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scorpionfish. This dive ended up being our longest of the trip; we stubbornly parked ourselves at a shallow part of the site until all the other divers were long gone and we could hear a skiff motoring impatiently back and forth waiting for us to surface. By the time we exited the water, night had fallen, and our fellow passengers teased that they had already eaten dinner without us. Fortunately, they had saved us a little. When we left Cabilao, we were convinced that we had seen the best of the Visayas. The boat was headed south toward Hagakhak , in Mindanao, and we went to bed that night a little depressed — we hadn’t heard anything about that area at all and didn’t have high hopes. As it turned out, our concern could not have been more unjustified. We woke to discover that we were anchored in a picturesque bay lined with small, white beach-rimmed islands, and there was not

another boat (or person) in sight. Over the next two days we were treated to an unbelievable variety of marine life and reef scenery. Hagakhak offers steep walls covered with hard and soft corals, sloping reefs with swim-throughs, sea snakes, a variety of moray eels and a few jellyfish. Of the reef’s minutia, we saw nudibranchs, cowries, numerous wire coral shrimp and gobies, and we even came across a blue-ringed octopus. The diving here was so magical that several of us badgered the crew into dawn dives two mornings in a row.

From Hagakhak, we sailed toward the southern part of Leyte, near Sogod Bay, a place where snorkelers can reliably, albeit seasonally, swim with whale sharks. We dived the Napantao marine sanctuary reefs of nearby Panaon Island and spent the morning happily photographing massive

schools of anthias and fusiliers swarming over green tubastrea coral. In the afternoon, we explored a jetty adjacent to the village of Padre Burgos on Leyte Island . We entered the water with muck diving in mind and our cameras set up for macro photography, but as soon as we descended and glanced back at the surface, we experienced a deep pang of regret at our lens selection. Sun rays pierced the water, while baitfish swirled in the distance; branches of soft coral hung from the pilings. It was wide-angle heaven, but it did deliver some

opportunities for close-ups, too. A careful look at the pilings revealed nudibranchs everywhere and a variety of frogfish, blennies and lionfish. Sea horses clung to debris along the bottom. Small clusters of staghorn coral adjacent to the jetty held a small population of mandarinfish, which are a major draw for photographers at dusk. The offshore reef diving we did in Leyte was also phenomenal, allowing us to spend our final hours in the Visayas photographing large gorgonians and schools of anthias moving fluidly over hard corals.

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