Earlier this month I went on a lovely trip to Malapascua to dive. Malapascua is a quaint little island off the coast of Cebu, Philippines and is mostly known by divers. Tourist tend to beeline for Boracay but divers go directly to Malapascua. The main draw to this island are the ever present thresher sharks which visit Monad Shoal every morning to be cleaned by an eager array of butterfly fish and wrasse. These threshers are oceanic so if lucky you could get a chance to see a really large one!
Besides the thresher shark dives, the macro life is outstanding with pygmy seahorses, frogfishes, nudibranch, shrimp, crabs and lots of mandarin fish. Further from Malapascua is also Kimud Shoal. Schooling hammerheads can sometimes be seen here but during our dive out there, we didn’t see any.
Some trip details:-
Dive Center: Thresher Shark Divers
Accommodation: Tepanee Beach Resort
Trusty dive group: Great Ocean Divers
Water temperature: 25 degrees Celsius. Cold by my standards!
Visibility: 10-20m.Viz was better below 30m. But as you can see from the pictures, the water was very green.
How to get there: Fly in to Cebu and your dive operator will arrange a 3-4 hour van ride to the jetty. From the jetty its about 1 hour on a bangka to Malapascua.
Bits and Clips of Malapascua click here for my video to see the thresher shark!
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