Cabilao

Cabilao is one of the few places in Bohol you can dive without staying on Panglao. Three or four small dive resorts sit on the island's west coast, house reefs start at the beach, and the boats are short hops around a shore you can see the whole of. Day trips do come across from Panglao — it is a long run, most of the morning — but the island rewards staying: sites ring it, so the guide picks by the current rather than by how far the boat can go, and night dives are simply the last dive of the day.

The diving is wall diving. Drop-offs run around most of the island, topping out at about 5 m and falling well past recreational depth, festooned with giant gorgonian fans, barrel sponges and soft coral, and cut with caves and overhangs to work along. Between the walls the ground is shallow seagrass, sand and scattered coral blocks, which is where the other half of Cabilao lives: ghost pipefish, sea moths, stargazers, frogfish, mantis shrimp and a long list of nudibranchs, mostly found on the slow dives and at night.

The island's reputation was built on hammerheads schooling off the north-west corner in the winter months, and that is still what most divers have heard about it. Sightings became far rarer after the 1990s, so treat them as luck rather than a plan; whitetip reef sharks resting in the caves, barracuda, jacks and dogtooth tuna on the current-washed points are the everyday version. The whole island has been a declared marine reserve since 1978, and the reef on the walls is in noticeably better condition than Panglao's.