Philippines

Diving Tubbataha

A UNESCO-listed atoll in the middle of the Sulu Sea, reachable for barely a quarter of the year.

Tubbataha Reefs Natural Park is two atolls and a reef in open sea, a night's steam from Palawan, with no land to speak of beyond a ranger station and a sandbar. Being that far from anywhere is precisely the point: it has been protected since 1988, fished by nobody, and the reef shows it — walls in genuinely excellent condition, grey reef and whitetip sharks as background animals, jack and barracuda schools, and turtles everywhere. The park only opens to visitors from around March to June, when the seas allow it, and every visit is liveaboard-only.

Know before you go

Best season

Mid-March to mid-June, and no other time — the park is closed and the crossing untenable outside that window.

Conditions

28–30°C with visibility often 30 m or more. Open-ocean sites mean current and surface chop; a few sites are unambiguously advanced.

Getting there

Fly to Puerto Princesa (PPS) on Palawan, where the liveaboards depart. The crossing to the reef takes about ten hours.

Dived with, here

• Stella Maris Explorer

  A liveaboard running the Tubbataha atolls out of Puerto Princesa in the short March-to-June window when the reef is reachable at all.

What lives in Philippines

Recorded across Philippines rather than Tubbataha specifically — each page names the sites.