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Malapascua Island: The Home of Thresher Sharks

Diving in Malapascua

Looking for some thresher shark diving experience? Visit the Malapascua Island in the Philippines. Malapascua Island is the only place in the whole world where you can have magnificent daily sightings of thresher sharks in action. Malapascua Island is an island of Cebu in the Visayan Sea in the Philippines. Due to the decreasing number of thresher shark species in the world, a marine park was made for these magnificent sea creatures to protect and rehabilitate them.

This marine park is called Monad Shoal. Monad Shoal is a sunken island near Malapascua Island that has a land area of 18-24 meters on top and the sides dropped off to about 230 meters. The Monad Shoal becomes the cleaning station of thresher sharks early in the morning every day. The cleaning services to the thresher sharks are courtesy of small fishes called cleaning wrasse. These wrasses would clean up the thresher sharks’ body, gills, and mouth from bacteria and dead skin. Because of this symbiotic relationship between thresher sharks and wrasses, eating wrasses would never come to the mind of any thresher shark.

The thresher sharks at Malapascua Island live and hunt almost the whole day in the deep waters of the island. The best time to dive for thresher sharks in Malapascua Island is between the time of sunrise and nine in the morning. There are dive resorts in Malapascua Island that offer dive tours for anyone interested in thresher sharks.

The thresher sharks in Malapascua Island are not threats to human life. When divers or any other elements startle the thresher sharks, they just swim over to the side of the Monad Shoal. If there were no sudden movements from divers, the thresher sharks would come up so close to the point that you could almost touch them.

The cleaning wrasses of Monad Shoal at Malapascua Island do not attract thresher sharks alone but other pelagics as well. Devil rays and manta rays are seen often in the area. Other shark species aside from thresher sharks are occasionally seen such as whitetips and hammerheads especially in the months of January to March when hammerheads are abundant in the waters of Malapascua Island.

Other sea creatures also make their home at the Monad Shoal at Malapascua Island like barracuda, batfish, tuna, flutemouths, mantis shrimps, lionfish, pipefish, moorish idols, scorpionfish, squid, bannerfish, octopus, unicornfish, and moray eels.

Diving in Malapascua Island is a great place to find an undersea adventure. You are bound to see the magnificent thresher sharks up close.

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