By Gabriela Baron
The Tubbataha Reef Marine Park in Palawan has been named among world’s best scuba diving destinations by New York-based magazine Travel + Leisure.
Tubbataha Reef, located in the Sulu Sea, was ranked 18th in the travel magazine’s “19 Beautiful Destinations With the Best Scuba Diving in the World,” behind the Cayman Islands.
“At the center of the Coral Triangle, the waters of the Philippines harbor some of the best scuba diving in the world,” author Terry Ward noted.
According to Ward, the over 97,000 hectares of marine and bird sanctuary has “more turtles, rays, and sharks than you ever imagined all in once place on incredible reef and drift dives,” and “makes for an extraordinary adventure.”
The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) declared the Tubbataha Reef as a World Heritage Site in 1993 due to its very high density of marine species.
Other diving destinations that Travel + Leisure listed included Tuamotu Archipelago in French Polynesia, Palau, Raja Ampat Islands in Indonesia, Maldives, Azores in Portugal, Tobago, Galapagos Islands, Cocos Islands in Costa Rica, and Socorro and Revillagigedo Islands in Mexico.
It also named Baja California Sur in Mexico, The Bahamas, The Florida Keys in the United States, Poor Knights Islands in New Zealand, Fiji, Heron Islands in Australia, Chuuk Lagoon in Micronesia, and Red Sea in Egypt as among the top diving destinations in the world.
