Parola/Lighthouse

Parola/Lighthouse is listed as a Ticao Island dive site by Scubago/SSI MyDiveGuide. This partial guide uses the name and map position published by that source. The location has not been independently confirmed by a local diver.

SSI describes Parola/Lighthouse as a cavern near San Miguel Island, while older operator descriptions of Parola refer to ledges. It is not confirmed whether those descriptions identify the same dive. The source map pin is not a verified entry point; cavern access and suitability remain unknown.

Current access, entry arrangements, depth limits, currents, visibility and seasonal conditions remain unconfirmed. Confirm the intended site, current conditions and a suitable dive plan with a local operator.

What the operator lineage says

Parola was described on the Ticao Island Resort "Dive spots" page archived by the Wayback Machine on 1 December 2010, which listed it under San Miguel Island at 20 metres. The resort placed it at the tip of San Miguel Island where currents meet, said to expect moderate to strong currents with sharks and rays surfing along, and described moving through many ledges with views of the ocean and the surface while finding marine life at different depths. The Shark Diving Philippines travel page captured in October 2026 repeats this text and the 20 metre figure word for word. Bicol Dive Center's San Miguel Island page, archived on 30 May 2023, carries the same description, adds that the best time to dive is when the tide is at its lowest, and gives a depth of 20 to 26 metres; all three are one lineage.

The 2010 page described San Miguel as lying on the northern part of the main Ticao Island, about 45 minutes by boat from Manta Bowl, with several very different dive sites around it.

The SSI listing

Scubago, which publishes SSI MyDiveGuide data, captured in October 2026, lists the site as Parola/Lighthouse, also called Lighthouse Cove, north of San Miguel Island. It describes a cavern with half of the formation submerged and the other half above the surface, home to numerous bats and swiftlets, and a massive boulder called the "Sentinel" that is filled with critters. It too says divers may experience moderate to strong currents with sharks and rays surfing along them. The page showed thirty user ratings and user-logged sightings of nudibranchs and common seahorses; these are user-generated entries, not survey data.

A 2010 night dive called Lighthouse

Mike Bartick's trip report in Underwater Photography Guide, dated 25 November 2010, describes a night dive from the resort at a spot called "Lighthouse" around the back of San Miguel Island, with dramatic striated cliffs dropping into calm water, healthy hard coral in the shallows sloping into soft corals and then sand below the hundred foot mark, a bit of current, and robust ghost pipefish, pygmy squid, nudibranchs and seahorses. Whether that Lighthouse is the Parola of the operator pages or the cavern of the SSI listing is not established here.

Unresolved points

Ledges at a current-swept tip, a half-submerged cavern and a longshore slope are three different pictures under related names, and the published depths of 20 metres and 20 to 26 metres belong to the operator lineage only. None of this is reconciled here.