Malapascua: Volunteering for the Thresher Shark Research Project
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World Wide Diver
Contributor
We were on Skype a couple of nights ago talking with Gary Cases, Divelink who is hosting the Thresher Shark Research project on Malapascua Island.
Gary is a marine biologist, instructor and expert on thresher shark. He will be known to many on this forum.
The research project will be undertaken over two years. An important part of the project will be to tag sharks to record their migratory routes. He told me that the thresher shark visiting the cleaning stations on monad shoal are different shark - rather than the same shark seen all the time.
The theory is that thresher from far and wide visit monad for cleaning.
Recently, a total ban on hunting/taking thresher in the Batangas area was imposed via a local ordinance. As many will be aware, the situation in Batangas was becoming critical and has been highlighted in the national and Worldwide media.
The theory is that sharks on the way to Monad (and other possible cleaning stations) from the Batangas area were being intercepted and killed on the way. This led to a significant reduction of sightings on Monad (est 30-40%). Gary told us that shark are still being sighted daily and numbers have increased since the Batangas ordinace was passed.
Another part of the research is to locate and dive on other sea mounts in the area to establish if thresher shark cleaning stations exist on these.
Hope that you find this of interest.
WWD
Gary is a marine biologist, instructor and expert on thresher shark. He will be known to many on this forum.
The research project will be undertaken over two years. An important part of the project will be to tag sharks to record their migratory routes. He told me that the thresher shark visiting the cleaning stations on monad shoal are different shark - rather than the same shark seen all the time.
The theory is that thresher from far and wide visit monad for cleaning.
Recently, a total ban on hunting/taking thresher in the Batangas area was imposed via a local ordinance. As many will be aware, the situation in Batangas was becoming critical and has been highlighted in the national and Worldwide media.
The theory is that sharks on the way to Monad (and other possible cleaning stations) from the Batangas area were being intercepted and killed on the way. This led to a significant reduction of sightings on Monad (est 30-40%). Gary told us that shark are still being sighted daily and numbers have increased since the Batangas ordinace was passed.
Another part of the research is to locate and dive on other sea mounts in the area to establish if thresher shark cleaning stations exist on these.
Hope that you find this of interest.
WWD
WWD - Tagging the thresher sharks to know more about them is useful, imho. Would tagging them hurt/ distress them? They are not very large, unlike whalesharks...
rramaley - You will love Malapascua! Look forward to hear abt the thresher shark population at Monad.
rramaley - You will love Malapascua! Look forward to hear abt the thresher shark population at Monad.
weenerdoggs
Contributor
It would be great if well intentioned scientists could find a way to do the research without the obvious blemish of a tag.
I like the "take only pictures...leave only bubble idea" on this one.
J.
I like the "take only pictures...leave only bubble idea" on this one.
J.
Hi everyone.
I've just returned as of last week from Malapascua. Boy what a ride!!! I have had an amazing time and I would recommend this experience to anyone who isn't afraid of a lot of hard work that has a lot of impact. I am a management consultant and, even so, I don't think I have ever been as exhausted as I was on this project. Up at 5 am, 3 dives at Monad, back to the island and another 5 hours or more working on data review or other projects that are going on. IT WAS FULL ON. There were emotional highs and lows like you wouldn't believe. And I'd do it again in a heartbeat. I hated to leave and only did so because I couldn't just leave my life hanging in Australia. The people I worked with were amazing: from Simon (the scientist leading the study) to the support staff (a few expats but mainly locals) to the other volunteers and student interns on the project. I have made some lasting relationships. I have eaten amazing food cooked by Remmy
and I really think I learned a lot about myself from this experience.
As for what I saw underwater - AMAZING. I dove Monad about 25 times in my time there (it would have been more but the weather grounded us for about a week when I first got there). I saw 3-4 metre long Threshers, I saw 5 meter wingspan Mantas, I saw beautiful devil rays. On one dive I saw all three! A few times the mantas and sharks came so close you could touch them (though I would never try to). I saw whitetip sharks, barracuda, and a number of smaller fish. I saw thresher sharks at 7am, 10am and 3PM and times in between. I saw mantas in the morning as well as the afternoon. I'd probably say that I saw either mantas or threshers on about 50% of my dives. Not much soft or hard coral to speak of, much of it has been destroyed through a combination of dive operator anchoring practices, diver trampling, and dynamite fishing (most if not all of the dynamite damage is old - dynamite fishing apparently hasn't been an issue on Monad Shoal in the last few years though you can hear dynamiting going on at Lleyte island and other locales - sound travels significant distances underwater).
On shore, I saw amazing footage that we captured on the underwater cameras - I unfortunately can't talk about that without approval from the project but believe me when I say much of what we saw is quite groundbreaking. And we even had the opportunity to work with the local high school, teaching the students about key concepts in marine ecology and working with them to help them understand how to preserve the Thresher Sharks to give them a sustainable source of livelihood. These classroom sessions have only just started but will continue over the months and years to come. There are other mini projects sitting in the wings, just waiting for sufficient manpower to get these going.
As for key takeaways from the project, I became acutely aware of how little I really knew about proper diving, from true buoyancy control to equipment set-up to responding to emergency situations. We had one person's tank o-ring fail at depth and I didn't have enough air in my tank to offer for a buddy breathe through a required decompression stop - thankfully we dove in groups so another person was nearby. But I now have it as a goal to improve my breathing techniques to reduce my air consumption and I will also ascend earlier to leave a little more in the tank in anticipation of these situations in the future. I realized how necessary it is to know how to repair your own equipment - the inflator on my BC got stuck in the inflate position (how lucky was I that this was on the surface!) and I would have not been able to dive that day if we didn't have a person on the boat who knew how to fix the problem. And the easiest thing in the world is to bring spare o-rings. The dive instructors that I have had in the past never told me how important it is to have spare o-rings - they never reveal how frequently o-rings can fail. This trip we had countless o-rings fail on various pieces of equipment but we never missed out on more than one dive a day because we had the spare parts on board with us. And my confidence diving in less than optimal conditions improved ten fold. I now feel much better about diving in current and on days with significant waves and wind.
Most of all, this was a real eye opener for me to see what kind of damage the act of diving can do to the very environment we visit. I watched countless divers descend and proceed to sit directly on the bottom and repeatedly crush the substrate with their fins and knees. I watched the visibility on the site decrease significantly simply from the actions of 4 lone divers who refused to maintain buoyancy. One guy in this group even sat with his tank on the ground and stretched out the rest of his body along the bottom as if reclining on a couch. I am glad that their poor behaviour was not rewarded on that dive with a manta or thresher sighting. Forgetting for a moment the pleasure divers who are either insufficiently trained or are simply irresponsible, my own question is: why don't the dive shops prevent this sort of action especially when it is so clear that the habitat is being destroyed. This destruction ultimately risks the ability of this site to attract threshers over the long run. I never had a discussion with any of the dive operators (sadly, apart from Divelink, the project does not work closely with any of the operators), so this question goes unanswered for me. Dive operator irresponsibility is yet another issue which Dadvocate made some mention of in their earlier post. I witnessed one particular dive operator on Monad deploy an anchor over each side of their boat (presumably to steady the boat as there was big swell that day) - WHILE THERE WERE DIVERS BELOW THE BOAT. I will not mention the name of the operator but it just showed me how stupid dive operators can be - so be aware!!!!
I could go on and on about how great the project was, but I think I'd bore many of you. So what I'll do now is answer a few specific issues brought up on this thread and invite people to email me with other specific questions.
Project costs: Believe me when I say that this is not a money making enterprise. In fact, Simon is using a lot of his own personal resources to keep the project going. The price that they ask volunteers to pay is an estimate of what it takes to host 4-6 volunteers at a time. The problem is that every time the number of volunteers falls below that number, the project loses money on the fixed costs (the boat crew, shore staff, fuel and maintenance costs, etc). Simon has ended up funding the shortfall from his own money and has been unable to find a way to recoup this to date - he is understandably torn about increasing what they charge volunteers. He offered very openly to show me the books to demonstrate the costs of the project. I didn't take him up on the offer but I feel confident that there is no funny business. I do get the sense that the grant funding which the project has received is a bit more oriented to the capital equipment costs (cameras, housings, acquisition of the boat) and, as the scope of what the project aims to do has increased (eg. school classroom teaching), so have the costs. These additional costs are not really covered by the grant so they need to be covered by money coming in from volunteers and other sponsors.
Working with dive shops: TSRCP has a partnership with Divelink, owned by Gary Cases. I met Gary on the trip and found him to be a really great guy who is clearly dedicated to improving Malapascua as well as a number of other dive areas around Cebu. Divelink has provided the project with office space, dive equipment storage and maintenance facilities and dive tanks / refill facilities as well. Gary also provides a great deal of logistical support for the project out of Cebu City. In addition I'm told that Gary is collaborating with Simon on a few projects / ideas (Gary is himself a marine biologist) though I was not involved with these during my time there.
Thresher Shark Divers: jbb asked me about the project's link to the dive operator "Thresher Shark Divers". I was told that when the project started, Simon sourced his air tanks / refills from TSD (which he had to pay for, there was no donation from TSD). That was the extent of the partnership, TSD did not join the dives or participate in any data review or analysis. I'm also told that certain research that TSD cite (eg. time of day sightings of Thresher Sharks) has come from Simon's thesis paper which TSD somehow attained access to. For a number of reasons which I don't think I have enough context to comment on, the TSD / TSRCP relationship ended pretty quickly. If TSD have hired a scientist or have conducted their own unbiased scientific research in the meantime, neither TSRCP nor the local dive community that TSCRP speaks with are aware of it.
Tagging sharks: World Wide Diver refers to a project about tagging being done in connection with Gary of Divelink. As far as I know, the project has not yet progressed beyond the planning and funding steps. Any tagging done as part of the project will also not be conducted at Monad Shoal, but in another area of the Philippines where the dive industry would not be impacted in any way. Xariatay - you ask if the process of tagging sharks distress the sharks and the answer is a resounding yes. For example, pregnant sharks have been known to jettison their pups when captured or tagged. This means that people who want tag sharks should have a very compelling reason why they want to do it (they need a robust theory to prove and they need to make a clear case about of how knowing the answer would be beneficial enough to warrant distressing the subjects). If you ever hear about people wanting to tag animals, don't be afraid to ask them "WHY?".
Anyway, let's stop there as I'm sure it is plenty. Let me know if you have any questions or comments.
I've just returned as of last week from Malapascua. Boy what a ride!!! I have had an amazing time and I would recommend this experience to anyone who isn't afraid of a lot of hard work that has a lot of impact. I am a management consultant and, even so, I don't think I have ever been as exhausted as I was on this project. Up at 5 am, 3 dives at Monad, back to the island and another 5 hours or more working on data review or other projects that are going on. IT WAS FULL ON. There were emotional highs and lows like you wouldn't believe. And I'd do it again in a heartbeat. I hated to leave and only did so because I couldn't just leave my life hanging in Australia. The people I worked with were amazing: from Simon (the scientist leading the study) to the support staff (a few expats but mainly locals) to the other volunteers and student interns on the project. I have made some lasting relationships. I have eaten amazing food cooked by Remmy
and I really think I learned a lot about myself from this experience. As for what I saw underwater - AMAZING. I dove Monad about 25 times in my time there (it would have been more but the weather grounded us for about a week when I first got there). I saw 3-4 metre long Threshers, I saw 5 meter wingspan Mantas, I saw beautiful devil rays. On one dive I saw all three! A few times the mantas and sharks came so close you could touch them (though I would never try to). I saw whitetip sharks, barracuda, and a number of smaller fish. I saw thresher sharks at 7am, 10am and 3PM and times in between. I saw mantas in the morning as well as the afternoon. I'd probably say that I saw either mantas or threshers on about 50% of my dives. Not much soft or hard coral to speak of, much of it has been destroyed through a combination of dive operator anchoring practices, diver trampling, and dynamite fishing (most if not all of the dynamite damage is old - dynamite fishing apparently hasn't been an issue on Monad Shoal in the last few years though you can hear dynamiting going on at Lleyte island and other locales - sound travels significant distances underwater).
On shore, I saw amazing footage that we captured on the underwater cameras - I unfortunately can't talk about that without approval from the project but believe me when I say much of what we saw is quite groundbreaking. And we even had the opportunity to work with the local high school, teaching the students about key concepts in marine ecology and working with them to help them understand how to preserve the Thresher Sharks to give them a sustainable source of livelihood. These classroom sessions have only just started but will continue over the months and years to come. There are other mini projects sitting in the wings, just waiting for sufficient manpower to get these going.
As for key takeaways from the project, I became acutely aware of how little I really knew about proper diving, from true buoyancy control to equipment set-up to responding to emergency situations. We had one person's tank o-ring fail at depth and I didn't have enough air in my tank to offer for a buddy breathe through a required decompression stop - thankfully we dove in groups so another person was nearby. But I now have it as a goal to improve my breathing techniques to reduce my air consumption and I will also ascend earlier to leave a little more in the tank in anticipation of these situations in the future. I realized how necessary it is to know how to repair your own equipment - the inflator on my BC got stuck in the inflate position (how lucky was I that this was on the surface!) and I would have not been able to dive that day if we didn't have a person on the boat who knew how to fix the problem. And the easiest thing in the world is to bring spare o-rings. The dive instructors that I have had in the past never told me how important it is to have spare o-rings - they never reveal how frequently o-rings can fail. This trip we had countless o-rings fail on various pieces of equipment but we never missed out on more than one dive a day because we had the spare parts on board with us. And my confidence diving in less than optimal conditions improved ten fold. I now feel much better about diving in current and on days with significant waves and wind.
Most of all, this was a real eye opener for me to see what kind of damage the act of diving can do to the very environment we visit. I watched countless divers descend and proceed to sit directly on the bottom and repeatedly crush the substrate with their fins and knees. I watched the visibility on the site decrease significantly simply from the actions of 4 lone divers who refused to maintain buoyancy. One guy in this group even sat with his tank on the ground and stretched out the rest of his body along the bottom as if reclining on a couch. I am glad that their poor behaviour was not rewarded on that dive with a manta or thresher sighting. Forgetting for a moment the pleasure divers who are either insufficiently trained or are simply irresponsible, my own question is: why don't the dive shops prevent this sort of action especially when it is so clear that the habitat is being destroyed. This destruction ultimately risks the ability of this site to attract threshers over the long run. I never had a discussion with any of the dive operators (sadly, apart from Divelink, the project does not work closely with any of the operators), so this question goes unanswered for me. Dive operator irresponsibility is yet another issue which Dadvocate made some mention of in their earlier post. I witnessed one particular dive operator on Monad deploy an anchor over each side of their boat (presumably to steady the boat as there was big swell that day) - WHILE THERE WERE DIVERS BELOW THE BOAT. I will not mention the name of the operator but it just showed me how stupid dive operators can be - so be aware!!!!
I could go on and on about how great the project was, but I think I'd bore many of you. So what I'll do now is answer a few specific issues brought up on this thread and invite people to email me with other specific questions.
Project costs: Believe me when I say that this is not a money making enterprise. In fact, Simon is using a lot of his own personal resources to keep the project going. The price that they ask volunteers to pay is an estimate of what it takes to host 4-6 volunteers at a time. The problem is that every time the number of volunteers falls below that number, the project loses money on the fixed costs (the boat crew, shore staff, fuel and maintenance costs, etc). Simon has ended up funding the shortfall from his own money and has been unable to find a way to recoup this to date - he is understandably torn about increasing what they charge volunteers. He offered very openly to show me the books to demonstrate the costs of the project. I didn't take him up on the offer but I feel confident that there is no funny business. I do get the sense that the grant funding which the project has received is a bit more oriented to the capital equipment costs (cameras, housings, acquisition of the boat) and, as the scope of what the project aims to do has increased (eg. school classroom teaching), so have the costs. These additional costs are not really covered by the grant so they need to be covered by money coming in from volunteers and other sponsors.
Working with dive shops: TSRCP has a partnership with Divelink, owned by Gary Cases. I met Gary on the trip and found him to be a really great guy who is clearly dedicated to improving Malapascua as well as a number of other dive areas around Cebu. Divelink has provided the project with office space, dive equipment storage and maintenance facilities and dive tanks / refill facilities as well. Gary also provides a great deal of logistical support for the project out of Cebu City. In addition I'm told that Gary is collaborating with Simon on a few projects / ideas (Gary is himself a marine biologist) though I was not involved with these during my time there.
Thresher Shark Divers: jbb asked me about the project's link to the dive operator "Thresher Shark Divers". I was told that when the project started, Simon sourced his air tanks / refills from TSD (which he had to pay for, there was no donation from TSD). That was the extent of the partnership, TSD did not join the dives or participate in any data review or analysis. I'm also told that certain research that TSD cite (eg. time of day sightings of Thresher Sharks) has come from Simon's thesis paper which TSD somehow attained access to. For a number of reasons which I don't think I have enough context to comment on, the TSD / TSRCP relationship ended pretty quickly. If TSD have hired a scientist or have conducted their own unbiased scientific research in the meantime, neither TSRCP nor the local dive community that TSCRP speaks with are aware of it.
Tagging sharks: World Wide Diver refers to a project about tagging being done in connection with Gary of Divelink. As far as I know, the project has not yet progressed beyond the planning and funding steps. Any tagging done as part of the project will also not be conducted at Monad Shoal, but in another area of the Philippines where the dive industry would not be impacted in any way. Xariatay - you ask if the process of tagging sharks distress the sharks and the answer is a resounding yes. For example, pregnant sharks have been known to jettison their pups when captured or tagged. This means that people who want tag sharks should have a very compelling reason why they want to do it (they need a robust theory to prove and they need to make a clear case about of how knowing the answer would be beneficial enough to warrant distressing the subjects). If you ever hear about people wanting to tag animals, don't be afraid to ask them "WHY?".
Anyway, let's stop there as I'm sure it is plenty. Let me know if you have any questions or comments.
Last edited:
CODMAN
Contributor
Glad you had a good time!
Zeeman
Contributor
Thanks for the report, and also for answering a lot of question with regards to the legitimacy of this project.
I, for one, am now far more interested in this project.
Cheers,
Z...
I, for one, am now far more interested in this project.
Cheers,
Z...
I was happy that this project really involved the locals. Now after this report, I'm happy and very impressed. Grassroots all the way! Too bad to hear about the falling out with TSD.
Thanks rramaley! great report!
Thanks rramaley! great report!
kosmonooit
Contributor
Good work there - its an interesting idea that the sharks migrate to the shoals for cleaning - but where from? the normally roam the deep sea?
Its a relief that the issue of over-commercialisation of the shoal is coming to the fore - guess that’s what causes a bit of friction with the geezas and geezettes from TSD coz they leading the charge. I went with them for a few dives to the shoal and I was really shocked to see the lack of skills with many of the group, esp. basic buoyancy. It seemed to me many had done some crash Open Water course and not much dive time, and now they are let loose on one of the most special places in the ocean.
Perhaps they should limit the shoal to Advanced Open Water or a certain number of logged dives, but thats unlikely to happen because is such big business innit
Its a relief that the issue of over-commercialisation of the shoal is coming to the fore - guess that’s what causes a bit of friction with the geezas and geezettes from TSD coz they leading the charge. I went with them for a few dives to the shoal and I was really shocked to see the lack of skills with many of the group, esp. basic buoyancy. It seemed to me many had done some crash Open Water course and not much dive time, and now they are let loose on one of the most special places in the ocean.
Perhaps they should limit the shoal to Advanced Open Water or a certain number of logged dives, but thats unlikely to happen because is such big business innit
Good work there - its an interesting idea that the sharks migrate to the shoals for cleaning - but where from? the normally roam the deep sea?
Its a relief that the issue of over-commercialisation of the shoal is coming to the fore - guess thatÃÔ what causes a bit of friction with the geezas and geezettes from TSD coz they leading the charge. I went with them for a few dives to the shoal and I was really shocked to see the lack of skills with many of the group, esp. basic buoyancy. It seemed to me many had done some crash Open Water course and not much dive time, and now they are let loose on one of the most special places in the ocean.
Perhaps they should limit the shoal to Advanced Open Water or a certain number of logged dives, but thats unlikely to happen because is such big business innit
Yes thresher sharks are considered pelagic / ocean-going animals and come to Monad and other similar shoals for the cleaning services of the resident fish. If you get to go again to Malapascua, try and calm your excitement (it was hard for me to do
) a bit and watch closely. You can actually see the cleaner fish doing their thing!!! I was told that the Monad dive is technically supposed to be for AOW divers only because of the depth of the dive Monad dive sites as you probably know are all about 22-24 metres in depth and open water divers aren't supposed to exceed 18 metres. The way some of the operators get around this is to either do the AOW class as they are diving Monad (in my opinion Monad is not the best place to do the deep dive portion of the AOW certification - too many variables). The other way some of the operators have gotten around the rule is to set up a buoy line a little further away on the shoal where the depth is 18m. Sneaky, huh? In any case, using AOW or number of dives as a filter sadly isn't even good enough - I've seen plenty of idiot divers with 500 + logged dives - I think its a mindset, not a number or a certification level and how do you set up a standard filter for that?).
By the way, if you want to see scary, go dive Monad during Chinese New Year.
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