Dumaguete/Dauin/Apo Vs. Bohol? Which is best?

[outpost31]

Hi All,

I'm planning a trip to PI in late March. I'm already set on going to Malapascua Island for 4 days of diving but I'm stuck on which place to go next. I'm interested in doing 3 days of diving and I'm looking for a good mix of big stuff and critters.

Which area would you recommend I do, Dumaguete/Dauin/Apo Island area OR Bohol/Balicasag Island area?

Also, which are the must-see sites for 3 days of diving in the D/D/Apo area please?
And who is good to dive with?

Many thanks!

 

[Rogersea]

I Probably have 40 dives on APO Island and a little more on than that at Balicasag. I have very few in Dauin as I dont really like the diving there. I stay on APO Island when I dive there at Apo Island Resort. I have stayed at many places in Alona but now normally stay in Tagbilaran at a place call Bohol Tropics and just go to Alona to dive.

If you only have three day I would choose Bohol because it would be a little easier to get to and you will have a little less travel time, the last few times I have gone to Alona I dive with Philippine Fun Divers aka www.boholfundivers.com . I don think either place is well known for big stuff such as rays or sharks. In Balicasag they have turtles and Jacks and some small stuff.

Although I am recommending Bohol, I personally prefer Apo Island, while there I use the dive center affiliated with Apo Island Resort www.apoislandresort.com/ . The only "big stuff" I remember from Apo is Large Hump Headed Wrasses and school of Jacks, turtles. They also have small stuff..

I recommend you do a little research on the board to get other opinions, but if you want any other advice feel free to PM me.

Cheers,
Roger

 

[wannadive64]

From Malapascua you can arrange a private boat over to Leyte and then head down to Padre Burgos for whale sharks (snorkeling only), excellent macro, great walls and one of the best night dives for critters anywhere.

 

[outpost31]

Many thanks Roger/wannadive!

I think the problem I have is I've found posts saying each one of these places is best/great diving so it's hard to choose.
In terms of travel time, I really don't mind devoting 1 day to travel between Malapascua and another area for something great.
Bohol seems good for me as it has great diving, it's close to Cebu & Oslob for WS and I can do the Tarsiers & Butterfly Sanctuary.
D/D/Apo area is also good, near to oslob for WS
And now South Leyte/Sogod, (cheers Wannadive), is also a good option for some interesting diving & WS

I guess it would help if I gave a little more info on what I'd like to see as my priority is photography:

Whale sharks (preferably in less of a hectic zoo environment), big schools of jacks/barracuda etc,
Turtles, Blue Ringed Octopus (rare I know), Mimic Octopus, Flamboyant Cuttlefish, Nudis (Especially Flabellina types),
Sea horses...also, just having a mix of dive types like wall, swim thru, etc is nice for variety.

I always try to pick the best experience/dive sites I can, based on my budget, as I may never return to that country.
All help and recommendations are much appreciated!

@Roger: sounds likes you know a lot about these areas so I may PM you for more specific info later, thank you!
Why do you prefer Apo?
@Wannadive: Can you recommend the best dive sites for that area please? Which is 'one of the best night dives'? Cheers!

 

[Mantra]

This will confuse you further - but if you stay in Dauin you get both Dauin and Apo Island from the one location. Mikes resort there makes the short trip to apo every other day, broken up with diving at Dauin and even Siquijor island. Looking at your list of critters - we had seahorse, feeding flamboyant cuttlefish, and a blue ringed octopus on the same dive at Dauin, finishing up in a drift over underwater hot springs, a couple of weeks ago. I would get bored just being at Apo only personally. It's beautiful, staggeringly so, but the critters at Dauin are abundant and diverse. You need to enjoy muck diving though.

Malapascua is about way more than the threshers. If you do deep slope and gato island there you will tick some things off your bucket list there too! Evolution run a great operation there.

if you do go to bohol, forget the butterfly sanctuary and look into an outfit called Prana divers. Read their tripadvisor review. Amazing little operation!

apo beats Balicasag hands down in my opinion.

 

[outpost31]

Thanks Mantra, and yes, that does confuse things further.
The Dauin/Apo does sound very good and it is really all about what I can see there for photography. If I was there for 3 days of diving, what sites/islands would you suggest? And yes, I do enjoy hunting for critters.

As for Malapascua, yes I'm there for TS but also for much more, I have Lighthouse for Mandarin, Gato, Calanggaman, deep slope on my list with either Evo or Exotic.

I'll look into Prana, Snake Island seems good as well, forgot to mention Sea Kraits on my list, they're always great to see.
Thank you!

 

[jbb]

Thanks Mantra, and yes, that does confuse things further.
The Dauin/Apo does sound very good and it is really all about what I can see there for photography. If I was there for 3 days of diving, what sites/islands would you suggest? And yes, I do enjoy hunting for critters.

As for Malapascua, yes I'm there for TS but also for much more, I have Lighthouse for Mandarin, Gato, Calanggaman, deep slope on my list with either Evo or Exotic.

I'll look into Prana, Snake Island seems good as well, forgot to mention Sea Kraits on my list, they're always great to see.
Thank you!

I've been to all three locations multiple times. Malapascua 14, Bohol 3, Dauin 3 and Apo 3. Can you tell which one is my favorite? You can search my flickr photos for each location to get a smattering of criters you might see. I travel alone so I like locations with some social interaction and good conversation in the evenings.

Malapascua - Thesher Shark Divers - I've been going there for 7 years. I has gotten more developed over the years. I know a lot of locals there and I enjoy visiting them nearly as much as the diving. I like the threshers but also the variety of dive sites. Other places get a little boring with similar coral or sandy slope dives. Malapascua has some of the least shy mandarin fish at Lighthouse night dive. I recommend Bantigi night dive too. Both might have a blue ring octo if you're lucky. Gato Island can be good for nudis. I wish they would protect Chocolate (harlequin shrimp on one visit) and Gato Islands better. Huge 6ft sea snake at Gato - very dark and can't see the stripes. It passed by my chest as I was taking a photo of a nudi against the cavern wall - wished someone had gotten a photo of that.

Bohol - Philippine Fun Divers - i think this is second due to the activity topside in the evening. Lots of moray eels - I really like the locally named "golden eel" with blue and black eyes. There are pygmy pipefish and mushroom coral pipefish - the latter are tough to get a good image of as they move about too quickly - they're on Monad Shoal too but everyone wants to look for thresher so they get passed by.

Apo - Liberty Lodge/Paul's Diving - I have better dives there when I stayed at Liberty Lodge on the island. Nice variety of dives too and only 10 minutes to the otherside of the island. You can dive the drift dives when there is a ripping current if you like. Hard to find nudis with all the corals but lots of other critters. Must do night dive in front of Liberty's. Only place I've gotten 5 dives in one day other than a liveaboard dive boat.

Dauin - Mike's Dauin Diver Resort - I've been diving here the last few years. Muck diving which I am used to in Seattle. Some cool stuff. Four flamboyant cuttlefish on one dive - wow. I still want to see the mimic and wonderpus octos. I never saw the critter that pulled a lionfish into the sand right in front of my eyes on a night dive, pretty sure it was a bobbit worm. Not a whole lot to do here in the evenings if there aren't a lot of other divers. I stay next to Mike's resort as I was looking for lower cost room - very cool thing he got a turkey dinner arranged on Thanksgiving for a group of American divers.

There you go. Everyone has their reasons for liking a dive destination.

 

[Mantra]

Some awesome advice from Jason there, and the voice of experience. It might have been thanks to a review of yours, Jason, that the option of staying cheaper at Puerto Cita next to Mikes came up, and we enjoyed that option. Great tip.

We enjoyed Dauin more than Alona Beach, perhaps because the nightlife/bar scene isn't very important to us. PFD at Alona has a great reputation - but I wonder if you have checked out Prana also, Jason? They are boutique and a special experience. Also Fluro diving if you want a night dive with a twist (expensive and maybe a bit gimmicky but worth doing). Like you rightly say, though, different divers will have different preferences for all sorts of reasons.

I forgot to include lighthouse! Awesome site, agreed.

One thing about the dive sites at Apo at the moment, OP - just check with the resort what sites they are currently diving as there is a lot of fresh damage to one side of the island from the supertyphoon a few months back. I didn't see it, but people were saying the reserve and clownfish City were wiped out, so the sites might be more limited now which might be a factor in considering there vs Dauin. If I had only 3 days in Dauin I would do a triple dive day at Apo including coconut (if you are ok with strong currents). I'd then take the other two days at Dauin, hunting for whatever. We were keen to find stargazers, for example, and ended up seeing three over the week.

Anyway, for us the enjoyment of places came down to three factors - the site, the conditions, and the quality of the dive shop. We dont care much about nightlife, and don't mind basic accomodation. We didn't chase the cheapest, and had flawless experiences at Evolution, Prana and Mike's. Moalboal was a different story. We went with a larger shop there who had a diver guide ratio of 11 to 1. Not a bad experience - we just did our own dives at the edge of the cluster*>#% - but the best guide on earth can't be pointing out criters in a situation like that. The dive just becomes about crowd control. It really reinforced a preference for smaller, more boutique, operators and the three named were top shelf for us. With all of them there were times it was just the two of us and a guide, and those were the dives when we tended to see the rarer stuff.

We also tipped at least 10% of the dive cost to the guide after the dives - more if we saw something really special. We tipped the boat crew and wait staff at the end of our stays.

 

[Rogersea]

Many thanks Roger/wannadive!


@Roger: sounds likes you know a lot about these areas so I may PM you for more specific info later, thank you!
Why do you prefer Apo?
@Wannadive: Can you recommend the best dive sites for that area please? Which is 'one of the best night dives'? Cheers!

I just really enjoy the ambiance of the island... The little resort that we stay at is nice, the food is reasonably good and the diving is very good, I never get tired of the dive sites..... I think u have everything in APO that you have in Bohol(diving wise).... Bohol has a lot more options as far as terrestrial adventures....

Cheers.
Roger

 

[outpost31]

Thank you Mantra, I'm like you, I don't care about the nightlife just a nice bar for a cold beer suits me. I try to avoid strong currents as I'm more about the photography. Cheers for the heads up on the typhoon damage.

@Jason Thank you very much for all the helpful info, I was really hoping there was someone on here with experience at all these places who could give me good advice! I checked out your photos, awesome shots mate! What camera were you using?
I think you just convinced me to up my 4 days to 5 at Malapascua.

So far, for my needs, Bohol is looking good but I need to find out more about the diving at Sogod/South Leyte in terms of what to see there, sites and ofc they have a less zoo-like experience with the WS.

Thank you all very much for taking the time to help me!