Kalanggaman Island

Diving around Kalanggaman Island

Kalanggaman is offered as a day trip from Malapascua by Sea Explorers. Its account describes reefs and walls with sea fans and sponges. Exotic distinguishes sloping reef terrain in the south from wall dives in the north.

Plan the actual route

The island has more than one dive area, so confirm the chosen reef or wall and its suitability rather than treating the whole island as one uniform dive. Sea Explorers notes that trips depend on weather, sea conditions, local rules and participation.

Visitor information still needed

This partial guide does not verify current facilities, accommodation, electricity, fees or boat schedules. Confirm those arrangements before travelling. Wildlife descriptions are operator reports, not promised encounters.

What Sea Explorers describes underwater

Sea Explorers' Kalanggaman page, captured on 8 October 2026, says the island is surrounded by reefs, slopes, and drop-offs leading into deeper water. It says the diving may include coral-covered walls, clear blue water, schooling reef fish, sea fans, soft corals, hard corals, and occasional pelagic marine life, and that conditions differ around the island, with some sections calm and others exposed to current, waves or deeper drop-offs. The operator says it chooses dive sites by weather, wind and waves, current, visibility, diver certification and experience, and expects divers to be comfortable with boat diving, deeper water and the possibility of current. It lists possible sightings including anthias, fusiliers, snappers, turtles, barracuda, trevallies, nudibranchs and moray eels. It also warns that older descriptions promote whale sharks and thresher sharks, which it says should not be presented as normal or guaranteed sightings.

Other dated accounts

A PADI blog guest article by Molly Basterfield, posted on 9 June 2020, describes diving while anchored near the island on a catamaran. She reports soft and hard corals at around 10m/32ft all around the island, visibility over 40m/131ft, rays on a sandy bottom, and a wall edge at around 25m/82ft, which she reached using a diver propulsion vehicle. She also describes an early-afternoon drift dive along the wall and frequent turtles. Those depths and conditions belong to one diver's route in 2020 and are not a site range. The PADI dive-site listing, captured the same day, describes deep walls covered in black corals, gives dive types of drift, wall and ocean, and shows a maximum depth of 98 feet / 30 meters with tuna and eagle ray as common sightings. A listing maximum is not a verified limit of the wall.

The Lakwatsero blog describes a 2010 dive trip from Malapascua taking two hours by boat, with a package of P1000 per dive for locals and at least eight divers required on the boat. Those prices and conditions are from 2010. Divebooker's liveaboard listing says the island has coral slopes and open-water scenery, with best conditions from March to May or during calm dry-season months and water generally around 26-30°C; that listing is a booking-site summary rather than a measurement.

Island context and access rules

Wikipedia describes Kalanggaman as a sandbar between Leyte and Cebu, 10 kilometres west of Palompon, and says the Department of Environment and Natural Resources raised concerns in 2018 about tourist traffic. Sea Explorers says visitors pay ecological fees imposed by the Municipality of Palompon, that it normally visits as a day trip from Malapascua taking about one and a half to two hours each way, and that a closure was announced for July 5-11, 2026. Check the current schedule and fees before booking.