The Verde Island Passage

The Verde Island Passage is the strait between Luzon and Mindoro that Lobo's entire coastline fronts. A 2005 study by Kent Carpenter and Victor Springer identified it as the centre of the centre of marine shorefish biodiversity, recording 1,736 marine species in a single 10 by 10 kilometre area, the highest concentration recorded anywhere on Earth.

What does the 2005 study actually say?

Carpenter and Springer mapped shorefish species richness across the Indo-Pacific in one degree and finer grids. The peak cell fell on the Verde Island Passage, holding 1,736 species, about 58 percent of all species in the study, inside a single 10 by 10 kilometre square. The phrase that followed, centre of the centre of marine shorefish biodiversity, comes from that paper and not from a tourism board.

Is the passage legally protected?

Not as a single protected seascape. This is reported wrongly more often than any other fact about the passage. It is recognised in national policy under Executive Order 578 of 2006 and it is covered in parts by a network of local marine protected areas, including Lobo's four. A Verde Island Passage Protected Seascape bill has been filed repeatedly since 2022 and, as of July 2026, has not been enacted. Until it is, describing the passage as a legally protected seascape is inaccurate.

What is Lobo's part in it?

Lobo's whole shoreline is passage frontage. The municipality maintains the Lobo Mangrove Conservation Area, the Sawang and Olo-Olo Fish Sanctuary and Refuge Area, the Malabrigo Fish Sanctuary and the Biga Fish Sanctuary. Batangas State University runs the Lobo Marine Station in Barangay Masaguitsit, at 13°38′30″N 121°11′33″E, under the VIP CORALS programme established in February 2018.

For a visitor this is not abstract. The reef starts close to shore, which is why snorkelling and diving is the reason to come, and why the pebble beaches are an asset rather than a disappointment.

What threatens it?

Shipping traffic through the strait is heavy, and in March 2023 oil from the sinking of the MT Princess Empress reached passage waters. Coastal development, fishing pressure and the long-pending gold and copper project inland are the other recurring pressures; the neutral chronology of the last is on the mining record.

Seeing it

The passage is visible from anywhere on the Lobo coast and from the grounds of Malabrigo Point Lighthouse, which was built to guide ships through it. Plan the trip with how to get to Lobo and two days in Lobo.