Talisay Pier

The shallow half is a shelf: seagrass, open sand and blocks of coral scattered across it, starting at about 3 m and running out before the ground tips into a steep slope that carries on to around 40. Nothing about it looks like much on the way in, which is the usual signal that the dive is going to be spent hovering over one patch of rubble rather than covering ground.

Mandarinfish are what it is dived for. They live in the coral rubble and come up out of it in the last of the light to spawn, a few centimetres above the reef and only for a short window, so the dive is timed for dusk and the group settles down and waits rather than searching. Red light and patience work; a bright torch put straight on them does not.

The rest of the shelf holds its own even without them. Frogfish, leaf fish and scorpionfish sit still enough on the coral blocks to be swum past, there are nudibranchs through the seagrass, and schooling barracuda work over the drop where the slope begins. It doubles as one of the island's night dives for the same reason — the ground here comes alive after dark.