Scuba Diving

Sogod Bay is a year round diving destination justifiably rated by many as the best in the Philippines, with marine life of all shapes, sizes and colours ranging from pygmy seahorses through to magnificent, but harmless, whale sharks and an incredible variety of extremely healthy and undamaged hard and soft coral.

There are over 25 dive sites in the area, each offer something quite different. At Lungsodaan are Max's Climax, Voltaire's Rock and Bulawarte with dives ranging from 15 up to 40 metres having pygmy seahorses, frogfish and hawksbill turtles. Big fish are also common with black and white snapper, harlequin sweetlips, trevallies, steephead parrotfish and various unicornfish.  

Closer to the Castle, lie Santa Sofia and Tangkaan marine sanctuaries. Santa Sofia has fantastic soft corals and shrimpfish, pipefish, frogfish, batfish, turtles, lionfish and signal gobies. At Tangkaan the sandy seabed drops steeply away from 6 metres to around 30 metres and this amazing wall dive provides a huge variety of fish species with large schools of fusilier and snapper, the occasional dogtooth tuna and great barracuda, frogfish, scorpionfish and blue-spotted ribbontail rays. There are large barrel sponges and a good mix of soft and hard corals, including fans of Tubastrea micrantha. 

Around the point from the Castle is Ampo reef which has well over 80% hard coral cover with amazing colours and textures. There are colourful tiny animals such as rubble dwarf gobies, mandarinfish, numerous nudibranchs and anemonefish. Angelfish are common, with regal, emperor and six-bar angels and Napoleon wrasse are regular visitors, and even cobias have been seen.

Limasawa Island is host to half a dozen dive sites including Adrian's Cove and Zack's Cove which are 20 to 50 metres deep with steep dark walls, gorgonian fans and massive table corals.

On the far (eastern) side of the bay lie Sunnok point, habitual home to whale sharks from December through April, and perhaps the jewel in Sogod Bay's crown, Napantao, which is surely the finest wall dive in the Philippines. Two sheer walls covered in soft and hard corals drop to nearly 50 metres, and teem with tens of thousands of anthias, damselfish and wrasse. Turtles are common as well as lionfish, large angelfish and grouper, and large pelagics such as tuna, jack and barracuda are to be seen when the current is strong.

Another 'must do' dive is the night dive at Padre Burgos town pier, with fantastic opportunities to see and photograph something unusual - seahorses, dwarf lionfish, nudibranches, frogfish, razor fish, slipper crabs, basketstars, waspfish, and much more.

You can experience all this in a beautiful, peaceful and uncrowded tropical setting and truly relax and enjoy your holiday. There are several dive shops only 10 minutes ride from the Castle and once in the water you will probably find that your dive boat is the only one at any given site. For keen divers, or mixed groups of divers and non-divers, we can offer a package of catered accommodation and full services at the Castle and scuba diving at one of the dive shops - and the complimentary Shuttle Service is always available for the 10 minute drive to the dive shop and back. For complete beginners we can arrange an introductory lesson in the convenience and safety of the Castle swimming pool.