Philippines – Moalboal (3/4)

It was easy to take the ferry from Bohol to Cebu and we had to wait only 30 minutes. Once we had our luggage, the driver already waited for us to bring us to the Cebu Seaview Dive Resort in Moalboal. There are also public buses and, if you know where to look for, already small vans which connect all the major destinations on Cebu. However, we had not much time on Cebu so we had opted for the somewhat more expensive means of transport. As things are still far less expensive as at other places we had visited, it was a reasonable price for a 3-4 hour ride across the island. It was actually quite interesting to drive through the small villages and over the low mountains, and we could stop when we want.

We arrived in Moalboal and the resort without any problems. Moalboal is actually a small town some kilometres away from the coast, where you can find all the resorts and hotels, which you refer to today when you talk about Moalboal. They are lined up the coast with just a narrow path to walk along the coast and only small streets connecting the coast to the main street. There are also basically only single-storey hotel buildings and quite simple stores and restaurants in between, so that the whole settlement still has a strong back-packer atmosphere.

Our resort was a newer complex, replacing a previous resort recently it seemed, but was optimised for divers with a restaurant in the center, a bar at the beautiful pool at the coast and a dive center in between. There is not really a beach in Moalboal, but the coral reeftop starts directly after you come down a 2-3 meter high cliff, stretches out some 50 meters into the water, getting maybe 2-3 meters deep, and then a sheer reef wall drops down some 25-35 meters. This is a perfect setting for shore diving and short boat trips to the different locations along the reef wall which stretches for several kilometers along the coast.

Given that perfect setting we spent most of the time diving as you can imagine. It was even better as we were lucky enough to have one of the best diving guides we had during the whole world trip: His name was “Arvin”, he saw all the small stuff, was calm and diving slowly so that we had enough time to admire all the underwater wonders there. In addition, they filled the bottles very well and had dives of 60-70 minutes (which is not always the case).

One of the main highlights for divers at that wall is that there is a permanent population of millions of sardines which stay close to the wall in a depth of 5-15 meter, not far from our resort. The phenomenon is called “Sardine Ball”, but they are actually forming an immense cloud of fish that is constantly moving and changing shape when snorkelers, divers, and marine hunters like jack fish, tuna, or the occasional shark is turning it into a “Sardine Run”. There are so many of them that when you dive below the main ball, it gets absolutely dark above and around you, even in the bright sun. we dived there twice – just awesome.

The second main highlight for divers is “Pescador Island” which is just a 15 minute boat drive from Moalboal, an island in the middle of the channel between Cebu and the opposite island of Negros. This location results in the fact that there is plenty of fish (hence pescador island which means fishermnn’s island), you can face strong currents, and there can be huge pelagic animals like sharks, manta and whales pass the island.

When we arrived there, there were also some other boats with snorkelers and scuba divers, and our captain mentioned that there were some rumours that a whale shark had been seen. We started our dive along the immense wall disappearing in the depths of the sea. We encountered a quite huge sea snake, luckily not interested in us, a huge moray eel, turtles, plenty of fish of all sizes, and some small creatures hiding in the corals of the wall.  The dive was supposed to end at the opposite side of the island, and when we reached the area where our boat and several others were waiting, it happened …

Our guide, Arvin, who had gone ahead to search for our boat, came back in a rush and hurried us to follow suit, making the sign of a shark (put a hand vertical on your head like a shark fin). Our hope was increasing that it could be indeed a whale shark, the largest shark in the world. We were swimming as fast as possible, but tiring, so we were not sure to get there before it left. But we made it. There he was, still junior and less than 10 meter, but immensely impressive and magnificent. The whale shark was surrounded  by divers and snorkelers above, with some free divers coming down form above, but it did not seem to bother too much, maybe even enjoying the bath in the bubbles.

The whale shark went down from time to time but reappeared always coming up to just a few meters under the surface. We made dozens of photos and videos, but hardly any without other divers and snorkelers being in the picture. We could stay and dive for some 15-20 minutes with the giant until our air in the tank was finally getting low and our guide signalled to come to the boat. But we learned later that it stayed also until the afternoon and other boats went there to see it, so it really seemed to be ok with the divers around.

For us, it had been the first ever whale shark we saw, just awesome. And we were extremely lucky, (a) to see one there which is very exceptional, (b) that it stayed for such a long time, and (c) we could dive with the shark with the remaining air in our tanks. We were even more happy as we had decided not to go snorkelling with whale sharks in the Philippines. There are some locations where they feed the whale sharks so that they stay instead of wandering the seas, and you can book tours to go snorkelling with them. One option would have been close to our hotel on Bohol, and the best known one would have been on Cebu at a town called “Oslob”.

There is no clearcut judgement if this is acceptable way of treating the animals or not. Animal welfare organisations are obviously more sceptical as it changes natural behaviour of the sharks and could have an impact on feeding and mating habits. On the other hand, organisers and other voices in the internet claim that fishing communities like in Oslob used to hunt the whale sharks (and one can apparently still earn a fortune to sell their fins to customers, allegedly from a huge country in that region) and now make a living from keeping them alive. In any case, we had decided for us that we want to see the first one whenever nature would make it happen. And that it happened still on the Philippines looked like sign that we had taken the right decision

After that highlight we still had some more amazing dives and also a great night dive which started with observing the mating of the Mandarine fishes. You might remember that we had a not really brilliant first try in Lembeh when we had been on board of the Ambai as there were too many divers and photographers at a small spot. This time it was just us and our guide, who helped us to enjoy the lovers’ play and also make some reasonably good photos.

After so many highlights in just 2 days and three nights in Moalboal, we regretted to not having had more time there, but were also looking forward to move on to Malapascua which is also famous for being a cool back-packer island and great diving location.