Dauin & Apo Island

A diving day here usually splits in two. Dauin's critter sites lie directly off the black-sand beaches, so resorts either walk divers in from the sand or run boat hops of a few minutes, and pairs go down with a guide working a slow zigzag across the slope, pointing out things you would otherwise swim straight past. Dusk and night dives sit in the ordinary schedule rather than counting as an extra, and nobody travels far between them.

Apo Island is the other half, and it is a committed trip: an outrigger crossing from the coast, two or three dives with the surface interval spent ashore, and sanctuary fees paid on arrival. Sites ring the island, from sheltered coral on the lee side to exposed points where the tide pushes hard enough that the dive becomes a one-way drift and the boatman follows the bubbles to pick divers up downstream.

The two halves look nothing alike underwater. Dauin is volcanic sand, dark and close to featureless, where the interest is whatever has settled on it or been put there on purpose: concrete blocks, tyres and, at a couple of sites, a sunken car, all of it colonised by small animals. Apo is hard reef grown over volcanic rock, with plate and boulder coral stacked down the slope, seaward drop-offs and shallow bommies that snorkellers work from the surface.

This is a photographer's base above all, and many resorts guide in twos or threes because the sand rewards staying put rather than covering ground. It also works for people who simply want warm, shallow diving with no long crossings, and for mixed groups where one half wants coral and the other wants critters. Divers hoping for big animals or long visibility are better treating the area as one stop on a longer route than a whole trip.