Secret Bay

A sandy site in the Mainit area

The Asri describes Secret Bay as a sandy slope used for underwater photography. Its notes give an average depth of 10 m and a maximum range of 15–20 m. Those figures belong to the operator’s listing, not a surveyed boundary of every route.

Historical macro observations

Divers Alert Network’s 2011 account describes dives at Secret Bay’s sandy muck habitat and reports encounters with small marine animals, including frogfish and octopuses. These are historical observations rather than guaranteed sightings or current encounter rates.

Dark sand and small-animal photography

Casa Escondida’s April 2026 guide calls this site Secret Bay (Mainit Muck) and describes dark volcanic sand and rubble over a roughly 5–21 m profile. Its focus is small animals on this substrate, rather than a coral-wall panorama. This is another operator profile, alongside The Asri’s measurements, not proof of fixed minimum and maximum depths for every visit.

A more recent operator account

Casa Escondida reports mantis shrimp, gobies, wonderpus octopus, seahorses and nudibranchs, and specifically identifies a peacock mantis shrimp in its caption. The article also promotes night diving here, but it does not establish current night-trip availability or a dated sighting record. Its seasonal cuttlefish and squid statement is not treated here as a dependable calendar. For a photography outing, confirm the actual section, planned depth and conditions with the team rather than relying on a promised animal or fixed season.

Confirm the section being visited

The sources do not establish that all nearby Mainit or bubble sites are interchangeable with Secret Bay. Confirm the intended location, entry arrangements and route with the operator. This partial guide does not infer a dependable current category, seasonal conditions or present animal residency from older descriptions.

A deeper route recorded in 2023

Michael McFadyen's August 2023 account describes starting over sand at about 5 m and following the slope into roughly 20–24 m. Small rocks and a larger coral outcrop interrupted the sand. This provides a different route context from the shallower operator profiles above; it does not establish a replacement maximum for Secret Bay.

He reports giant anglerfish beside the outcrop, together with nudibranchs, moray eels, crabs and shrimps along the outing. The two fish photographs accompanying that section are explicitly from a later dive, used as comparisons rather than photographs of those Secret Bay encounters. Keeping the image context separate from the written observation avoids treating an illustration as an independently documented sighting.

The account describes returning shallower toward the boat and reports about 10 m visibility and 28°C water on that visit. Those conditions and the locations of individual animals are historical observations, not a seasonal forecast or a navigation plan.