The Mighty Sardines of Moalboal Are a Sight to Behold
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Cebu is a place which has a lot of sights to offer for the traveler; from some of the nation’s oldest Spanish colonial-aera churches and military forts in Cebu City, to a wide selection of picturesque beaches along its coastlines outside of the metropolitan area.
Straight across the width of the island from Cebu City lies Moalboal, one of the more popular scuba diving destinations in the Philippines. What makes Moalboal unique is a massive school of sardines, right off the coast, only a brief swim from the beach.
The school of sardines located just off the coast of Moalboal island in Cebu province
The school of sardines is nothing short of spectacular. The fish—at least several hundred thousand of them, possibly in the low millions—form walls that can become so dense that they block the sunlight even on bright tropical days. The wall sometimes divides, a process which only takes seconds, and the mass of fish splits into two halves. The fish then form bridges connecting the two halves, and soon the school is one again. They avoid bubbles from the divers below and open up a round gap to let the air-bubbles pass through them. The dynamic of the sardine school is hypnotic, like a giant, living lava-lamp.
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It's fun to observe the sardines during a scuba dive, but they are so close to shore, and often so shallow, that it’s possible to see them well while snorkeling, from the water’s surface. If you are a comfortable swimmer you can head out on your own, but even if you are a bit insecure in the water, you can experience the spectacle. Lots of dive shops in Moalboal offer the services of snorkel guides who will put you in a life vest and make sure you stay afloat while fish-watching.
THe sardines form walls that can become so dense that they block the sunlight even on bright tropical days
It’s important to point out that Moalboal’s sardines are not a “sardine run,” or a migration of fish towards a seasonal feeding ground, as it occurs off the coast of Mozambique. The Cebu sardines are a stationary aggregation, which remain in place every single day. In addition, the aggregation is not a single-species affair: Prof Kent Carpenter, one of the most experienced experts when it comes to Philippine marine fishes, pointed out that the fish aggregation contains several different species of sardines and two species of jackfish. Hence the fish school of Moalboal is a multi-species stationary fish aggregation.
A closer look at the sardines
No one knows exactly why the fish like Moalboal’s coastline so much
An obvious question is why the fish like Moalboal’s coastline so much. We don’t know for sure, but we can speculate that a few factors come together. The small town right off the coast will produce some run-off – human wastewater which is rich in nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphate. These nutrients are fertilizers for the tiny plants which make up the base of the marine food web, the plant-like plankton (phytoplankton). Tiny shrimps, the animal-component of the plankton (zooplankton) feed on these, and the sardines and jacks feed on the zooplankton. So, via two steps, the human run-off provides food for the sardines.
In addition, schooling fish find safety in numbers. A hundred thousand eyes see more than two, and the response to an approaching predatory fish in a school is swift; even a fish on the opposite end of the school will realize, by observing its school-mates escape, that something dangerous is happening. Such a big school as it resides off Moalboal will hence act in a self-reinforcing way: a lot of sardines are attractive to other sardines, hence young sardines settle in the area and maintain the school over time. It’s comparable to a busy marketplace, which is popular with sellers and customers, and therefore attracts more sellers in the future who want to take advantage of the big number of customers.
The sardines are so close to shore, and often so shallow, that it’s possible to see them well even while snorkeling, from the water’s surface
Despite the advantage of schooling, the sardines and jacks are not living a completely safe life off Moalboal. Larger predatory fishes see their school as an all-you-can-eat buffet. Needlefish, highly elongated fish with needle-like jaws, hunt the sardines from above. Larger jackfish, different from the ones which are a part of the school, hunt the schooling fish from below.
Occasionally a majestic thresher shark visits the reef of Moalboal to hunt. These unusual sharks don’t kill their prey with their sharp teeth like most other shark species, but rather thresh around with the highly elongated upper lobe of their dorsal fin. The threshing then stuns or kills the sardines, almost like with a whip, and the shark picks its dazed or dead prey out of the water column subsequently. It’s not a very common thing to see the thresher sharks in Moalboal—Malapascua in Cebu’s north is the place to see these fascinating sharks more reliably—but it does happen. I have talked to divers who were lucky enough to see these sharks hunting sardines on their very first dive, ever, and were absolutely stunned by the spectacle.
Dive shops in Moalboal offer the services of snorkel guides who will put guests in a life vest to make sure they stay afloat while fish-watching
During a recent visit, I observed a lizardfish catch and devour a sardine. This mid-sized fish is a much more pedestrian predator than a thresher shark. Nevertheless, the predation event was an intriguing piece of natural history. The lizardfish perches on the reef, well camouflaged and motionless, and waits until a careless sardine doesn’t notice it and swims too close to its position. Then the lizardfish darts up and grabs the prey fish with its sharp, pointy, inward-pointing fish, leaving the sardine no chance to escape.
The video below shows footage of the lizardfish struggling to swallow the sardine, which was about half its size. In nature, when you can get food, you have to take advantage of the opportunity, and can’t reject lunch based on too massive a portion size.
As for the pleasures for the traveler above the waves, Moalboal and its touristy area in Panagsama beach grew significantly in the last couple of years. What used to be a fishing village decades ago, and a small town with a few dive shops and dive-bars a single decade ago, is now a busy but still charming place with excellent Filipino, Thai, Italian, and Middle Eastern restaurants & hip cafes. After a day of diving or snorkeling, you can enjoy a cocktail while gazing at the stars above the Tañon Strait, which separates Cebu from Negros. The aggregation of sardines and jacks, which is the foundation of tourism in Moalboal brought fancy drinks, falafel wraps and excellent cappuccino to the west coast of Cebu.
