In August 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.

There are dozens of dive sites located within 20 minutes run from the resort.

Unfortunately we had a Super Typhoon hit the northern Philippines when we were there, so the Coast Guard banned all boats and diving later in the week. This dive site was one we visited on the second day.

Olympic Point is located almost six kilometres east-south-east from the resort across the passage off Maricaban Island. A GPS mark for the dive spot is 13° 40' 11.629" N 120° 51' 02.758" (using WGS84 as the datum).

A satellite photo from Google Earth that shows the location of the dive site marked by the red at bottom left and Buceo Anilao Resort at top right

The dive boat anchors a short distance off the shore to teh east of the Olympic Point Resort. The bottom is only 5 metres deep here and then slopes to 9 metres before dropping a bit steepr to 30+ metres. The bottom metres and then sloping again to deeper. The bottom is sand with small rocks here and there. There are also some old coral pieces that are larger than the rocks. The bottom has sea whips, soft corals and many featherstars and some sponges.

The orange hairy anglerfish	one of many clownfish seen

From the boat we drop and headed north to about 21 metres where the bottom becomes plain sand. We then headed west before eventually coming shallower and heading back towards the boat. Near the boat we saw a juvenile ribbon eel and later another one. There were plenty of nudibranchs and shrimps (on sea whips and anemones) as some crabs.

A juvenile ribbon eel	A moray eel

One brilliant thing we find is an anemone with two tiny white pipefish in it. I have never seen this species before, very cute. I ended up getting a couple of photos of it which ended up reasonable. There are a few lionfish and more shrimp in anemones and a featherstar shrimp. We even see a tiny orange hairy anglerfish which kept moving and was very hard to photograph.

A strange goby	One of the two tiny white pipefish in an anemone

We end up back at the boat and finish our dive in the shallows. There were a few more species of nudibranch seen here. In August the water temperature was 29C and the visibility was 12 to 15 metres. A very good dive site.

MORE PHOTOGRAPHS

A strange nudibranch	One of the common nudibranchs
This nudibranch is also common	An extremely colourful shrimp
Glass shrimp in an anemone	Featherstar shrimp