Malapascua Island
My partner and I visited Malapascua before the typhoon Yolanda in 2013. Located in the Visayan Sea, the island was a gem. Its dive site, Monad Shoal, is famous for the sightseeing of an endangered shark species, thresher shark. I was told that it was guaranteed to see them when diving in Monad Shoal. Indeed, we saw three thresher sharks, quite close during our dive. But scuba divers should start early in the morning, I meant early here, be ready to wake up at 5 am in the morning for the thresher sharks dive. And it is a deep diving (around 25 to 30 meter deep). It is best to have at least advanced open water license to dive in this dive site.
Other dive sites in Malapascua are also interesting; we saw various species of nudibranch; mantis shrimps, scorpion fish, ghost pipefish, crabs and cuttlefish.
We also did night dives at dive site called Lighthouse where we saw so many seahorses! It was amazing to see them that many at night. I was wondering where did they hide during the day. We also did a mandarin dive in this dive site.
We were diving in Gato island, about 45 minutes from Malapascua. We saw plenty of reef-sharks and nurse sharks to observe and tunnels to visit. There were several dive sites surrounding the island. We visited dive sites: Whitetip Alley, Nudibranch City and Cathedral.
Overall, Malapascua diving is a combination of observing the big marine species and the tiny ones.
