Tubbataha Reef

Tubbataha sits in the middle of the Sulu Sea, about 150 km southeast of Puerto Princesa, with nothing around it but open water. The protected area spans roughly 970 km² and takes in two large atolls, the North and South Atolls, and the smaller Jessie Beazley Reef some 20 km to the north. The name comes from Sama-Bajau words meaning a long reef that surfaces at low tide. The islets have no fresh water, so no one has ever lived here, and that isolation is the main reason the reef survived in such good condition.

This is a true atoll system, built on an extinct submarine volcano on the Cagayan Ridge: as the old volcanic islands sank, the corals kept growing towards the light. The result is a shallow reef top that ends abruptly in walls dropping more than 100 metres into blue water, and those walls are what divers come for. Surveys have counted around 600 fish species and 360 coral species, along with sharks (whitetip reef sharks are the familiar sight, hammerheads the prize), manta rays, turtles, schools of barracuda and jacks, and Napoleon wrasse. The North Islet is a nesting ground for seabirds and marine turtles.

Protection came late and against real pressure. Motorised boats in the 1980s brought fishermen using cyanide and dynamite, and divers and conservationists pushed for a park; in 1988 President Corazon Aquino declared it the country's first national marine park. UNESCO inscribed it in 1993, it became a Ramsar wetland in 1999, and in 2006 it was enlarged to include Jessie Beazley Reef. Rotating teams of park rangers from the navy, coast guard, the municipality of Cagayancillo and the park office live on a station on the North Atoll, two months at a time. They have dealt with more than poachers: in 2013 the US Navy minesweeper USS Guardian ran aground on the reef and had to be cut apart in place, and the United States later paid the Philippines for the damage.

Visiting Tubbataha is a commitment. There is no accommodation and no landing on the sandbars; the only way in is a liveaboard dive boat, and the season is only a few months long, roughly mid-March to mid-June, when the Sulu Sea is calm enough for the crossing. Visibility then can reach 30 metres or more. Trips are few and fill up long in advance, often most of a year ahead. The one place visitors may step ashore is the ranger station.

Getting there

All trips leave from Puerto Princesa, the capital of Palawan, served by Puerto Princesa International Airport (PPS), about 150 km from the reef. The crossing takes about ten hours by boat, usually overnight, and liveaboard cruises typically last five to seven nights.