Puerto Galera

Sabang sets the pattern. Dive shops stand in a row behind the beach, outriggers are moored a few metres off it, and most sites are close enough that the boat comes back between dives: you surface, walk into the shop, and go again on a fresh tank. Timing follows the tide rather than the clock, so briefings open with which way the water will be running, and the order of the day gets rearranged around slack water.

For such a short stretch of coast the topography changes fast. Off Escarceo Point the reef breaks into ridges and cut channels where current accelerates through the gaps; the Sinandigan side east of Sabang runs as wall, with growth thick enough to hold small subjects; and the bays either side of the village flatten into sand and rubble at easy depths, which is where the shore entries, the training dives and a cargo boat sunk on purpose in the early 2000s all sit.

The two set pieces are drifts and dusk. A canyon dive is a committed one-way run, entered upcurrent, carried through and finished holding onto rock while the water keeps moving past, and it is worth being straight with a shop about how much current you have actually dived. At the other extreme, the mandarinfish dive is spent hovering over one patch of rubble in fading light, waiting on a fish the size of a thumb to leave cover.

Verde Island is the long crossing and a day out in its own right, weather-dependent and normally sold as a full trip rather than a slot in the schedule. The area suits divers who want a lot of different diving without changing base, provided they can handle water that pushes; newly certified divers stay in the sheltered bays until they can. Sabang is a bar strip as much as a dive village, and quieter rooms sit around the headland at Small and Big La Laguna.