Gato Island

The dive

Gato is a small uninhabited rock island in the Visayan Sea, roughly 15 km north-west of Malapascua and 40 to 50 minutes away by banca. It is not part of the Malapascua day programme: it is its own trip, and the nearest other catalogued dive is 14 km away. The island has been a municipal sanctuary of Daanbantayan since a 1997 resolution declared it a sea snake and fish sanctuary; the resolution was re-enacted in 2001 to bring the 2-nautical-mile ring around the island inside the protected zone and to move custody to the municipal government. The cliffs are undercut and there is effectively nowhere to dock, so the whole visit happens from the boat.

Operators split the perimeter into five named dives — White-tip Alley, The Guardhouse, Nudibranch City, The Cave and Cathedral — and a normal day is two of them. The terrain is boulders, overhangs, walls and swim-throughs under soft coral, worked between about 5 and 24 m; Malapascua Exotic quotes 5 to 27 m and Kokay's a 30 m maximum. The feature the island is known for is a tunnel that runs right under it, about 30 m long according to Kokay's Malapascua Diving, decorated inside with daisy soft corals and sponges. It is a genuine overhead environment: Sea Explorers restricts it to suitably trained and experienced divers and only when conditions allow, and divers who stay outside still get the reef.

What you come for is animals resting rather than animals passing. Whitetip reef sharks lie up in the crevices and alcoves — the OBIS occurrence records around the island have Triaenodon obesus as one of the most frequently logged taxa there — and the banded sea krait, the yellow-lipped species known locally as balingkasaw, is resident enough that it is the reason the sanctuary exists. Operators also report bamboo and cat sharks and blue-spotted rays. The macro list is long and the occurrence data backs it: ornate ghost pipefish, tiger-tail seahorse, broadclub cuttlefish, harlequin sweetlips, map puffer, zebra lionfish and a heavy nudibranch load of Nembrotha and Phyllidia species.

• A tunnel roughly 30 m long running under the island, decorated with daisy soft corals and sponges
• Whitetip reef sharks resting in crevices and alcoves rather than passing in the blue
• Banded sea kraits, locally balingkasaw, in a sanctuary declared for them in 1997
• Five named dives around one rock: White-tip Alley, The Guardhouse, Nudibranch City, The Cave and Cathedral
• A dense nudibranch list on the soft-coral overhangs

Conditions

Water sits around 26 to 29 °C most of the year and 24 to 26 °C in January and February. Visibility at Malapascua's offshore marks runs 20 to 30 m in the March-to-June dry window and 10 to 15 m through the amihan months; no operator publishes a Gato-specific figure. The dive itself is worked around a rock in open sea, so the day is defined by the crossing: flat and the trip runs, choppy and it does not.

On current: Kokay's Malapascua Diving is the only operator that rates the current directly and says it 'could be strong'. Sea Explorers ties tunnel entry to conditions on the day. Depths disagree across the operators who publish them — Thresher Shark Divers quotes 24 m, Malapascua Exotic 5 to 27 m, Kokay's a 30 m maximum — and we have used the shallowest. Because the site is a 40 to 50 minute open-water crossing, the surface state usually decides whether the trip runs at all, not the current underwater.

Best months: Mar, Apr, May, Jun