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Diving
Throughout the Philippines and even South-East Asia Malapascua is
known as a diver’s highlight. Diving season is all year round. All the
small marine kritter South East Asia is famous for, like numerous
nudibranch species, crabs including the rare harlequin shrimp, ghostpipefish,
frogfish, various seahorses and Mandarin fish are very well represented
around the island. Good divesites to look for these philippine specialities
are Lapus-Lapus, Bantigi or Chocolate island. But
Malapascua is also the place in the Philippines to look for larger
fish:
Calanggaman island, about 60 min by boat, offers
superb walls and mostly excellent visibilities. Larger pelagics
like eagle ray, tuna, mackerel or trevally are frequently seen.
Gato island, a marine sanctuary, about 45 min by
banca from Bounty beach, is a superb critter place but also breeding
ground of black banded sea snakes and home to a large population
of grey bamboo and white tip reef sharks, which can be easily observed.
More experienced divers may cross the small island in an underwater
tunnel.
Monad shoal, a sunken island, 30 min by banca,
is the place to look for large pelagigs like tuna or barracuda. There is
an excellent Manta ray cleaning station and the site is world famous for
daily sightings of Thresher sharks, which ascent
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from deep water to their cleaning stations at about
22 m early every morning. Large wrecks like Dona Marilyn
ferry, sunk in a typhoon in 1986 and now lying in a depth
of 16 – 32 m, complete the picture of Malapascua as a top diving
destination.
Several PADI dive shops are conveniently located very close to the resort:
The swiss-german Sea Explorers are our direct neighbors, just a few steps away from the bar.
They have been operating on Malapascua since many years and offer a complete range of diving services like
daily boat trips, rental equipment and Nitrox. Sea Explorers go parallel to different destinations with two
boats. PADI courses up to Divemaster level are available in english and also german language.
A bit further down the beach the british Thresher Shark Divers offer very comparable services.
Here is a collection of photographs taken by us during occasional
dives over the last years, please click to enlarge:
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