Type: sightEntrance fee: FreeHours: Open dailyBest time: Morning or Late Afternoon
Cabilao Island sits off Loon, on Bohol’s side of the strait — not part of Cebu administratively, but a routine add-on for divers staging out of Cebu City who want wall diving without a Camotes or Malapascua ferry run. The coral drop-offs are the draw, along with the pygmy seahorses sheltering in its gorgonian fans, small enough that most dive shops keep a dedicated macro guide on hand to find them. The reef sits inside a community-managed marine sanctuary, one of several no-take zones along Bohol’s coast kept enforced since the reef-recovery push that followed decades of blast fishing across the wider Danajon Bank.
- The wall dives are the reason to come — visibility and drop-off structure rank among the better sites reachable from Cebu.
- The island is small enough to circle by bicycle in an afternoon.
- Resorts are mostly small, family-run operations rather than chains — book ahead, rooms are limited.