Balicasag Island

How did Balicasag become a marine sanctuary in 1985?

In the early 1980s, Balicasag's reefs were fished with dynamite and cyanide. In 1985 and 1986, during Silliman University's marine conservation program, the islet's residents marked out a sanctuary on the west coast and guarded it themselves, with technical support from the university's marine laboratory. In 2008, the Coastal Conservation and Education Foundation rated the protected area at level 4, the highest, for the quality of its management. The effect is measurable: coral cover recovered within the first decade, fish density increased, and the neighboring Panglao reefs benefit from the spillover. A twenty-room government-run resort has been built on the island facing the sanctuary.

Divers' money funds the protection. Panglao's 2008 municipal ordinance created an environmental fee, initially PHP 100 a day for diving; its collection, contested by operators, resumed in September 2012 through the municipal treasury. In 2014, a provincial committee recommended mandatory tickets, advance booking, per-site quotas and mooring buoys with helical anchors. Today the fee is PHP 250 per diver per day, mooring is PHP 300 per boat, and the island is capped at 150 divers a day.

What are the dive sites around Balicasag, site by site?

The sites follow one another around the islet. In the north, Cathedral is a wall split by fissures, with a chamber where shafts of light enter. Heading south, Diver's Heaven is a steep slope of sea fans and sponges, with overhangs carpeted in soft corals: trevally, barracuda, mackerel and turtles in the upper sections. Black Forest comes next: a slope from 7 to 40 m, first sand dotted with coral heads, then the black corals of the depths, with schools of trevally, fusiliers and triggerfish in the blue; it's often done as a drift. Ruby's Rock closes off the south coast. At the southeastern tip, Turtle Point lines up soft corals and anemone gardens beneath the turtles, with a cave at 60 m best left to specialists. Royal Garden is a plateau of hard and soft corals at 18 m. In the northwest, Current View Point, swept by current, brings together pygmy seahorses, trevally, barracuda and sometimes a shark.

How do you dive among the schools at Balicasag?

The turtles live in the top five to eighteen meters: a slow dive on the plateau leaves plenty of air to watch them graze and rise to breathe. The schools of trevally and blackfin barracuda hold at the edge of the wall; a diver who drops beneath them, calmly, without rushed bubbles, ends up wrapped in fish. On the Black Forest drift, follow the guide and keep a hand free for your SMB: bangka traffic at the surface is heavy. From May to July, titan triggerfish defend their nests with their teeth; a wide semicircle keeps you clear. Book the island early and avoid it over the holidays, Christmas, New Year and Easter, when the quota fills days in advance.