Mactan & Olango · Philippines · Wreck · Wall
Tambuli Airplane Wreck
A small twin-engine plane on a seagrass plateau off Maribago
Area photo: ＤＡＶＩＤ · CC BY-SA 3.0
The Tambuli plane wreck lies off Maribago on Mactan's east coast, a short boat run from the shore. The site is a sloped wall running down to 35 metres, topped by a sandy plateau of seagrass and seaweed, and the aircraft on it is a small single-seater with twin engines.
Where it is and how deep
10.2886° N, 124.0139° EPublished position for this site.
The dive
The boat run out from the Maribago shore is short, so this is a hop along the coast rather than a trip. What you drop onto is a sandy sloped plateau covered in seagrass and seaweed, shallow enough to hold light, and the ground falls away from the edge of it as a sloped wall that carries on down to 35 metres.
The aircraft is small — a single-seater with twin engines — so it is a feature on the slope rather than a wreck to penetrate. Nothing has been published about how or when it came to be here, and no marine-life account exists for the site on its own, so the dive works best as a look at the aircraft with the rest of the time given to the seagrass plateau and the slope below it.
The wreck
- Vessel
- Unidentified light aircraft
- Type
- Single-seater with twin engines
- Cause
- No published record of how or when the aircraft came to be on the slope.
- Lies
- On a sloped wall off Maribago on Mactan's east coast, the slope running down to 35 m.
Marine life and season
The sources we used don't single out particular species here.
| Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Good | Good | Prime | Prime | Prime | Fair | Fair | Fair | Fair | Fair | Fair | Fair |
Season follows Mactan & Olango: Mar–May, the hot dry season, is the usual window; the Jun–Nov rains cut visibility on the house reefs, and typhoon risk runs highest around Nov–Dec, as Typhoon Rai showed in December 2021.
Questions divers ask
How deep is the Tambuli airplane wreck?+
The site is a sloped wall running down to 35 metres, with a sandy plateau of seagrass and seaweed on top of it. No separate depth figure has been published for the aircraft itself.
Sources
- Tambuli Airplane Wreck — Scubago
More dive sites in Mactan & Olango
Reef
Table corals from 3 m down to 40, and nudibranchs on all of it
Wall
A wall from 20 m to about 73 m off Olango's north-west side
Wall
A channel wall to 35 m with a current that runs hard
Sharks at 35 m off Olango's northern tip, hammerheads among them
A blue opening in the wall at 25–27 m, depending on the tide
Cave & cavern
A 29 m roof, a 40 m floor, and a chamber full of flashlightfish
Wreck
A ship at 50 m that a typhoon stood back upright
Reef
A wide shield reef with the wall starting at 5–7 m
Similar dives elsewhere
A two-seat aircraft sunk on sand at 20 m, with a wall beyond
The seaplane crane still stands out on a hull at 35 m
A 35 m hull, then an SUV and a helicopter on the way back
A 1988 ferry wreck lying on her starboard side at 33 m