Sea Explorers Alona Beach
Sea Explorers Alona Beach has two dive shop set-ups on famous Alona Beach: One at the Alona Vida Beach Resort and one at the elegant Amorita Resort. The dive shops at both resorts offer several dive trips a day and in addition diving courses and equipment rental are available.
Dive Service
The dive shops use two outrigger boats - one for a max. of 12 divers (22m long/66ft) and one for a max. of 8 divers (15m long/45ft) and a smaller speedboat. The boats are equipped with emergency kit, DAN Oxygen System and mobile phone. The catamarans have a simple toilet. Sea Explorers Alona Beach offers various departures during the day and night dives every evening. Full day tours to Cabilao Island (minimum 4 people) are also on offer.
The well-equipped dive shops have 50 twelve litre aluminium tanks with INT and DIN connectors, 12 complete sets of hire equipment and 2 Bauer compressors. Nitrox is also available as well as technical diving. Sea Explorers Alona Beach offers Tec Deep and Trimix courses along with rebreather courses.
Dive Sites
The dive sites are reached with the outrigger boats in 5 to 50 minutes. The trip to Cabilao Island lasts about 90 minutes. The dives are accompanied by European instructors and very knowledgeable local Filipino dive guides who are intimately familiar with the diving conditions.
The diving is varied with beautiful coral gardens in shallow water. Main attraction, however, are the steep walls with caves, overhangs and crevices. You find beautiful underwater scenery with sea fans, soft corals and feather stars where many colorful nudibranchs, frog fish, snake eels, stone fish and sea snakes have a home. Highlights are the dive sites around Balicasag Island and Cabilao Island. The area can be dived all year round, with mostly good to very good visibility, and soft to medium currents. The health status of the coral is good to very good, no coral bleaching, and no dynamite fishing.
You should know...
Alona Beach has received new regulations (Feb 2016) concerning diving at Balicasag Island. First, to make sure that the area is continuously protected, there is a limit of 150 divers only allowed per day with a maximum of 300 dives. Second, any diving courses are not allowed anymore to be done in this island. Third, there is an implementation of higher rates set for the dives in this island compared to the dives in the other sites around Alona Beach. That means, every diver needs to pay a surcharge of 250 Peso on the spot per dive in Balicasag. Lastly, dives at Balicasag cannot be confirmed ahead of time and can only be booked locally. Any registered divers in Balicasag cannot be cancelled once confirmed. With these rules and regulations, the local government tries to protect the area around Balicasag to preserve the nice coral gardens as well as to care for the marina life in the interest of all.
