Anda · Philippines · Wall · Drift
Coral Garden
A sharp wall to 40 m under a broad shelf of coral
Area photo: Ioannis Magouras · CC BY 4.0
Coral Garden is the deep end of the Anda wall: a sharp face dropping to 40 m with large expanses of hard and soft coral over the top of it. Current runs along the wall often enough that the site is usually dived as a drift, letting the face go past rather than swimming the length of it.
Where it is and how deep
9.7217° N, 124.5153° EPublished position for this site.
The dive
The shallow part of the site is what gives it the name. The top carries large expanses of hard and soft coral, and it is worth planning to spend the end of the dive up there rather than treating it as the swim back to the boat. The wall itself starts at the outer edge of that shelf, and it is sharp rather than sloping, falling away cleanly to 40 m.
Current is common along the face, and when it runs the site is dived as a drift: in at the up-current end, settle at one depth on the wall and let it carry you. Forty metres is the floor of recreational depth limits, so the sensible profile keeps the drop-off below you rather than under your fins, picking a depth on the upper face and saving the coral shelf on top for the long shallow finish.
Marine life and season
- Pristine corals
| Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Prime | Prime | Prime | Prime | Prime | Good | Fair | Fair | Fair | Good | Prime | Prime |
Season follows Anda: Nov–Jun is the main season; the south-west monsoon and typhoons make Jul–Oct unreliable on this exposed coast.
Know before you go
- Current along the wall can turn the dive into a one-way drift with no swim back to the mooring, so carry a surface marker and dive it with a boat that will follow the group.
Sources
- Coral Garden dive site — Scubago (SSI)
More dive sites in Anda
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Two buoys, east and west, because the wall runs that long
Wall
A 20 m corridor at depth, leading to a room at 26 m
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A resident colony of 20 to 40 turtles on one small stretch of reef
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Turtles, frogfish and nudibranchs on a wall to 25 m
Mandarinfish at sunset on a wall that starts at 3 m
A 24 m wall dived as two sites, north and south
Turtle City — greens and hawksbills on a wall to 30 m
Similar dives elsewhere
Table corals over a wall running 25 to 40 metres
An open-top cave in the northwest wall of a limestone island
A cracked deep wall under a shallow coral garden
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