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A diver hangs beside a vast school of black jacks along a wall at Shark Airport, Tubbataha — Tubbataha Reefs.

Tubbataha Reefs · Philippines · Reef

Shark Airport

Several whitetip reef sharks on one terrace at 20 m

Area photo: q.phia · CC BY 2.0

Shark Airport is a Tubbataha reef site built around one feature: a sloping, terrace-like shelf at 20 metres where whitetip reef sharks gather, several of them in view at once. The catalogue that lists it calls the site very remote and reachable only by liveaboard, so it is dived from a tender off a boat working the park.

Where it is and how deep

Depth profile of Shark Airport: typical dive to 20 m (to 66 ft) 18 m · Open Water30 m · Advanced40 m · Recreational limit20 mtypical dive
Depths on a shared scale to 40 m (130 ft); dashed lines mark common certification limits.

8.8698° N, 120.0013° EPublished position for this site.

The dive

The dive is organised around the terrace, the sloping shelf of reef at 20 metres that gives the site its name and its reputation. This is where the air is worth spending: whitetip reef sharks use it, and rather than one animal passing in the blue there can be several of them in the same field of view. Settle low, keep off the coral and let them hold their ground instead of swimming in at them.

There is no shore option and no day boat that reaches this reef, so a dive here happens only while a liveaboard is in the park, and the tender that dropped you collects you wherever you surface. Everything published about the site is about the terrace, so treat the rest of the reef as the way to and from it rather than the reason to be here, and keep enough gas to spend the useful part of the dive at 20 metres.

Marine life and season

  • Reef sharks
Month-by-month season rating for Shark Airport
JanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec
Off-seasonOff-seasonFairPrimePrimeGoodOff-seasonOff-seasonOff-seasonOff-seasonOff-seasonOff-season

Season follows Tubbataha Reefs: Park diving is permitted only mid-March through mid-June; closed the rest of the year for monsoon safety and reef recovery.

Know before you go

  • The park is dived from tenders and you surface away from the boat, so carry an SMB and deploy it before you come up.

Questions divers ask

Do you actually see sharks at Shark Airport?+

The site is named for them. Whitetip reef sharks use the terrace-like slope at 20 metres, and the published description of the site notes that several can be spotted at once rather than one at a time.

Sources

  1. Shark Airport - Philippines, Mimaropa — Scubago / SSI MyDiveGuide
  2. Shark Airport, Philippines — SSI MyDiveGuide

In The Logbook

More dive sites in Tubbataha Reefs

Wall

Delsan Wreck

Predators along the wall, and a crevasse to 40 m as current shelter

5–23 m · max 40 madvanced

Pinnacle

Jessie Beazley Reef

A mid-ocean cay dived only when the crossing stays calm

7–50 madvanced

Wall

Wall Street

A steep face to 60 m over a 3-5 m coral garden

3–5 m · max 60 madvanced

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