Apo Reef status?

[Centrals]

Yes, 5 days of diving from Rags II: 2 days at Apo Reef and 3 days at Coron. I'm very excited about it!

Make sure you dive the Kyokuzan Maru(asbestos wreck) a rarely dived wreck because of its location. It will be the first or last dive in Coron.
Have a nice one.

 

[Makhno]

Make sure you dive the Kyokuzan Maru(asbestos wreck) a rarely dived wreck because of its location. It will be the first or last dive in Coron.
Have a nice one.

Thanks Centrals, I'll be sure to dive that wreck.

 

[xrcjdx]

this post will be a worthless review of apo reef because during my visit the viz was absolutely terrible. bad, bad bloom. very disappointed with that, but that's the (bad) luck of the draw. that said, on on the last of 4 diving days (4 dives per day), on the fringes of the protected area, we were greeted with decent viz, large swarming schools of jack, and surrounded by white tips on a spot picked up with sonar on the spot by the rags ii (although the plateau at about 30m, being some distance from the ranger station, had in typical philippines fashion been blasted in the past). the rags ii is an absolute class act for people who come to seriously dive.

 

[Makhno]

When my friends and I were there Feb. 10th - 11th, Apo Reef was very nice. No bleaching to speak of, good viz (30m or more on average), at least one or two whitetip reef sharks (some greys, too) and turtles on almost every dive, plenty of diversity and quantity of reef fishes, some good macro life. My only disappointments were no big rays and not enough silvery pelagic fishes (although my friends saw a few schools of trevallies that I didn't see). Overall we were quite happy.

I agree completely that the Rags II liveaboard is a real class act -- and that was especially apparent at Coron/Busuanga where they did what I thought was a very good job of accommodating and balancing the interests of both recreational divers and technical divers at the same time. Can't wait to go back.