Here in Moalboal we have a unique event that for years has been a major draw for traveling divers, it's something that happens in a few places around the globe but here it's slightly different. Known as the sardine run, this is a spectacle where thousand or maybe millions of sardines are on the move, South Africa has a famous one where small fry in their millions slowly migrate northwards up the west coast feeding and growing along the way, a epic journey that ends off of the coast of the UK by which time numbers have depleted at the hands sorry I mean mouths of predators, by the time they reach UK waters they have grown to such a size that they are no longer called sardines but now known as Pilchards same fish different name.
Sardine run?
So whats so different about Moalboal you ask, I assume you're still reading and asking that question? Well here it's hard to call it a sardine run, that implies they go somewhere which they don't, any day of the year you can enter the water and within a 150 meter stretch right on the coastline you will encounter more fish that you have ever seen in one place, so many it can block out the sunlight. Some describe it as a "sardine storm" which I suppose works, I think of it as a fishy social club.
Packed in like er? sardines, as the saying goes.
Often people ask how many do you think there are and for me it's impossible to give a honest answer, I hear numbers being quoted from hundreds of thousands to one, two, three million but I question where these people get there numbers from, as far as I am aware no real study has taken place so at best these numbers are guess work. One thing for sure in many years of diving it is by far the largest body of fish I have ever encountered and they are mesmerizing to watch.
Definitely more than twenty.
Whatever the number if you find yourself on the island of Cebu you really should find time to come and witness this wonderful display that nature puts on. Diving with and underneath them is by far the greater experience but if you are not a diver even snorkeling gives you a amazing view of this show.
Roll up roll up for the greatest show on earth!
(well Cebu at least).
[//]:# (!pinmapple 9.951861 lat 123.365264 long Sardine run cebu dive centre d3scr)