Philippine Siren Liveaboard

This was probably the best liveaboard boat we have been on. This was in our top 3 trips---and yes, all of those have been with BlueWater (Anilao and Sea of Cortez were the others). This ship was beautiful. The crew keeps it in top shape, it was spacious and comfortable, clean and organized. The crew made this trip so pleasurable. Everyone was treated like royalty!! Jonah is the best cruise director and has a great talent to manage both the ship, crew, unruly guests and negotiate with local Filipinos. The food was delicious and the crew had so many surprises for me for my birthday! Cake, Tshirt, decorated dive station, celebration underwater, wine.....so gracious of them!

Outstanding boat, crew, and organization. It was my 25th live-aboard and I was not disappointed.I was on the Coron to Anilao trip which also visits Puerto Gallera and Apo reef. Every site was very different and 3 days in each was perfect. Coron has WW2 wrecks. Apo is reef and walls, but few fish. Sad! Puerto Gallera has amazing corals and macro. Anilao is muck and little else.I wish that there were more fish, but when you see the local poverty and fishermen, you realize that fish is the primary source of food for many of them.Siren does a great job of arranging travel and transfers. Free gear rental and nitrox is sweet. The crew is extremely helpful and friendly. Dive from zodiacs. Food amazing and an experience. Stable and sea-worthy boat.

Philippine Siren is a classic boat where its crew keeps it in shape. The leisure area and our room were very spacious. The dive prep area is a little tight in space, but they run a very efficient operation and literally take care of everything for you so you don't have to run here and there to grab your camera, fins, etc. When it's dive time, practically every crew member comes to the dive deck to prep for you. Once you step into your wetsuit, you practically don't have to do anything else. They will remember every piece of your gear to bring to the zodiac, along with your favorite drink once you come out. I've taught my wife to be self sufficent, including setting up the gear to taking the nitrox measurement. I feel that they have spoiled her here. The crew really goes out of the way. My wife had a quacker that stopped quacking. I borrowed a tool from a crew member and opened it up to see what is wrong to no avail. I thought that's the end of her quacking on this trip. But later on, the crew member disassembled it and got it working without my asking.The food is great, with a change of theme every day. Every meal was provided, and they were full meals, from lunch on day of arrival to dinner on the last night and breakfast on the last day. The automated cappuccino machine is awesome, nothing like a quadruple shot before the morning dive.Every dive site is different, unlike some other liveaboards, and each location they take you to is completely different from the others that you visited, from reef, wall, cavern right through an island, sardine, whale shark, thresher to muck. It's like going to many destinations on one trip. Some people said they could have done all this via land based diving, but it's a lot of traveling by land and sea to get to each of these dive sites. The guides were great, they would point out to so many things that we would have definitely missed. Gotta give a shout out to Jonah, who glee with excitement on her finds and made sure everybody got to see them, even though it's probably the 1000th time she has seen it. I thought the muck dive would be OK but it would definitely not be for my wife, but she loved it because things were just crawling around everywhere. We were kind of disappointed that we only got a limited sighting of the thresher shark, even though we had the advantage of dive extremely early and getting there first. I guess the fact that people show up with all their bubbles causes the sharks to leave. We did make a second attempt the next day with the same result, although my insistence on getting a good sighting caused me to stay back for an extra few minutes, thereby missing the humongous jellyfish that everybody else saw. We also got a visit from Dr Frogfish to give us a presentation on all the varieties out there, and believe me, this place is filled with frogfish.I thought the fish variety was great, but another diver said the fish life is not like what it used to be when she visited 10 years ago. I was expecting worse, hearing how the lack of enforcement have allowed the locals to clean out the reefs. We did hear a couple of loud bangs from a distance while underwater. We thought it was someone doing dynamite fishing far away, but was told it was the local diveboat's engine misfiring.....I still have my doubts.At the end, they even provided an extremely detailed daily dive log with every fish they saw, accurately identified. I see the cruise director and DM flipping through the fish ID book for hours in order to identify the exact fish that were seen.It was great that they provided pickup and dropoff service to anywhere in the city area, plus their boarding was quite early compared to other liveaboards, so we don't have to be stuck hours in limbo between the time after checking out of our hotel and being picked up.

I spent a week on a beautiful boat, eating excellent food and diving with an enthusiastic and knowledgeable crew. Despite the fact that the weather didn't get the memo we had a wonderful week exploring some of the great diving the Philippines has to offer. The seascape was varied and interesting as was the wildlife. I thoroughly enjoyed myself and would gladly sail with a siren again given the opportunity.

The S/Y Philippine Siren is the most comfortable live aboard I've been to. It's designed in order for the diver to be conformable anywhere he/she is. The dive deck is well distributed, so each one has it's place to get ready, its space to store dive equipment. As I use glasses, the drawer available for each dive position was a nice addition to the diver position. Also, the live aboard other TWO spaces available to each diver to store other equipment like camera and photographic equipment, as well as laptops.The rooms are also design to be spacious, and not cram together like other liveaboards I've been to. The food was excellent because of it's diversity, taste and presentation. As I 'm following a special diet, they were very accommodating with my diet, and I got to enjoy the excellent cuisine.The staff was kind, accommodating, helpful, friendly. Always ready to help.The marine life was incredible. I think there was flora and fauna for everybody's taste. From huge tunas and sharks, through sharks, turtles, cuttlefish, bluespotted ribbon tail ray, Napoleons, very big photogenic jellyfishes, schools of jacks, barracudas,This live aboard is suited for photographers and divers that do not mind a rough sea in order to get to very healthy and well protected marine natural parkOn this trip we visited the Tubbataha Reefs Marine Park.

An older boat and not as comfortable as some of the 4 and 5 star boats I have been on. Not a Mermaid or Agressor level by any means. Huge diving deck with diving off dingies. Was 5 or 6 divers to a guide. Rooms were good size though. Food was great and way above average-see the pics.I agree with the above reviewer about the shallow draft that can make the first and last nights unpleasant due to lots of rolling even when waves not that big. Lat nights dinner disrupted by crashing bottles and plates on way back.. Great staff and friendly Philipino crew. Good captain and guides.Tubbataha is mostly larger stuff, not much of any macro and diving conditions can be challenging. Avoid room #8 which is the back of the boat & accessible down a difficult ladder staircase & is claustrophobic and isolated from all the other rooms.

We went on a live-aboard to the Tubbataha reef, which is far out in the sea and requires a 12 hours overnight ride with the boat from Puerto Princessa. Unfortunately we had bad weather and very high waves. The boat has only little draft which resulted in the worst rolling I have ever experienced on a ship. The cabins are spacious and nicely decorated. The eating area is outside, which is nice during good weather. To make this ship a great value we felt that it is missing more spacious and comfortable relaxation zones. Food was excellent, the presentation of the food by the cook was even better. Generally the team on the boat including the dive guides were highly motivated. The marine life is one of the best I have seen: gorgeous reefs with large sea fans and sponges, big schools of fish, including barracuda and jack fish and lots of sharks. At some places it felt like a shark soup with different types of sharks circling around. We also saw Mantas and a Whale shark on that trip.