Balanoi Secret Garden

Balanoi Secret Garden is named in the operator map, and the operator website describes it as a muck dive site. This guide preserves the named location while its precise boundary remains unverified.

The operator map and website name Balanoi Secret Garden. Balanoy (Buceo) and Buceo house reef/Secret Garden appear in other listings, but their equivalence is not verified. Two same-family map points are retained as alternatives.

Depth, entry arrangements, visibility, seasonal conditions and marine-life observations are not established for this record. Confirm the location, present access and diving conditions with a local operator before planning a dive.

What the operator map describes

The Anilao operator dive map (Divers and Critters family, retrieved 2026-10-08) numbers the site "41. Balanoi Secret Garden". Its entry gives a depth of up to 35 metres (115 feet), a gradual slope with soft corals and rubble, and calls it a slight muck dive site. The entry also states: "Current can be extremely strong." Its list of common critters begins with Coleman shrimp, ghostpipe fish, boxer crab, hairy shrimp, tiger shrimp and bumble bee shrimp, and also names weedy scorpion fish, urchin crab and urchin shrimp. The rest of the list repeats wording used on many other entries of the same map, so only the entry-specific names are quoted here. These are the operator's descriptive entries, not dated sightings.

The Divers and Critters guest-photos page, from the same operator family, names Balanoi Secret Garden in a muck-diving passage that says "Other quality muck dive sites are Anilao Pier, Basura and Balanoi Secret Garden." The two operator pages are one lineage and are not independent confirmations of each other.

Similar names in other listings

An undated Underwater Photography listing titled "Secret Garden - Anilao" describes a "Muck and rubble slope with small corals and bommies" and calls it a "Great playground for nudibranches", with a typical depth of 0 to 20 metres and typical visibility of 10 to 30 metres. It does not mention Balanoi, so whether it is the same place as the mapped Balanoi Secret Garden is not established. A separate listing titled only "Secret Garden", with no Anilao location stated, is not used.

Deepblu lists Buceo Anilao Beach and Dive Resort at "Sitio Balanoi, Mabini, Batangas", and Scubaverse gives the resort address as Sitio Balanoy, San Teodoro, Mabini. These pages show that Balanoi is a place name near that resort. They do not say that the dive site called Balanoi Secret Garden is the resort's house reef, and this guide does not make that link.