Anda · Philippines · Coral garden · Wall
Paradise Gardens
A resident colony of 20 to 40 turtles on one small stretch of reef
Photo: Ioannis Magouras · CC BY 4.0
Paradise Gardens is Blue Star's house reef and the site Anda is best known for: a soft coral garden in 2 to 5 m of water, a wall dropping to 20 m below it, and a resident colony of 20 to 40 turtles on a very small stretch of reef directly opposite the resort. Snorkellers and divers use the same ground.
Also known as Paradise Garden.
Where it is and how deep
9.7227° N, 124.5178° EApproximate position — the dashed circle shows where the site lies; your operator's briefing has the mooring.
The dive
The dive starts shallow and stays that way. The top of the reef is a soft coral garden in 2 to 5 m, the same ground the snorkellers use, and from there the slope runs down through hard corals, sponges and crinoids onto a wall that bottoms out at 20 m. Nothing about the profile is demanding, and the reef is alive with small fish the whole way down.
The turtles are the point. A colony of 20 to 40 of them lives in a very small area opposite the resort, feeding on sea grass on a small rocky outcrop, and several are likely to appear at different points in the dive. Some of them are large. Around them the wall carries the ordinary cast of a healthy Bohol reef, moorish idols, snappers and jacks, while whitetip and blacktip reef sharks and a school of bigeye trevally turn up only infrequently.
On the reef itself the small stuff is dense: nudibranchs in numbers, shrimps, scorpionfish and moray eels worked into the hard and soft coral. Because the site sits directly off the resort it is easy to dive it twice in a day, and the shallow coral garden holds enough to fill a long safety stop or a whole second tank.
Marine life and season
- Sea turtles
- Reef sharks
- Trevally & jacks
- Nudibranchs
- Macro critters
| 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.
Dive videos
Paradise Garden @ BlueStar Dive Resort · Eleuterio Beruan Jr. on YouTube
Questions divers ask
Where can you see turtles in Anda?+
Paradise Gardens holds a resident colony of 20 to 40 turtles in a very small area directly opposite Blue Star Dive & Resort. Divers and snorkellers both see them there, and some of the animals are large.
Can beginners dive Paradise Gardens?+
Yes. The coral garden on top of the reef sits in 2 to 5 m and the wall below bottoms out at 20 m, so most of the site is inside Open Water limits, and the shallow section doubles as the snorkelling ground.
Sources
- Anda Dive Sites - Dive Anda Bohol Philippines — Diveanda.com (archived)
- Diving in Anda Bohol — Blue Star Dive & Resort
- Your Guide to Diving in Bohol — Dive The World
- OpenStreetMap: Blue Star Dive Resort — OpenStreetMap
Photo credits
- A banded sea krait glides low over sand near the reef. by Ioannis Magouras, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
In The Logbook
- Where to dive with sea turtlesBig animals · 15 min read
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A 24 m wall dived as two sites, north and south
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A sharp wall to 40 m under a broad shelf of coral
Muck & macro
A sloping wall onto muck at 25 m, dived for nudibranchs
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A drift wall rated for beginners through advanced divers
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Similar dives elsewhere
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