Diving the wrecks of Coron Bay

For the last three days we've been diving the wrecks of Coron. Located just to the north of Palawan, on the island of Busuanga it is one of the most spectacular wreck diving sites. Amongst the scenic bays and narrow passages between islets surrounding Busuanga lie Japanese navy's auxiliary transport vessels. They were sunk during two air strikes on September 24th and October 9th 1944.

Altogether there are 7 wrecks around Busuanga, but we dove only 6 of them:

• Okikawa Maru
• Akitsushima
• Taiei Maru
• Olympia Maru
• Tangat Wreck
• Irako

More on history of Coron wrecks.

All the diving was done from the spiderlike bancas, traditional filipino boats now used for everything from transport to fishing to diving. The wrecks are rather deep for recreatioal diving, ranging from 25 to 45 meters, and all the dives we did were penetration dives. It is very easy to exceed your No Decompression Limits under such circumstances, especially if the divemaster minds only his computer which is less conservative than yours. After spending 17 minutes on decompression stop on the first days second dive we decided to use nitrox for second dives on the last two days.

The wrecks were just amazing, especially the auxiliary oiler Okikawa Maru. With her spacious tanks. Although the visibility outside was just 10 meters, inside the wrecks the water was much clearer (until someone made a false move and stirred up the silt...).



All of the dives were penetretion dives, though for less experienced divers it is also possible to stay outside the wrecks and still have a lovely dive. We were ofcourse led by a divemaster, otherwise we would have probably gotten lost and I wouldn't be writnig this. Inside the wrecks are rather comfortable, though we had to watch our heads most of the time and there were a few tight squeezes - we once exited a wreck through a propeller shaft.