The Beauty of Muck Diving

Bohol is a great place to discover it all, both underwater and on land. You can see a lot of amazing sites here. From the iconic chocolate hills, the mighty tarsiers, monkeys, flying lemurs and flying foxes, lovely rivers, and to beautiful white sand beaches and coral reefs. Indeed, Bohol is one of the top destinations in the country. And of course the fantastic diving sites – be sure not to miss the diving here, or you miss an experience of a life time.

One of the greatest feelings when SCUBA diving is to see unusual yet beautiful and truly amazing underwater sea creatures. Especially the creatures that give you that “WOW” moment underwater. From the big stuff to the very small creatures.

Bohol is an island that is surrounded by beautiful pristine reefs. In fact, it is the only double barrier reef in the Philippines.

It houses a lot of underwater wildlife from fish, Whale Sharks, dolphins, migrating whales, school of trevallies, etc. to the macro invertebrates such as nudibranchs, octopuses and more. The Island is famous for having crystal clear waters and fine white sand beaches from which you can discover these amazing creatures.

Aside from having healthy reefs with good visibility, which most divers like, there is also a very cool and interesting type of diving. This type of diving is different from the usual coral reef habitat and it awaits you full of surprises.

This type of diving is called MUCK DIVING. As you might have already guessed, muck diving is a type of diving in a mucky environment. This type of environment has a lot of silt and mud and typically has “so-so” visibility. Sometimes there is also a lot of debris present, both from natural sources as well as human products. Fortunately, here in Anda, Bohol, we don’t have debris such as trash or plastic underwater.

Why we love MUCK DIVING in general?

Anda is famous for its macro critters. And if you love macro, this is the place for you. A “mucky” environment houses a lot of surprises from macro to super macro creatures… Some beautiful, some ugly and some incredibly weird, but colorful and rare nonetheless. Here in Anda we have over 9 dive sites very near the resort, specifically for muck diving, so plenty of sites to choose from. It is really macro heaven here! If you want to know exactly where these sites are and explore the incredible macro life, visit and dive with us in Magic Oceans so we can show you.

What can we see there?

So much! For example all the different types of frogfish – from a couple of millimeters to quite a few centimeters in size and of course the different kinds such as the Juvenile Painted, Warty, Hairy Frogfishes, amongst others. We can also see different kinds of octopuses and cuttlefish such as the Mimic Octopus, Wunderpus, Blueringed Octopus, Flamboyant Cuttlefish, and more. Additionally, there are many different types of beautiful seahorses and sea moths (Pegasus) that can be found in these areas as well.

In addition to that, we can see different kinds of crabs and shrimps here such as Tiger Shrimps, Emperors, Zebra Crabs, Squat Lobsters, Coleman Shrimps, the list goes on! And of course, for those Nudibranch geeks, we have an even higher chance of seeing multiple different kinds of them – from ‘seldom to see’ to very rare species (shhh, we also have different kinds of Melibe spp. here!). Not only that, if you love to do night dives, these are the areas you want to visit and dive at. All in all, there are too many critters to mention and our dive guides are equipped with super macro eyes to help you find them!

What are you waiting for? Book your dives here in Magic Oceans Dive Resort and we will dive to find them all!

Written by: Marlon Managa
Posted on: December 2, 2019