigan Wall at the red mark Sabang Bay is top left. Dive ended up in the bay north of the red mark.

From the mark about we head north-west and then north and end up in the shallow bay south of the headland. We drop to the bottom in about 7 metres and head down a steepish slope to 30 metres which we reach after only five minutes. This is sand and almost totally covered with small rocks which have growth on them. From here we head east-north-east. We are hoping to see thresher sharks as they have been seen in this area recently. However, we see none but we end up seeing them the next day on a nearby site, Kilima.

The northern end of the wall	One of numerous yellow sea cucumbers

After 15 minutes we come to a shear wall which only goes for 50 or so metres. There were some small gorgonias, featherstars, sponges and a few nudibranchs. The wall had lots of the small yellow sea cucumbers that at first glance look like nudibranchs (see photo). Along here we have been going between 26 and 28 metres.

At the end of the wall we start a very gradual ascent as we follow the bottom to the north-north-west into the bay. There are some larger coral outcrops, anemones and clownfish, a few pufferfish (one was very large) and some moray eels. As we get shallower we see more anemones, one has a porcelain crab in it.

A large pufferfish	A colourful nudibranch

We also see a lot of long-finned bannerfish. We end up in six metres where we do our safety stop for almost 10 minutes. There is a lot to see here too.

This was a good, if unspectacular, dive. Water temperature was 28C deeper and 29C above 20 metres in September. The visibility was about 25 metres.

MORE PHOTOS

A dark green nudibranch	Seawhip shrimp
These are probably the mmost common nudibranch at Sabang	A long-finned bannerfish
A porcelain crab in an anemone	A clownfish in an anemone