Sombrero Island

The bottom here is not a flat slope but a run of valleys and pillars, and the dive follows the contours of it rather than a single depth. Nothing on the site drops below 25 m, so the whole profile stays inside easy recreational limits. Soft corals, gorgonians and crinoids jostle for space with hard corals that are in genuinely good condition, all of it fed by the current that often runs across the site.

Two kinds of looking pay off. Close in, this is one of the better Anilao dives for nudibranchs: mating green nudibranchs, Nembrotha kubaryana, along with Chromodoris willani and Ardeadoris egretta. Lift your eyes and the reef fish are often dominated by a red blizzard of anthias, sometimes hard to see past, with the vivid blue of red-toothed triggerfish showing against the coral behind them.

It is worth doing exactly that from time to time. Turtles, mantas and eagle rays all put in regular appearances here, and the diver with a camera pressed to a nudibranch is the one who misses them. Let the current set the direction of the dive, keep the reef on one side, and lift your head out of it between subjects.