Diving Gato Island in Malapascua, Philippines

In September of 2026, I dove Gato Island with Devocean Divers, by boat out of Malapascua Island, Philippines.

Gato Island is known for its resident whitetip reef sharks, its underwater tunnel, and rich marine life.

The cave is closed.

I dove the site three times on this trip, and the specs below are from one of those dives.

The Dive

It's a boat ride out from Malapascua, and the island itself is a lump of limestone cliff with a cave mouth cut into one side.

I logged 74 ft (22.6 m) at the deepest, with an average of 39 ft (11.9 m) across 51 minutes.

The diving wraps around the rock, and most of what's worth seeing sits in the overhangs and on the rubble at the base rather than out in the open.

Going three times helped, because the small stuff is what this site is really carrying and you don't find it on one pass.

The Cave

The story I was told on the island is that the cave has been closed to divers since an earthquake.

A magnitude 6.9 earthquake hit offshore of northern Cebu on 30 September 2025, with the epicenter around 12 miles (19 km) northeast of Bogo City.

I can't confirm that the closure traces to that specific quake, and no dive shop I can find has published a notice about it either way.

So I didn't go through it, and I can't tell you what's in there.

If you dove the cave before it shut, tell me what it was like.

What Marine Life I Saw

This is a macro site as much as anything else.

Most of the good finds were on the rubble and tucked under the overhangs, not out in the water column.