Nogas Island Great Potential for Macro Diving

Scuba diving is swimming under underwater or taking part in another activity, while using a scuba set. Under scuba diving are different classifications describing various diving activities. There are commercial, professional, rescue and recovery, scientific, recreational, and technical diving which includes cave diving, cavern diving, deep diving, ice diving and wreck diving.

Specifically, recreational diving a.k.a. sport diving is a type of diving that uses scuba equipment for the purpose of leisure and enjoyment. This is usually viewed as the opposite of technical diving which requires greater level of training, experience and equipment.

There are different factors which makes a destination attractive for diving:
1. Wildlife present in the site. The more diverse the flora and fauna the more attractive it is. Also, unique or endemic creatures also attract divers.
2. Topography of the site such as reefs, caves, gullies and underwater cliffs are interesting features.
3. Historical or cultural items like shipwrecks.
4. Underwater visibility.
5. Temperature.
6. Currents.

Nogas Island is a 24-heactare government naval reserve about a mile from Poblacion, Anini-y, Antique. According to an article in the internet, in the Visayas, Nogas Island is an undiscovered site (www.angelfire.com/divesite/other.html) and may be considered as Philippine’s best kept secret (Chris Ng of Diverone Inc., a dive resort operator) .

If you are one of those divers who are not awed with large sea creatures then Nogas Island is your macro heaven. The term macro heaven is related to macro diving, dives that do not focus on the big stuff (http://www.dive-the-world.com/). One might be wondering why the term macro when it does not focus on the large creatures. Macro is used as underwater divers cum photographer uses macro lenses to be able to take big and close up pictures of the tiny creatures.

According to the site mentioned above, areas suitable for macro diving is tend to be shallow water, close to shore in areas where coral, if present, is not particularly vibrant or may be dead, in seagrass beds, and/or black sand or silty conditions. These are diving environments where there are less likely anything bigger than an octopus.

A dive site in Nogas Island frequented by people booked in Boracay is located between the Nogas Point, Nogas Island and Anini-y, Antique (?). It is said (http://www.diving.navius.com/) that there is a large rock at the drop off which serves as a mark entrance to the descending wall. The depth is said to be 20 to 100 ft with slow current and the level of diffuclty is advanced.

Nogas Island is also for bird lovers and botany enthusiast as it holds diverse variety of bird species and variety of vines, wild tress and shrubs.