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.

Elmars Point is located about 1.3 kilometres to the north-west of the resort. This is south-east of Sunview and north-west of Twin Rocks. A GPS mark for the dive spot is 13° 41' 49.945" N 120° 53' 05.118" E (using WGS84 as the datum).

A satellite photo from Google Earth that shows the location of the dive site by the red marker. Buceo Anilao Resort at bottom middle

The boat anchors a short distance off the shore in five metres. After descending we went west down a coral rubble slope then south-east in a relatively strong current. The visibility was only 8 to 10 metres but it got worse at the end.

The bottom at 23 metres was like the slope with lots of small soft corals. After 30 minutess we came to a more substantial coral reef and the current dropped for a few minutes. However, it soon then came back. Along here there were hundreds of smaller barrel sponges and dozens of large gorgonias, some huge.

A gorgonia and the reef	A tilted barrel sponge

We did this as a drift dive and just over 30 minutes into the dive we started very slowly coming up into the shallower water. After 45 minutes the current stopped again, this time for good. We saw a banded sea snake, a large turtle, some moray eels, a zebra crab on a fire urchin, a few nudibranchs and a porcelain crab in an anemone.

Featherstars on a large coral	A barrel sponge with niger triggerfish in background

Eventually we end up in the shallows about 300 metres away from where we started. The dive boat was anchored here and we spent the last 10 minutes doing our safety stop under the boat. This was a really nice dive. Water temperature was 30C in October and the visibility varied from 8 to 10 metres early in the dive to 5 to 6 metres towards the end.

MORE PHOTOS

A turtle	Porcelain crab in anemone
A ribbon eel	A striped sea snake
Nudibranch	Nudibranch