Diving in Port Barton

May 5, 2018: Port Barton may not be near the top of the must dive areas in the Philippines, but it still had some unique dive sites to offer, especially on the outside of the bay. Richard and I signed up for a three-dive trip with Aquaholics Dive Centre, the go to dive shop in town, while poor Chris spent the day recovering from Gandhi’s revenge.

Small dive groups are the best and today there would be just three of us on the boat, plus the crew. Joining us was Mathus from Slovakia. After signing the paperwork and loading all our gear into the banca, we headed to our first site, Shark Point. It took about an hour to get there; now it was time to find out if it was worth the wait. The water was a bit cool, so I was glad to be wearing my wetsuit, especially by the third dive of the day.

Our guide Cal had an impressive eye for finding small stuff. Here are some of the highlights of what we saw on our dives.

Shark Point (Peaked Rock)

It’s easy to understand why this spot is called Shark Point, even though there were no sharks around. The reef was beautiful, and although I expected to see more big fish swimming about, the nudibranchs were plentiful and a large crevasse in the middle of the rock was fun to explore. That’s where all the shrimp were hiding out. We also spotted a banded ribbon worm that must have been eight to ten feet long.

Middle Rock

When we arrived at Middle Rock, we came upon a couple of local fishermen in the water snorkeling for their catch. They moved on once we jumped in the water. We first swam through a shallow sandy pass between the rocks before dropping deeper where we spotted a couple of flying gunnards and a pair of crocodile fish. Visibility wasn’t great, but the sea life made up for it.

Wilson Head (Boayan Island)

On our final dive, we found a couple of rays in the sandy area and the reef had some nice drop offs and lots of beautiful corals housing some interesting critters.