📸 — Malapascua Island, Philippines
We felt torn with where to go after Moalboal. Palawan Island is a famous hotspot for diving, but we’ve read that it’s gotten crazy busy over the last few years, so it’s not so peaceful anymore. We also considered heading to a few other islands (as there are so many to choose from!) but after a very last minute decision, we did a 9 hour transit day to Malapascua in hopes of some good diving and more chill setting.
Between Easter and the Asian Labour day holiday, there has been a crazy influx of tourism in the Philippines, so we had our fingers crossed that Malapascua would be an exception as the only reason people go to this island is to go diving. Mainly, the stars of the show here are the Thresher Sharks that can be seen every morning.
We lucked out and found what we were looking for. Even better, this island was celebrating Fiesta while we were here which allowed us to immerse ourselves which has been a lot of fun.
Our thirty days in the Philippines went by in a flash, and we will definitely be back again soon as there is so much more to see!
See more on our website www.alittledetour.ca🌏✈️👫
So this is random. We walked into one of the dive shops that had good Google reviews and as we were looking at the board… Caile walked out!! Caile was getting her dive instructor course while we were getting our open water course in Nicaragua at the beginning of our trip! And now we ran into her 50+ dives later on a random island on the other side of the world where she has lived the last 10 months!
We did a lot of diving in between, but we put all our pictures in one spot since there was lots to see under the sea!
This is the nudibranch section. It really feels like Pokemon, you are trying to find them all and there are thousands of different kinds!
End of Nudibranch section :)
They had a problem with dynamite fishing around Malapascua island. So all the dive shops got together and bought a few Mary statues to be placed at the bottom of the ocean. This is fascinating because the Philippines is a very religious country, and by having these statues blessed in Cebu, and sunk in the water has actually helped prevent fishermen from blowing up the coral. In addition… no one wants to go to hell for being the one to accidentally blew up Mary!
Thresher Sharks are what makes this island popular for scuba divers.
Thresher sharks are primarily sharks-of-the-deep and prefer the open ocean and have been known to venture 500 meters (1,600 ft) deep. But on occasion, these sharks come up to the shallows to have their skin cleaned by other fish in the area. We went down to one of the cleaning stations that is about 27 meters deep and had about 15 sightings of sharks. They dart from the deep up to the shallows and you swim around patiently waiting for them at five in the morning. It was a cool sight to see and a highlight for Olivier on the trip. He will proudly show you his video and tell you all about thresher sharks, whether you like it or not.
See more on our website www.alittledetour.ca🌏✈️👫