Black Rock

Black Rock on South Atoll

Oceana Maria lists Black Rock among Tubbataha's South Atoll dive sites. Solitude describes reef walls and reports rays, reef sharks and barracuda in its discussion of Black Rock and nearby Delsan Wreck. Those combined-site reports should not be read as guaranteed sightings at Black Rock alone.

Reported reef and wildlife

Master Liveaboards describes a sloping plateau leading to walls, with potentially strong and changing currents. Dive The World reports a manta cleaning station. Treat the cleaning-station account as a reason to ask the guide about recent activity, not a promise that mantas will be present.

Planning an observational dive

Confirm the intended route and the day's conditions with the liveaboard team. The park's 2025 rules require a two-metre distance around marine wildlife and prohibit chasing or blocking animals. Leave room for animals to approach and depart without interference.

This partial account does not establish the exact cleaning-station position, a surveyed depth range or an encounter frequency. Photographs and older trip accounts cannot confirm current visibility or the condition of the reef.

Position and the park's own records

The Tubbataha Management Office's monitoring appendix places its 2019 Black Rock station in the northern part of South Atoll, its 2025 fish-inventory station at "Black Rock, northeastern South Atoll", and a 2024 lagoon station just inside the lagoon near the Black Rock dive site (Ecosystem Research and Monitoring Reports 2024 and 2025). Fly and Sea likewise puts it in the northeast corner of South Atoll. TMO's 2025 shark survey ran two transects here of about 808 and 786 metres, and the single tiger shark recorded in that year's survey was observed at Black Rock; that is one sighting during a survey, not a resident animal.

Names that overlap

Palau Sport's page states that Black Rock "is also known as the Turtle Highway and Trigger Fish City". Master Liveaboards, the Aggressor logs and TMO's 2025 shark survey treat Triggerfish City as a separate South Atoll site, and the Philippine Aggressor log of 21 March 2026 also names a "Black Rock Corner". This guide keeps Black Rock and Triggerfish City as separate records and flags Palau Sport's statement as an unresolved naming claim. Stephen Frink's Alert Diver article of 1 August 2018 dived a site he calls "Black Rock South" and found staghorn fields with chromis and anthias.

What dated visits recorded

The Philippine Aggressor II log of 30 May 2026 spent two dives here with patrolling sharks, streaming fusiliers, sweetlips, barracuda, turtles and a Napoleon wrasse; its 21 March 2026 log opened with a strong current carrying jacks and barracuda through the site, and the Philippine Aggressor log of the same date lists black snappers, bumphead parrotfish, groupers, a marble ray and an eagle ray. cbartazo.com's log of May 2011 records a Black Rock dive to 18.6 metres "deferred due to water conditions", with fans and sponges on the wall. Master Liveaboards adds that whitetip and nurse sharks rest under large table corals and that it often spends a whole day here. Liquid Diving Adventures (October 2020) says the site is not known for its corals but for whitetips, mantas and Napoleon wrasse. Logged depths and species lists are observations from named days.