Thresher Sharks, Malapascua

[gee13]

Hi all,

I plan in future to witness thresher shark/s can anybody comment on diving in Malapuasca, and who has recently seen any threshers? Are they still around? What's the season for them and what kind of diving's best? LOB or Resort. Also any reccomendation on Dive Ops would be received with thanks.

I hear strobes not allowed and the dives are really early, so Im wondering how much light there would be, it would be nice to capture at least 1 or 2 good shots of them.

 

[CODMAN]

from what I've read, the threshers are there year round. To my knowledge, there are no liveaboards specifically for Malapascua. Maybe some doing a "safari" of the different PI dive areas... But not specifically for there...

Hope this helps a bit! Others more knowledgeable will surely be along soon to fill in the gaps (or cover up the mistakes...)...

Cheers!

Hi all,

I plan in future to witness thresher shark/s can anybody comment on diving in Malapuasca, and who has recently seen any threshers? Are they still around? What's the season for them and what kind of diving's best? LOB or Resort. Also any reccomendation on Dive Ops would be received with thanks.

I hear strobes not allowed and the dives are really early, so Im wondering how much light there would be, it would be nice to capture at least 1 or 2 good shots of them.

 

[jbb]

Hi all,

I plan in future to witness thresher shark/s can anybody comment on diving in Malapuasca, and who has recently seen any threshers? Are they still around? What's the season for them and what kind of diving's best? LOB or Resort. Also any reccomendation on Dive Ops would be received with thanks.

I hear strobes not allowed and the dives are really early, so Im wondering how much light there would be, it would be nice to capture at least 1 or 2 good shots of them.

Yes, they've been there every time I have visited. You might see them even The reason they appear on Monad Shoal is due to the cleaning station there. The sharks come up from the deep or where ever to get cleaned in the morning. They are active usually from 5am to 10am but most shops leave Malapascua at 5am to 6:30 am to dive that site. So no season. There are dives for manta rays on the same site at 2pm or early afternoon. Hammerheads appear usually around March but are much deeper.

No flash, as the sharks are dark deep water sharks and it will anoy and drive them off. I have been taking video with my point and shoot the last couple of trip due to the low light levels. Just depends on what kind of camera you have and the widest aperture available. I dive with Thresher Shark Divers but there a quite a number of shops on the island with the larger ones being TSD, Exotic and Sea Explorers. I like TSD because there are usually a lot of different nationalities without big groups so it's a more sociable atmosphere amongst collection of divers. The big shops have staggered schedule for the sharks in the morning to avoid crowding but there can be as many as 30-40 divers on the bottom as the smaller shops will go whenever. The later trips will have more natural light available. One of my best sightings was when we dove Kimud early trying to see hammerheads and then diving Monad at 8:30am with only 6 of us for a great view of 3 threshers swimming thru the cleaning station. GET NITROX CERTIFIED for this dive site - well worth it if you have good air consumption. There are usually fewer divers on nitrox as well so fewer bubbles getting in the way of your camera shot.

Where you stay depends on who you dive with and your budget, ac or fan, hot water, etc. Cocobana is on the beach with a range of room prices.

There aren't a lot of schools of fish on the Malapascua sites. It's more for macro (nudibranchs), threshers and mantas. I recommend the night dive at Lighthouse for the mandarin fish mating and seahorses. Bantigi is another nice night dive. You can look at my Flickr site for a smattering of what you can see while on Malapascua.

 

[cim72lando]

I have done 3 trips to Malapascua and have seen the tresher sharks. Just plan to do more than one dive to Monad shoal as it is not always a guaranteed sighting in every dive. If you do see them in your first dive to Monad, it's worth seeing them again as they are quite rare. FYI there are no schooling threshers and no season for them. Although the boats leave early, by the time you get to the water there is enough light. Strobes are useless as they are more than 5 feet away. Perfect your technic for shooting with ambient lighting instead. My last trip there was in Nov. 2009
Mantas (actually A manta) are usually more reliable to be seen in Monad but you can be lucky and see the thresher and a manta on the same dive.
I stayed every time with Exotic Dive resort and have never been disappointed with them. My favorite divemaster is Toto and he is great in spotting macro life. Malapascua is actually a macrophotographer's dream although you can see white tips and there is an intact shipwreck that is worth at least 2 dives (the Dona Marilyn sunk during a storm with loss of lives). There are some liveaboards that go to Malapascua but usually don't stay long in the area. One of them would be a boat from the Expedition Fleet.

 

[gee13]

Thanks guys for the positive responses. So is it easy/ expensive to get there if I transit from Manila? Is there much for a family to do there or more for the single dive traveller?

 

[Rogersea]

If they are non-divers, I think that there is enough to keep a family busy for one or two days, after that they will be repeating. But the activities will be beach/water centric and there is an enjoyable hike around the Island but that doesn't take too long. The great thing about young kids is they can entertain themselves at places like Malapascua since it is really safe, the teenagers might get bored.

 

[jlovold]

I just arrived back from the Philippines, where I have been diving in Malapascua and Coron Bay.

We were diving with "Evolution Diving", and were extremely satisfied, both because I brought my CCR, and needed sorb and O2, but also because their boats were not overfilled like some of the others. Also, all of their cylinders have DIN-valves (which of course are convertible to yoke).
I got excellent service, and their facilities were really good! Matt and David are extremely capable divers, and are incredibly good at finding small stuff.
The dive-center is still very new, and everything is not yet in place, but I was very impressed with what they have achieved so far! I didn´t even have to carry my own stuff! Or rinse it! Everything was taken care of.
In the evenings we usually spent our time in the bar, and had some very good filippino dishes, although that was not yet available every evening. We also ordered pizzas from "Angelina´s" one evening, and Matt even did duty as a pizza-boy!

I must add that I would stay away from certain dive-centres on the far west side of "Bounty-beach", due to hearing their compressors running when that part of the beach was covered in relatively thick smoke from garbage- and grass-burning. If any of their guests were suffering from headaches and nausea during and after their dives, now they know why!

The place to stay in Malapascua is IMO at "Mike and Diose´s". Excellent, affordable rooms with western standard, and very good breakfast.

We usually ate at "Exotic" (due to being lazy. Food is usually OK, but they have a really nice french onion-soup), but can highly recommend the food at "Angelina´s" (italian restaurant on the south of the west-side) "Hippocampus" can also be recommended.

Planes are usually pretty cheap, but next time I would probably try to avoid Manila, as it is a bit chaotic going between terminals. (get a taxi, the transfer-bus never comes anyway) The trip from Cebu-City to Malapascua takes about 3,5hrs with a car, and then the boat-trip takes about 40 minutes. Apart from diving, there may not be too much to do, except the usual stuff you would do on an island surrounded by white beaches. There is not very much shopping opportunities, so you should go there mainly to dive and enjoy life.

BTW, if you want REALLY LONG bottomtimes on Monad, you should dive a CCR. The longest dive I had there was about 1hr 30mins, and I had about 45 mins left to the NDL! We outlasted at least three groups!

Unfortunately, no Treshers on that dive. I blame that on the bubble-blowers...

 

[eagerbeaver]

Thanks for the kind words Johan...glad you enjoyed your trip. Will you be posting some photos here?

But I don't want everyone getting ideas about me as their pizza boy!

 

[Babydamulag]

pizza boy, pizza boy, pizza boy,pizza boy,pizza boy,pizza boy,pizza boy,pizza boy,pizza boy,pizza boy,pizza boy,pizza boy,pizza boy,pizza boy,pizza boy,pizza boy,pizza boy,pizza boy,pizza boy,pizza boy,pizza boy,pizza boy,pizza boy,pizza boy,pizza boy,pizza boy,pizza boy,pizza boy,pizza boy,pizza boy,pizza boy,pizza boy,pizza boy................lololololololol. GOOD JOB MATT!

 

[Cabbie]

I could be tempted to dive with EVOLUTION DIVING if they have their own pizza boy - talk about full service