It has been 2 years since our last post and we are excited to share some of our recent dive adventures in our succeeding posts. Today, we’ll virtually take you to Coron. Coron occupies the eastern part of the Busuanga Island, which is part of the Palawan Province of the Philippines.

Coron diving is best-known for the ship wrecks, as it is the final resting place of the 12 Japanese supply ships, bombed by Ally forces in 1944 during World War 2. Of those 12, we visited 2 ship wrecks- Okikawa Maru and Lusong.

This photo was taken in Okikawa Maru, seen with beautiful soft corals and even a friendly turtle. Okikawa Maru is 160m but the main deck lies at around 12m. Like most of the ship wrecks in Coron, visibility is always challenging, ranging from 5m-15m.

For both our wreck dives, we opted to have minimal penetration and explored with our underwater scooters. With the scooters, we can swim against the current with ease and we cover a huge surface area at a shorter time. The next photo is from Lusong gunboat, which is relatively shallow and small, with a nice coral garden beside it.

The highlight of our diving in Coron was seeing the sea cow or Dugong in the Northern part of the Busuanga coastline. Diving with the dugong would start with a local guide briefing on how to approach this marine mammal. The local guide then snorkels to find the dugong and then we dive as soon as it is spotted.

The dugong mostly stays for a couple of minutes, grazes on the sea grass beds and moves to a different location. We witnessed a fascinating behavior where it was trying to brush off the Remora by rolling over multiple times. It was indeed 2 memorable dives with the Dugong named Aban.

Another beautiful yet an exclusive area to explore is the Club Paradise house reef. We dove with the very accommodating Dugong dive center and their service is highly recommended.

Coron is certainly a mix of different diving profiles, both suited for beginners and advanced divers. Equally beautiful above water are the limestone formations, where non-divers can also enjoy. We look forward to explore more of Coron with our macro lenses and the unique diving sites in the lakes.