I recently managed to sneak in a weekend in Cebu and upon researching promising snorkelling locations I came across Nalusuan Island. The resort there is basic but has the essentials and although with simple rooms (these are the 'stilts over the water' style ones) they actually afford a great view and relaxing balcony to hang out on.The island has been reclaimed from a low lying sand bar and fortified with much cement. Doesn't sound all that appealing but actually it's okay. The main attraction in any case is the marine reserve surrounding the island and the reef within easy access of the pier leading away from the island.
The island is about half way between Cebu and Bohol. From Cebu airport on Mactan island you get a taxi for around 20 minutes and then take a pump boat for around 40 minutes to get there. Most visitors to the island are day trippers or people stopping as part of an island hopping tour. I chose to spend the night there and after the day trippers depart you do have the island more or less to yourself. Most visitors are Koreans or Japanese and from what I can tell they're either hardcore scuba divers or flap about trying to snorkel with life jackets on while kicking the crap out of whatever corals they can reach with their flippers. Once you get away from the main entry points to the reserve the corals are in mostly good shape. Certainly evidence of bleaching but there's a reasonable array of healthy hard and soft corals. What I was impressed with though was the abundant fish life. Various tangs, butterflyfish, parrotfish, clownfish, batfish, large groupers and an array of smaller ones too. I also saw a shark, stingray and giant jelly fish which were interesting too. Unfortunately to my great annoyance I left my camera at home so wasn't able to record this for myself. I thought just to give everyone an idea of what's down there I'd link some images I found via an image search on flickr/google for 'nalusuan'. Images attributed where source is known.
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