How NOT to dive Monad Shoal in Malapascua. Is a Thresher sighting worth the damage?

[Mucksavage]

For some reason this kind of 'diving' seems to be the norm for Malapascua and the Thresher Sharks. Divers complain about the dynamite fishing in The Philippines but this is the only place in the world you can bank on seeing a Thresher Shark - yet diver's are killing the habitat of the cleaner fish that attract them every single day.

If you are researching your trip to the Philippines and plan to dive Monad Shoal please make sure you observe neutral buoyancy and respect the reef. If your dive shop tells you to empty your BCD you should consider taking your business elsewhere.

Happily some diver's are disgusted by this behaviour. All images submitted by disgruntled third parties.

 

[Rhone Man]

Without in any way defending poor bouyancy skills, unfortunately whenever you market a location to a large number of tourist divers, you are going to get a lot of divers in the bottom quartile of skills, and that inevitably means inviting a lot of coral mashers to dive your sites.

You can educate, encourage, threaten, barrack, and take as many additional steps as you like: ultimately if you put a lot of traffic through, it is going to result in wear and tear on the environment.

 

[Pao]

Sad to say but those scenes are all too common. I myself am guilty of kicking or plowing into coral when I was starting out. Those were the times when my only concern was not to lose sight of the diver in front of me or not to shoot up. I now wonder how many years of growth I destroyed when I was starting out. After that phase I developed an aversion for the bottom and tended to hover over my dive buddies. It is only after taking a particular course did I get my trim/buoyancy acceptable enough that I can sight-see near the bottom with confidence. I think the DM/ dive guide should utilize the check dive to assess the skills of a diver and see if he/she is suited for a particular dive site (just a thought ) or better yet, the mainstream training agencies should emphasize trim and buoyancy during the certification process and make it a mandatory skill or at least teach the divers to maintain a respectable distance from the reef until they get their trim/buoyancy right (wishful thinking

).

 

[DevonDiver]

Monad is a "deep" site right? (20-24m?)

Sorry.. but if dive operations were insistent on matching qualifications against depths - then this 'should' ensure that only AOW divers were visiting the site. They 'should' be expected to have an ability to maintain neutral buoyancy (well, actually, so should a newly qualified OW diver... but I digress).

One can only wish that there were more stonefish in the world...

 

[h2odragon1]

The first three photo's show divers settleing in the sand, the last two are on the coral or rocks.
40% is not good!
Maybe Bouyance control is a certification that dive operations shoul require prior to diving aroun coral, if the goal of the dive is to set still and wait for something to come along!

 

[Mucksavage]

Some interesting points. I posted this to see if it created some debate which at least might highlight the issue.

The last poster says sitting in the sand is OK and if it were really sand then that might be argued. That picture is from Manta Point and it used to all be hard coral, however it has been pulverised by divers over many years. We have roped off the area to try and allow the hard substrate to grow back in some areas while accepting that others will suffer. I don't believe it makes it OK to sit like that. Ironically we have divers return from the dive and talk about the dynamite damage. There is no dynamite damage there, only destructive divers sitting on former coral.

The problem isn't really with OW divers Andy - probably 100% of these pictured are AOW+. Most dive shops here do not let OW divers go to Monad. Its pretty good way to sell AOW after all. The problem is multifold and responsibility can be portioned out in many ways - the agencies for promoting fast courses with minimum emphasis on buoyancy as mentioned, dive shops for not briefing properly or certain dive shops for actively (and aggressively) promoting negative buoyancy but it also comes down to each individual diver. Pao you mentioned your destructive early dives - well at least you are aware of that and you tried not to do it which is half the battle! What is happening here is people with with more experience and less awareness are quite happy to crunch into the corals to see a shark.

We often take AOW students there and because they spend the time with the Instructor and get a proper briefing on what to do and what not to do they usually fare a lot better then the guy with 100 dives, a camera and a case of shark fever.

Regardless of the issues - what would be great is for every future diver coming to Monad to make up their mind now that they will be part of the solution facing Monad Shoal.

 

[Kenr]

You can educate, encourage, threaten, barrack, and take as many additional steps as you like: ultimately if you put a lot of traffic through, it is going to result in wear and tear on the environment.

I agree

 

[Scuba_Shane]

I see people running into coral all the time, and when its a dive tour operator or someone else of that experience level it is even worse. This last winter I went to Punta Cana, DR and did some diving with my GF who had never been diving before. She was better than the guy who was the DM with our group, he kept bumping into corals and worse yet mashing it with his fins. It turns my stomach upside down seeing stuff like that cause you know its dead. Lots of divers just have thick skulls and don't get the damage they can do to corals. You just have to keep pounding the information at them and hope they learn.

I am still pretty excited to dive Monad shoal one day. Hopefully early next year I can come out there and do my DM with you guys at Evolution Work allowing of course.

 

[supergaijin]

It is freaky to see rate of desertification on top reefs as described by the OP. I have noticed big changes in some reefs in the Maldives after being away for less than a year. Especially on pinnacles withe Grey Reef Sharks- the fringe on a couple of sites has been completely cleared of coral revealing bare rock from divers planting themselves.

Unfortunately it happens very often that when divers with otherwise good buoyancy skills combine cameras and large pelagics, their once-decent buoyancy skills go to pot. It's a catch 22 but when divers try to hover a few inches of the reef to shoot mantas for example, their fins can remove whole chunks without them feeling it- and would swear that they never touched the reef... but find a couple of mysterious scars on the tops of their fins.

If I remember correctly from when I dived Monad, there was a ton of macro to find on the top reef as well.

 

[guamrider]

I've read all of the above posts and find it interesting that not ONE person has offered any other recommendation except having better buoyancy control. You can have the best buoyancy control possible but when there is a current running you'll drift away from your group. Period. It seems that currents run there about 60% of the time. I've been there 3 years in a row and made at least 5 dives on Monad each time and dove with two different operations.

In “no current” conditions I agree that there is absolutely no reason to sit or lie on the reef. But, it all changes in the current. Even the dive guides tell their divers to hold onto the reef when there is a current, and at times it can scream.

Do ANY of the dive operators offer reef hooks so divers can use them and hover above the reef (as they do in Palau, Malaysia and other areas)?

Oh, I can hear everyone who have never used one saying that reef hooks will damage the reef even more than hanging on to it or sitting on the bottom. That theory is simply nuts. Used correctly, which is a very simple procedure, reef hooks prevent a a lot of damage to a reef.

DIVE OPERATORS: Instead of investing in a lot of ropes and anchors into the reef to hold divers in place why not give the divers going to Monad the use of reef hooks for free along with 2 min. of instruction? I betcha you also sell a few of them because they can be used in any current conditions that you're near the bottom. You

There's a post here relating to reef books: http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/pacific-islands/238299-how-properly-use-reef-hook.html

Just my 3 1/2 cents.