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.

We went back again in October 2025 as we enjoyed the diving so much and we did not get to dive even half the sites that are here.

Sandy Bottom is located about 2.5 kilometres north-west from the resort. A GPS mark for the dive spot is 13° 42' 11.650"N 120° 52' 43.295"E (using WGS84 as the datum).

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

The dive boat anchors 75 metres off the beach in about six metres. As indicated by the site name, the site consists of a sandy bottom which slopes gradually to 22 metres or more. The bottom is mostly sand, but there are lots of sea pens and some small anemones.

A shrimp on a sea pen	A crab on a sea cucumber, they live part of the time in their anus!

Once on the bottom we gradually head deeper. The sea pens have shrimp and squat lobsters on them. There are also hundreds of small sea cucumbers. A lot of these have small crabs on them. The crabs also live in their anus, you can even find one there like I did!

There are some small anemones with sexy/dancing shrimp in them. We saw four sea horses on our two dives here, not sure which species they were. There are also quite a few groups of fire urchins and some have shrimp (Coleman’s Urchin Shrimp, Periclimenes colemani) on them. One of these groups had an ornate ghost pipefish hovering over them.

An ornate ghost pipefish	Hermit crab

Other things we saw on our dives were a blenny in a piece of bamboo, a yellow goby in a San Miguel bottle, some crabs and squat lobsters in soft corals, a long-tail cowfish, a striped boxfish, sole and a couple of decorator crabs. We also saw a small orange anglerfish.

During the dive we went to 22 metres and then gradually ascended back to the sand under the boat. A really surprisingly good dive. Water temperature was 28C in October and the visibility about 8-10 metres.

MORE PHOTOS

Elysia species nudibranch	Shaun the Shrimp nudibranch
A soft coral crab	A really different decorator crab
A squat lobster on a sea pen	Another squat lobster, this time in a soft coral
A small anglerfish	A sea horse
Another sea horse	And one more
Another sea horse	A goby in a beer bottle