Balicasag Marine Sanctuary

This is the gentlest dive on the island and the one most people remember. The ground is a shallow coral shelf running out to a lip at around 25 m, the water is usually flat, and the whole site is inside Open Water limits, so the dive is spent looking rather than managing anything. Guides work it slowly along the shelf and finish on top, which suits photographers and gives an unusually long bottom time for Balicasag.

Turtles are the point. Green and hawksbill are both resident here in numbers, and decades of protection have left them completely indifferent to divers — they carry on grazing the shelf while a group hovers a metre off, which is the whole reason the island's snorkel boats come here too. Beyond them the shelf is dense with clownfish in their anemones, butterflyfish, parrotfish and sweetlips, and jackfish and snapper school off the drop.

It is also the part of Balicasag where the protection is most visible. The sanctuary is a no-take zone with a local guide required, a fee, and a limit on how many divers are on the island in a day, and the reef inside it is in better condition than the sections outside. The trade-off is company: this is the busiest patch of water in Bohol on a calm morning, which is another argument for being on the first boat out.