Cathedral tower

Archived operators describe a coral tower and gorge on a deep day-trip dive. Easy Diving places the top around 22 metres and the dive around 40 metres. This is the Turtle Island excursion listing, not Cathedral in Anilao or Balicasag.

This is a partial site guide based on retained dive listings. Conditions, access, seasonal suitability and current operating arrangements have not been checked by a local diver. The map position comes from a published dive-site dataset and should be confirmed with a local operator before planning a visit.

Source trail (not independent corroboration): Archived operator account; Archived operator account; Directory map record.

A historical butterflyfish report

Artistic Diving’s archived 2019 page reports a school of butterflyfish around the deep Cathedral Tower outing. The account gives no observation date or reliable encounter frequency. It also mentions diving at 5–6 m without explaining how that section connects to the tower; this does not establish a shallow tower summit or a confirmed finishing route.

Operator figures for the tower

Easy Diving's archived 2014 and 2025 lists place Cathedral Tower under Turtle Island day trips and describe a deep dive down to 40 metres on an excellent reef, with a tower that goes up to 22 metres. Artistic Diving's list archived in March 2008 carries the same wording and marks the site as a day-trip dive. The version Easy Diving supplied to PADI Travel describes a dive down to 40 metres on an excellent reef where a high rock formation, the Cathedral Tower, reaches up to 22 metres; the same page lists reef, wall and cavern as dive types but records a maximum depth of 34 metres, which contradicts its own 40-metre description. Artistic Diving's archived 2019 page says a depth of 40 metres can be reached effortlessly through the gorge. None of these figures has been reconciled, and the tower-top depth of 22 metres is an operator statement rather than a measured value.

Visitor and directory entries

A taucher.net review of Easy Diving dated 23 January 2005 says a day trip to Turtle Island, which it describes as lying in a nature reserve, was offered once a week, and names Cathedral Tower, with its canyons and coral growth, and a pier it spells Pulata as the highlights alongside a fish barbecue on a sandbank. Two entries on underwaterphotography.com by Thomas Bannenberg list a Turtle Island Cathedral Tower dive spot off Sipalay: one gives a typical depth of 0 to 30 metres and visibility of 3 to 10 metres, the other 0 to 20 metres and 10 to 30 metres, with day-boat and wall as dive types. Those are undated user-submitted values that disagree with each other and with the operators' 40-metre figure. Sea Explorers' current Sipalay page offers full-day trips to Turtle Island with the exact sites selected according to sea conditions, currents and the group's experience, without naming Cathedral Tower.