Tubbataha South Atoll & Jessie Beazley

South Atoll and Jessie Beazley: two distinct reef areas

The existing Diveity record groups South Atoll and Jessie Beazley for an overview. They should not be understood as a single reef, one dive site or a shared entry point. Palau Sport presents South Atoll's Ko-ok Point, Delsan Wreck and Black Rock separately from Jessie Beazley Reef.

Compare the actual itinerary stops

Use the named-site guides when comparing individual South Atoll dives. Palau Sport describes Jessie Beazley's coral gardens and wall features in its own section. These accounts do not establish a common depth range, conditions or wildlife frequency across the two areas. Ask which reef and named route an itinerary entry refers to.

Access and uncertainty

The Tubbataha Management Office describes boat-based visits, with guests staying aboard liveaboards. Check the operator's departure and transfer arrangements. This is a partial regional overview: it does not verify a booking, an exact dive-entry position, a compulsory route or today's conditions. A map position associated with the combined record should not be treated as the entry coordinate for every dive in either area.

South Atoll sites in operator accounts

Palau Sport's Tubbataha page, read on 8 October 2026, says nurse sharks and hammerhead sharks can be seen at Ko-ok Point passing through the opening and ledges of coral-covered vertical walls. It describes the Delsan Wreck as a place to see schools of jacks, barracudas, trevallies, grey reef sharks, hammerheads and tiger sharks. For Black Rock it describes cleaner fish grooming groupers, manta rays, turtles and sweet lips at a cleaning station, and says the site is also known as the Turtle Highway and Trigger Fish City. Dive The World, in a page captured on 7 October 2026, says the Delsan Wreck sounds like a wreck dive but really is not, since there are only the remains of a small vessel near the south east of the atoll, and names Staghorn Point as the most reliable manta ray site in Tubbataha. A Master Liveaboards itinerary PDF says currents at Black Rock can be strong and changeable.

Jessie Beazley Reef

Palau Sport describes Jessie Beazley as a place with giant tabletop corals growing on the edges of the wall overhang and coral gardens of hard and soft corals. Dive The World calls it an emergent coral cay about 20 km north of the two main atolls, says the reef appears to be named after a ship that sank at Tubbataha in 1872, and describes a mushroom shaped reef that starts as shallow as 7m and drops to more than 50m, most commonly dived at North End and South End when conditions are calm. Master Liveaboards gives about 20 kilometres north of the North Atoll and describes a sandy cay with walls plunging to abyssal depths. These depths describe one reef's profile and are not a range for South Atoll.

What the sources leave open

The Tubbataha Management Office FAQ says trips are by liveaboard because there are no facilities, so guests stay on the boat, and that most divers fly to Puerto Princesa and take a sea journey of 10-12 hours. The operators' wildlife lists are not frequencies.