Aladin

Aladin: a wall at Apo Reef

Aladin is a named wall dive around Apo Island within Apo Reef off Mindoro. This is the Apo Reef destination, not the separate Apo Island diving area off Negros. Pandan Island Dive Resort describes a northeast-facing wall with a coral plateau around 10 m and highlights its morning light.

Read depths as attributed descriptions

Pandan publishes a 10–40 m range, while Gustav's Place lists 5–40 m for Aladin and highlights afternoon lighting. These operator accounts do not establish identical route boundaries or surveyed whole-site limits. Ask which section and profile your guide plans to use rather than assuming every Aladin trip follows the same route.

What to confirm

Gustav's reports bumphead parrotfish in the shallower section, without guaranteeing a sighting. Confirm the day's conditions, entry and pickup arrangements, and suitability for your experience. This partial guide does not establish a current visibility forecast, universal certification minimum or guaranteed best time of day.

Position and mooring

The DENR Protected Area Office dive-site list reproduced as Figure 14 of the 2014 MBCFI Ecotourism Plan carries Aladin as site 1 at 120°25'00.0" E, 12°39'42.6" N. A VentureFarther marker named Apo Reef - Aladin, created on 20 August 2017, gives 12° 39.710' N, 120° 25.000' E and notes a mooring on the park dive site whose ball could be missing, as it was in July 2017; the two positions agree at the precision shown, though whether they are independent is unknown. Schadow1 Expeditions' report of 15 February 2014 photographed the Apo Island beach front with corals near the Aladin dive point. SSI's MyDiveGuide entry Apo Island - Aladin calls it a wall dive on the north-east corner of Apo Island, reached by boat from Pandan Island Resort.

How the wall is described

Pandan Island Dive Resort's current page gives 10 to 40 m on the north-east side of the island and recommends the morning, when the sun lights the wall and the corals on the plateau at around 10 m. Gustav's Place's current page gives 5 to 40 m for a wall in the northern part of the reef around Apo Island, praises the light on late-afternoon dives and says groups of bumphead parrotfish often visit the shallows. Dive The World's undated page, which spells the name Aladdin, describes a wall on the northern side of Apo Island where the dive normally begins at the most sheer section and is met by a school of bumphead parrotfish crunching coral to sand, with jacks, barracuda, snapper, big-eye trevally and blue-dash fusiliers sometimes in dizzying numbers; it suggests finning into the blue for pelagics and exploring the shallow reef top for nudibranchs and morays while using up the tank. SSI's entry lists a wide range of pelagics and reef sharks, mackerel, tuna, turtles and occasionally manta or eagle rays on a wall overgrown with hard and soft corals.

Points to keep open

Morning and late-afternoon light are each recommended by a different operator and are not reconciled here. The bumphead parrotfish accounts are dated or general operator statements, not a promise, and the 5 or 10 to 40 m ranges describe routes rather than a surveyed site extent. The mooring note is from 2017 and says nothing about current mooring availability.