← Part of Chuck and Lijie's scuba diving trips
essay
Philippines liveaboard — December 2026 to January 2027
Chuck and Lijie's planned scuba liveaboard trip to the Philippines, departing 24 December 2026 and returning 2 January 2027. The trip covers the new-year-over-new-year window, a ten-day window crossing one of the world's most biodiverse reef regions. Specific itinerary, operator, dive sites, photographs and video to come after the trip.
Planned trip
Chuck and Lijie have booked a scuba liveaboard trip to the Philippines departing 24 December 2026 and returning 2 January 2027 — a ten-day window crossing one of the world’s most biodiverse reef regions.
The Philippines sits at the heart of the Coral Triangle — the marine area in the western Pacific covering parts of Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, the Solomon Islands, and Timor-Leste, recognized by marine biologists as the global center of coral and reef-fish biodiversity. Among the world’s 798 species of reef-building corals, 76% are found in this region; many of the world’s named reef fish species are here. The Philippines portion includes well-known liveaboard destinations such as Tubbataha Reefs Natural Park (Sulu Sea), Apo Reef (Mindoro Strait), the Visayan Sea, and a number of remote outer islands.
The specific operator, boat name, route through dive sites, photographs, and video are pending — the trip itself has not happened at the date of this entry.
What’s expected
A Philippines liveaboard in late December into early January typically dives a route that emphasizes:
- Tubbataha Reefs — the UNESCO World Heritage Site in the Sulu Sea, accessible only by liveaboard, known for large schools of pelagics, manta rays, and reef sharks. The Tubbataha diving season is mid-March through mid-June, so a December-January trip is more likely to focus elsewhere.
- Visayan triangle — the region between Cebu, Negros, and Bohol, with macro-rich muck-diving (frogfish, pygmy seahorses, harlequin shrimp, nudibranchs) alongside reef diving
- Apo Island (not to be confused with Apo Reef) — the small island marine reserve known for its hard-coral gardens and turtle population
- Anilao (south of Manila on Luzon) — one of the world’s best macro-photography destinations
The specific portion of the Philippines Chuck and Lijie’s December 2026 boat will cover will be filled in after the trip.
See also
- The parent scuba-trips document — frames the broader corpus
- Thailand — Similan Islands — the previous liveaboard region
Entry is a pre-trip placeholder — photographs, video, and a substantive trip narrative will replace this scaffolding after 2 January 2027.