Monad Shoal and Kimud Shoal

Why did the thresher sharks move from Monad Shoal to Kimud Shoal?

Monad Shoal and Kimud Shoal are two seamounts in the Visayan Sea, 8 and 15 km east of Malapascua and 7 km apart. Their tops form plateaus between 12 and 25 m, and their flanks plunge to 200 and 250 m: it's from these depths that pelagic thresher sharks rise at dawn to have their parasites removed by cleaner fish. Monad Shoal made the island's reputation: fishermen used to see the sharks jumping there, the first dive center started selling the dive in the late 1990s, and for twenty years it was the only place in the world where you could reliably see the species at recreational depths.

Between 2020 and 2022, the thresher sharks left Monad Shoal for Kimud Shoal. Tiger sharks settled on the old site, and the threshers, which have nothing to gain from rubbing shoulders with a bigger predator, moved their grooming to the neighboring plateau. Since 2022, Malapascua's dive centers have run the dawn trip to Kimud Shoal; Monad Shoal is still dived, deeper, for the tiger shark, seen about once a week.

How does the dawn thresher shark dive work, minute by minute?

Meet at the dive center between 4:30 and 5:30 a.m., depending on the tide and season. The banca takes 45 minutes to an hour to reach Kimud Shoal. You descend the mooring line to the plateau at 12 m, and the guide settles the group behind a rope stretched between concrete blocks, facing the cleaning station, between 12 and 22 m. Then you wait, motionless, neutrally buoyant. The shark comes out of the gloom, circles above the station, lets the cleaner fish approach, leaves and comes back. Encounters last from a few seconds to several minutes; a diver who moves forward or switches on a video light scares it off for everyone. Two dives follow on the same plateau, with a surface interval on board, and the boat is back on Bounty Beach for breakfast.

Who protects Monad Shoal, and how do divers pay for it?

Monad Shoal has been a municipal marine protected area since 2002, 184 hectares with a 500 m buffer zone, where all fishing is banned. In 2010, several dive centers created the Malapascua Marine Protection Fund, financed by a contribution from every diver, to pay for patrols: former fishermen trained as Bantay Dagat, the sea wardens, watch over the shoal from three small boats and a patrol boat provided by the province of Cebu in 2015. That same year, Monad Shoal and Gato Island became the Philippines' first shark and ray sanctuary, and the province banned the capture and trade of all shark and ray species in its waters. The sanctuary fees, PHP 300 a day, and the Kimud Shoal fee, PHP 100, are collected by the dive centers and passed on to the municipalities.

What else can you dive from Malapascua: Gato, Kalanggaman and the Lighthouse?

Gato Island, an hour away by banca, is a rock pierced by a 30 m tunnel that runs through the island, with dives between 5 and 24 m: whitetip reef sharks asleep in the caves, plenty of banded sea kraits, cuttlefish and nudibranchs on the walls. Kalanggaman, two hours to the east, is a white sandbar sitting on a wall that drops beyond 200 m; the island costs PHP 1,000 for the day. The Lighthouse reef, at the northwestern tip of Malapascua, is dived at dusk, between 5 and 10 m: around 6 p.m., the mandarinfish come out of the branching corals for their mating display, a show of a few minutes that you watch without white light. Night dives on the island's reefs round out the program: schools of striped catfish, hermit crabs, zebra crabs on fire urchins.