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.

Dry Dock is just under a kilometre north-west of the resort. It is off the bay which houses Scandi Dive Resort. A GPS mark for the starting spot for the dive site is 13° 31' 33.398"N 120° 58' 13.357"E (using WGS84 as the datum).

A satellite photo from Google Earth, Dry Dock is at the red marker. Sabang Bay is out of photo bottom left.

This dive is on a small floating dry dock which has been scuttled here for a dive site. It is located straight in front of the Scandi Dive Resort which is two bays to the west of the main Sabang Bay. It is about 250 metres from the beach.

We drop to 27 metres and then drift a little to the east and deeper to 30 metres. The dry dock is located here on a sandy bottom. The deepest bit is at 30 metres and the shallowest at 25 metres as it is on a bit of a slope. The dry dock is perhaps 40 metres by 20 metres in size, bit hard to tell as visibility is not great.

Some of the growth on the dry dock	John over top of part of the dry dock

The structure has some growth on it, but not as much as I expected. There are some small gorgonias and some sponges. After examining the dry dock for a bit, we head south-east into the shallower water. We get a bit deeper at first when we drop off the wreck but then start to come up to 24 metres.

As we go along we see some shrimps, nudibranchs, a moray eel, some dancing shrimp in anemones and a few tropical fish. We come across some crates which have beer bottles in them. The bottles have been tied into the crates so they did not fall out. It seems to have been put there as an artificial reef.

These are beer bottles in a crate, home for fishlife	A goby in one of the beer bottles

We also see an anemone with one of the tiny white pipefish like we saw a few days ago at a different spot. It is impossible to get a photograph of it. We also see some octopus, lionfish and more nudibranchs. In one small overhang there is a plaque to a dead Korean diver. I think I saw three or four such plaques on my trip, I cannot believe that so many die here!

Nudibranch	A clownfish in an anemone

We spend a fair bit of time at 15 metres before going up to five metres for our safety stop. Here we see a school of large silver fish (no idea what species) and on both dives, another turtle. It is quite nice in this area.

This was another good dive. Water temperature was 29°C in September. The visibility was about 15 metres.

MORE PHOTOS

Dancing shrimp in an anemone	Another shrimp
Two tiger pipefish	A speckled moray eel