Carbin Reef and Friends
Macahulom, Panal and Carbin are three reefs in the north of Negros Island in the Philippines. Many thanks to the Northern Negros State College of Science and Technology for hosting me during a recent visit to the region. From Dumaguete it’s a 5 hour drive, past water buffaloes, kids playing basketball on the country road, humongous sugarcane trucks and families of six on one moped. Sagay is in the neighboring province of Negros Occidental, one of the sugarcane capitals of the Philippines. To haul agricultural products (mainly timber I believe) from the center of the island to the coastline a steam train system was built in the 19th century. You can still admire one of the massive locomotives, with a sign “Made in Philadelphia” on its front, in Sagay’s city park.
The three reefs are between 20 and about 60 minutes by bangka boat from Sagay, and so far only Carbin is open to tourists. Some of the corals of Carbin reef are exposed at low tide, and a sand bank is always (barely) above the water level. On one end of the sand bank is a concrete guard tower, complete with solar panels to provide power for the rangers stationed on Carbin reef.
The reefs are mostly in good shape, with healthy coral cover, and good fish biodiversity. Macahulum reef is home to black tip reef sharks, which are unfortunately a bit shy (but see the video below). A few months before my visit a dead dugong beached there, hopefully the reef is home to more of these herbivorous marine mammals. Also notable are the giant clams at Carbin reefs, which were placed there as juveniles many years ago. The visibility at Carbin ref was not great, but that’s due to its proximity to a river mouth, not due to pollution. Also notable is that all three of these reefs are rather shallow, with the corals not reaching much deeper than 12 meters in the sites I saw. Generally, the area in the north of Negros towards the north of Cebu is rather shallow, barely getting below 48 meters (and mostly less than 30 meters) according to Navionics.
Videos and Stills
The video below shows the marine biodiversity on these reefs, including blacktip reef sharks, filmed while standing on a boat. Also: wrasses, sweetlips, cardinalfishes, seastars, sea cucumbers, dragonets, marine catfish and lots of beautiful corals. Filmed with a GoPro Hero7 and an Olympus TG6.
The mangroves in Sagay were so nice that I compiled a separate video about them:
These are all my still photographs from the trip up north. I really enjoyed the chance to photograph underwater and over-under in mangroves. The mangroves in Sagay are quite close to clear water from the open ocean. During rising tide, the visibility in the mangroves was unusually nice. The Giger-esque root systems of these unusual, brackish-water-living trees are a pleasure to shoot.
Some of my shots from the trip are also on Instagram:
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