Research Reef

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A named reef from the chart, not a dive site anyone has told us about. It may be a great dive or a sandbar at low tide. If you dive it, log the dive here so the crew knows.

What you'll see (6)

Snowflake MorayEchidna nebulosaseen 1× near here

Indo-Pacific Rock-boring UrchinEchinometra mathaeiseen 1× near here

Mottled Lightfoot CrabGrapsus albolineatusseen 1× near here

Common Spider ConchLambis lambisseen 1× near here

Yellow-eyed PufferArothron immaculatusseen 1× near here

Reticulated PufferArothron reticularisseen 1× near here

Planning a trip

6–8 days

worth going for

Long flight and a domestic connection.

2,473km from Singapore — about 18h each way, so two of those days are travel. the only logged site in the area.

Dive Crew is a dive group from Singapore. Members plan trips here, log their dives, and share their photos of each site.

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Monsoon

October is the worst of the season here.

Two monsoons from opposite directions, so which coast you are on matters more than which month it is. Typhoons overlay both.

Habagat — southwest monsoon

Rough on the west-facing sites — Coron, El Nido, Apo Reef. Anilao and the east coast are sheltered from it.

Typhoon season

Storms cancel boats at a few days' notice anywhere north of Palawan.

The year here

JFMAMJJASOND

Best here: February, March, April, May.

The Philippines. Written by hand from how the season actually runs, calibrated against what the boats do, since a season that disagrees with the operators is wrong however good the meteorology behind it. It describes most years, not this one: the forecast above is what knows about next week.

Moon and tides

Waning gibbous

71% lit · day 20 of the lunar month

Neap tides

Neap tides — the smallest range of the month, so the weakest currents. Easy conditions and usually the clearest water, though a drift site may barely drift.

New 10 Oct Full 26 Oct

Phase computed here, not fetched. This is the spring/neap cycle, which sets how hard the water moves — not a tide table: no free source publishes high and low water for Southeast Asian reefs, and the range peaks a day or two after the moon does, by an amount that varies with the coast. For times on the day, ask the operator.

Getting there

~9h 12m

door to water, each way · 3 legs

FlightManila (MNL)~5h 42mFlight time plus the airports at both ends. A connection adds to it.Find flights →
TransferAnilao3hThree hours by road once you are out of Manila, which is the part that varies. Resorts run a van.Directions →
Dive boatResearch Reef30 minAnilao's sites are a short bangka ride from the resort jetties.

📍 Research Reef on Google Maps 🧭 Route from Manila

Times marked ~ are estimated from straight-line distance and will be roughly right at best. The road legs are the ones Google Maps answers properly; it will not plan the ferry or the dive boat at all. A dive site's coordinates put a pin in open water, so the map link drops you on the site, not on a jetty.

Details

Country: Philippines
Marks: 16°35.000'N 120°17.000'E
Position: 16.5833, 120.2833

On Wikidata →

Where it is

Loading the map…

Nearby

Sightings and photographs from iNaturalist contributors, research-grade records within 6km, under Creative Commons licences. Counts are what divers and snorkellers have bothered to log — a common fish with few records is common all the same.