Anda · Philippines · Wall · Night · Sand slope
Wonderwall
Mandarinfish at sunset on a wall that starts at 3 m
Photo: Ioannis Magouras · CC BY 4.0
Wonderwall is a wall on the Anda coast: reef top at 3 m, a steep face down to around 25 m, and a sand bottom that keeps falling to 60 m with a speedboat wreck lying on it. The wall is a macro dive — pygmy seahorses, porcelain crabs, frogfish, seasonal ghost pipefish — and the shallows hold mandarinfish that come out just after sunset.
Also known as Wonderwall Reef.
Where it is and how deep
9.7409° N, 124.5010° EPublished position for this site.
The dive
Entry is by boat, and the descent is short — the reef starts at 3 m before the wall opens up and drops away to about 25 m. Work the face slowly, because this is a hunting dive rather than a swimming one: pygmy seahorses on the fans, porcelain crabs tucked into their hosts, nudibranchs, eels in the reef, frogfish, and ghost pipefish when they are in season.
Under the wall a sandy slope carries a speedboat wreck, a feature of the dive rather than a dive of its own. The sand then keeps going, 60 m at the bottom, which puts most of it outside recreational limits and makes this a site to be disciplined about depth on. Most of the time is better spent shallower anyway, and the reef top gives you somewhere to run the tank out.
The other dive here is the dusk one. Mandarinfish are resident on the shallow reef and come out just after sunset, and divers gather around a coral patch to watch them mate, so the timing matters more than the route: you want to be settled over the patch as the light goes rather than swimming to it in the dark. It is the same wall, dived at the end of the day and then a little way beyond it.
Marine life and season
- Mandarinfish
- Pygmy seahorses
- Frogfish
- 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.
Know before you go
- The sand under the wall falls away to 60 m with no visual break, so it is easy to follow a subject deeper than planned down the slope.
- The mandarinfish come out after sunset, which means the ascent and the pick-up happen in the dark — lights, a backup, and a way to signal the boat are not optional on that dive.
Dive videos
Diving with Riza at Wonderwall · KolyaKhan on YouTube
Questions divers ask
Are there mandarinfish at Wonderwall?+
Yes. Mandarinfish are resident on the shallow part of the reef and come out just after sunset, so the site is dived at dusk as well as in daylight.
How deep is Wonderwall?+
The reef top starts at 3 m and the wall drops to roughly 25 to 26 m. Below the wall the sandy bottom keeps going to 60 m, which is well outside recreational limits.
Sources
- Wonderwall dive site — PADI
- 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
Photo credits
- A fimbriated moray eel looks out from a crevice in the reef wall. by Ioannis Magouras, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
In The Logbook
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