Big animals
Sometimes hammerheads are seen at some Malapascua dive sites, but I didn't see any.
- Thresher sharks. Malapascua is famous for the pelagic thresher sharks which visit Monad Shoal, a seamount cleaning station where little wrasse service the big fish. Few if any other places around the world offer such good chances of seeing these rarely-encountered sharks. Not being a morning person, I only woke up early once for that famous thresher shark dive at Monad Shoal. The boat left at 5 a.m., when it was still dark out. By the time we arrived at the dive site, the sun was coming up and the threshers were circling around the top of the seamount, having their parasites removed by blue-streak cleaner wrasse. I saw 3 or 4 of them swim past and circle around a few times; other mornings, some divers see more sharks for longer times, and sometimes divers don't see any. There's about a 90% chance of seeing the threshers on the early morning dive, from what I heard. I also saw single thresher sharks later in the day on each of my trimix dives. They cruised past while I was ascending to about 50 or 60 meters on the wall of Monad Shoal.
- Whitetip reef sharks. There are whitetip reef sharks at Gato Island (a protected marine reserve), which is about an hour by boat from Malapascua. On both of the days I went to Gato Island I saw a few fat pregnant whitetip sharks, and on one dive I also saw a small newborn whitetip shark finding refuge inside a small cave. On two of those dives, we encountered the sharks after swimming through a shallow 25-meter-long tunnel from one side of the little island to the other; the sharks were lying in the sand or swimming around at the mouth of the cave where we exited, and before exiting we watched them up close for 6 or 8 minutes or so before moving on. They weren't afraid of divers and they approached us more closely than other, more skittish whitetips I've seen in the past (these came within less than a couple meters of us). On another dive I saw 3 of them out on the reef away from the cave, one swimming around and two resting in a sandy patch.
- Big rays. I saw a devil ray on one of my deep trimix dives at Monad Shoal; it circled around for a while before wandering off. A few days later, some CCR divers told me that they had seen eagle rays on a deep wall dive at Monad Shoal. Locals asked me on a few occasions whether I'd seen any mantas that day (I hadn't), because it's not uncommon for recreational divers to see big rays on those early morning dives at Monad Shoal; later in the day, though, they're usually down deep at tech diving depths, from what I was told.
Sometimes hammerheads are seen at some Malapascua dive sites, but I didn't see any.
