Balicasag Liveaboard Diving

Liveaboard Diving in Balicasag

What To Expect On a Balicasag Liveaboard

Liveaboard diving in Balicasag happens around this circular island and offers many different dive experiences. While on your luxury Philippines liveaboard, enjoy the views with Balicasag as the backdrop to your stay on board. Balicasag stretches out from a group of islands from the southwest coast of Bohol, and the island is home to only 100 families of Philippine origin. It is difficult to find a place to stay on this quiet island as there are only beach bungalows on offer, so taking a liveaboard tour is the best option for visiting this incredible dive mecca. Liveaboard boats in Balicasag allow you to enjoy the diving on offer here without the travel from island to island that a day tour will entail.

Balicasag Underwater

Your Balicasag liveaboard will offer dive tours for all experience levels. This dive cruise will allow you to enjoy the reefs that skirt the edge around this island and fall into large wall drops into the blue. You can find reefs out from the beach by 50 meters that are beautifully rich with life on this coral plateau. Further out from the island, your dive cruise will take you over a sloping reef and then a wall, which runs around the island and offers many diving adventures. With a visibility of up to 45 meters, you will see incredibly beautiful biodiversity here, including the amazingly large black coral forest. Your dive safari to Balicasag will allow you to take many swimsuits and see caverns on your dives. With up to 4 dives a day, you will see the sights of this remote island easily during your stay as you live aboard this boat. Many divers have enjoyed this island and it has loads to offer all diving tastes. Scuba diving in Balicasag can afford you sights of beautiful reefs, black coral gardens, juveniles, and the rarely spotted anglerfish. This is a must-dive area for keen diving photographers; you can try your camera skills out in all diving scenarios by checking your lighting as you dive.

Dive Sites Of Balicasag

Cathedral This wall will offer all your macro delights amongst its coral-covered rocks. There is so much to see here. A coral reef moving out to the wall and so many tricks of the light here to guide your eyes across different areas for an unforgettable dive. Look out for Turles (you won't miss them here), Rays, Batfish, and much more. Keep an eye out into the blue for bigger species, too. This site offers swim-throughs and small holes to find the hidden creatures; ghost shrimp and nudibranchs make their homes here. All experience levels can dive into this site.

Sanctuary: A protected area dive site; look at the nursery reef for juveniles and get your fish identification books ready to work out which species you saw. Dives can be made at this site between 4 and 60 meters over the blue and along the wall. Caverns and swim-throughs are the highlights here, and you should spot thousands of big-eye jacks here, too.

Diver's Heaven Like most sites on this island, enjoy this wall dive from 6 to 40 meters. Hard corals are found in the shallow areas, while turtles, Napoleon wrasse, scorpionfish, and anglerfish can be found as you descend the wall. Look into holes and crevices to find hidden gems of sea life. In the darker depths, search for the hiding Anglerfish.

Black Forest, A popular site with experienced divers on Balicasag Island, the Black Forest is full of black corals, where barracuda, jacks, and turtles reside. A hard coral slope down to 40m, this diverse area is home to garden eels. This site is often dived in drift currents, so leave it to the advanced divers.

Top Tips For Divers

Bring your underwater camera to catch the moments in the clear water. You will likely catch some wonderful snaps of the mantas that will make your diving pals back home very jealous of your trip. Remember your sun cream here to keep your skin safe between dives when sunbathing on the deck.

Getting To Balicasag

For a Balicasag liveaboard, you will more often than not arrive at the Philippine islands through the capital's Manila airport. Dumaguete, Cebu, and Mactan are the departure ports for these tours.

To get to Dumaguete, fly direct from Manila with Cebu-Pacific Air.

From Manila, take a direct flight to Cebu with Cebu-Pacific Air or fly into Cebu with Qatar Airways from Doha, Malaysian Airlines from Kuala Lumpur, or Singapore Airlines from Singapore.

Getting to Mactan can be done through Cebu, as above, followed by a boat across the channel. Alternatively, fly directly to Mactan Cebu airport with Cebu-Pacific Air.