Three of the northernmost islands in the Palawan Province are Coron, Busuanga, and Culion.  Coron Bay is a calm natural harbor lying within this island group and the Japanese Navy used it at times to hide vessels of their Pacific fleet during WWII.  By sometime in 1944, the Americans had cracked Japanese radio codes and learned that several Japanese ships were staging near Coron, in preparation for an attack on Manila.  On September 24, 1944, about 130 American fighters and dive bombers descended on Coron and sank every Japanese ship in hiding.  The attack was overwhelming and must have been a fearsome spectacle.  Nine of the sunken ships are now regular scuba diving sites visited by hundreds of divers every year.  For more detail on each dive site, take a look at the Coron entry in the Dive Site Directory.    **Nov 30,2008 update: I now have a good number of underwater photos from the wrecks posted here: Coron Shipwrecks & Other Dive Sites.

Not only is Coron great for wreck diving, but there are several other unique dive sites as well.  Surface interval time is well spent in some of the most unspoiled paradisiacal settings to be found anywhere on earth.