In August 2023 I did a three week long dive trip to the Philippines with my friend John. We spent the first week at Anilao staying at Buceo Anilao Dive Resort.

There are dozens of dive sites located within 20 minutes run from the resort.

Unfortunately we had a Super Typhoon hit the northern Philippines when we were there, so the Coast Guard banned all boats and diving later in the week. We ended up going back in October 2025 for two weeks. This dive site was one we visited on that trip.

Caban Cove is located just under 4.5 kilometres to the west of the resort about a quarter of the way south from the northern end of Caban Island. It takes about 15 minutes to get there, although we did it as a second dive from a lot closer. A GPS mark for the dive spot is 13° 41' 12.815"N 120° 50' 36.690" E (using WGS84 as the datum).

A satellite photo from Google Earth that shows the location of the dive site at left and Buceo Anilao Resort at right

The dive starts in a cove, the only one on the whole island and off what appears to be the only buildings on Caban Island. We did this as a drift dive to the north starting near the northern end of the beach. The boat is live as you drop into the water and straight away you see that the bottom slopes steeply to 22 metres. The bottom is composed of a lot of coral and rock rubble.

There are also some boulder sized coral bommies. Once down on the bottom of the slope we drift north-east and then north in a slight current. The bottom has sea whips, soft corals, and many featherstars and some sponges. We see more than a dozen moray eels, at least three different species. We also see another very ugly spiny devilfish.

A typical scene on this dive	Spiny devilfish

A short distance along we find two black giant anglerfish. One is a bit bigger than the other, we assume that this is a female and the smaller one is the male. Another 15 or so metres on we see two more, again, one is bigger than the other. There are tens of thousands of niger (blue) triggerfish all along the reef. There are also plenty of Moorish idols, other tropical species like butterflyfish and a large pufferfish.

Two giant anglerfish	One of the other two giant anglerfish

We also see a small mutli-coloured black boxfish, two dartfish (so hard to photograph) a large mantis shrimp, some rockcod, heaps of nudibranchs including one I think I have never seen before. We gradually ascend as we head north to maximise bottom time. The bottom of the slope here is probably 30 metres.

A dartfish	Black boxfish

After 50 minutes or so the bottom is more solidly coral and a bit further on, there are a few large coral bommies.

We hang around these bommies as the boat has anchored here. The dive is a very colourful one, as good as any site I have dived in Anilao. We finish our dive in the shallows here. There were a few more species of nudibranch seen here. In August the water temperature was 29C and the visibility was 12 to 15 metres. An excellent dive site.

The view towards the end of the dive	Another photograph near the end

MORE PHOTOGRAPHS

Not sure what this species of nudibranch this is	Hypselodoris pulchella I think
A spotted moray eel I think	A blue ribbon eel