Balinghai

Balinghai is one of the more unusual profiles on the island: a wall running along Boracay's north-west coast with a sandy slope behind it that leads out to a second, outer reef at around 24 m. That gives you two quite different dives in one site, and lets a group spread across depths according to certification.

The wall itself is the macro playground — our logs from Balinghai are dominated by frogfish, moray eels and nudibranchs, with lionfish, anthias, bannerfish and angelfish filling the cracks. Green and hawksbill turtles are a common sighting here, and tuna and blue-spotted stingrays patrol the deeper water. A cluster of concrete dome artificial reefs adds extra structure and has grown its own resident population.

Starting at 8 m, Balinghai is comfortably within Open Water limits while still offering somewhere to go for certified divers who want more depth — which makes it a good "everyone on one boat" site. The same wall continues north into Santoson, so the two are often dived together.