The prime diving sites in the Ticao Island/Donsol area are around the San Miguel Island and the other islands near it. This island is at the northern end of Ticao Island. Between it and Bagababoy Island (which is next to Ticao Island) is a pass and on the western side there is a small island which I do not know the name of (it is not on the chart or GoogleMaps).

This dive site is on the western side of the small island. This site can be affected by very strong currents that apparently rip through the pass. Hence the name of the dive site, it can either be Heaven or Hell, depending on the currents.

San Miguel Island is located at the top left of chart. Ticao Island Resort is near bottom right of island.	An enlarged section of the chart at left. Dive site is at left of the small island south of San Miguel Island.

It is about 45 to 50 minutes run from Ticao Island Resort and probably an hour or so from Donsol in a large banca. The dive actually starts about half way down the west side of the island outside a very large above water cave. The bancas anchor in the shallows in about seven metres. You head down and drop over the top down a slope. We headed south, the gradual slope a bit bare in spots due to the typhoon that hit here late 2019 (we went in 2020). There are plenty of sand between the coral outcrops. We only ended up going to less than 20 metres at the most.

Halgerda tessellata - Tessellated halgerda	Juvenile Nembrotha lineolata - lined nembrotha
Trichesia species, I have not been able to identify it	Halgerda batangas - Batangas halgerda

As mentioned, the site was greatly affected by the typhoon but there was still some interesting stuff to see. All the larger things like gorgonias and sea whips were mostly gone, but some smaller ones remained. As we went we saw plenty of species of nudibranch, including some rarer ones like doto.

There were plenty of anemones, with clownfish, glasss shrimp and "dancing" shrimp. We also saw some pufferfish, butterflyfish and most of the normal tropical fish species.

Ornate elysia - Elysia ornata	Possibly Phyllodesmium briareum
"Dancing" shrimp - Periclimenes previarpalis (taken at a nearby site)	Clownfish in anemone (taken at a nearby site)

We dived mostly at the 16 to 19 metre level till we gradually started ascending. We did not travel far on this dive, perhaps a 100 metres at the most. We ended up on a flat ledge in five metres where we were collected by the banca. Again the visibility at this site was good, about 15 metres. Water temperature in March was 26.3�C.

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