Secret Bay

Secret Bay sits a short boat ride from Anilao's resorts, its sandy slope dropping from a shallow shelf to about 24 metres at the outer edge. Guides often rank it the best muck dive on this coast — its other local name is Mainit Muck — and the bottom is soft sand and rubble rather than reef, so the dive is built around working that ground slowly rather than covering distance.

By day the slope regularly produces hairy frogfish, rhinopias and Coleman and hairy shrimp tucked into sponges, gobies sheltering in bottles and other litter on the sand, and a run of nudibranchs steady enough that photography workshops list Secret Bay among their most requested sites. Bobbit worms lie buried at the sand's edge with jaws open, and mantis shrimp hold burrows across the open ground.

After dark the same sand changes character: mimic octopus, wonderpus and blue-ringed octopus come out to hunt over open ground that gave them nowhere to hide by day. It is rated as good a night dive as a day one, and with Anilao Pier it is one of the coast's standout night sites. The same resorts also run Anilao's separate blackwater dives after dark, drifting over deep open water well offshore — a different, deeper way to dive at night than working Secret Bay's shallow sand.