In late May the whale sharks did not turn up in Oslob for four days and the tours simply stopped. Everyone got their money back and went home. It has put the old argument back on the table, so let's have it here.

Photo: Jake Gaviola, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

The case against the way it is run: the sharks are hand-fed to keep them in one bay. Marine scientists have argued for years that provisioning an endangered species changes its behaviour, interferes with migration, and teaches animals to associate boats with food — which is a dangerous habit to have once they swim out of protected water. Four days of no-shows is the kind of thing that argument predicts.

The case for it: this is a working municipality, not a nature documentary. Oslob took in roughly 26,000 visitors in the first quarter of this year alone, on an average of 800 to 900 people a day in May and more than 2,000 on the busiest ones. A lot of those boat operators used to fish for a living. The local government's position is that the feeding is a small intervention against a large benefit.

Photo: choypictures, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

For scale, Cebu province logged about 496,000 arrivals from January to March 2026 — up a shade over one percent, with domestic travel covering for a dip in foreign visitors. Daanbantayan, off the back of the Malapascua diving, actually pulled more visitors than Oslob in that quarter. Moalboal, with the sardine run and the turtles, drew far fewer.

Photo: Iampjanz, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

What we would like to hear from you:

1. A friend lands next week and asks about Oslob. What do you actually tell them?
2. Should the feeding be regulated harder, phased out, or left alone? If phased out, who pays for that transition?
3. Where do you send people instead — Malapascua, Moalboal, or out of the province entirely to somewhere the animals are not fed?
4. Domestic numbers up, foreign numbers down. What is actually keeping international visitors away, and is it fixable at the local level?
5. What else in Cebu is being loved to death right now, and what is quietly still worth the trip?

If a resort, dive shop or operator you rate has a page here on Cebugle, link it in your reply. If it does not have one, say so — that is a gap worth filling.

Ground rules: first-hand experience beats a repost. If you work in tourism, say so — your view is welcome, the undisclosed plug is not. Argue the issue, not the person replying to you, and link anything you are citing as fact.