Malapascua - Exotic Island vs. TSD vs. Evolution Diving

[yuhtnav]

The last time I was there the TSD boat spotted all the other boats at 'new' Monad and so we went to the old site and saw a ton of sharks. I don't think that was anything to do with an agreement with other DCs but the TSD boat boys using a bit of nous. Check out the TSD FB page for an awesome vid my friend too of a manta there.

... ton of sharks ... wow
I'm so jealous right now. I hope I will be the same lucky!!

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I have been three times to Malapascua in the last two years and went all three times with Evolution. They are a very professional outfit and have mostly very good divemasters. Also they usually have a small diver to DM ratio which i personally like. I rarely had more then four people in the same group.

Regarding diving i have to say Malapascua is one of my favourite places in the world and i have seen a lot including Palau, Sipadan, Tulamben, Galapagos to just mention a few. There is a huge diversity of dive possibilities. From Macro to Muck, to sharks, to corals, to Mandarin, to Cave swim through. It nearly has it all and that a bargain rates!

I suggest anybody who goes there to make the Gato Island trip. Gato is really special and offers many things like the cave swim through, beautiful corals, pygmy seahorses, cuttlefish (saw mating ones), white tip reef sharks, yellow sea horses, lots of different types of nudis and thats pretty much all gueranteed!

Monad this year was great with loads of Tresher sharks. Where else in the world you have a near guarantee to see those majestic animals?

I saw pictures of pelagic manta rays recently there as well and devil rays are also spotted quite regularly. I have seen devil rays there on my first trip, but didn't do the day dives at monad in my last two trips.

The mandarin dive can be very nice, but depends a bit on the DM. I had great experiences there, but also some pretty crappy ones on my last trip due to the DM not knowing the site.

The muck and macro diving around Malapascua itself is also great. You can see so much stuff like sea horses, frog fish, nudis, ghost pipefish, flamboyant cuttlefish and endless more.

Then there is even more options with trips to chocolate island, callangaman island, dona marilyn wreck and so on. I did chocolate island once and it was ok, but viz was bad on that day and that trip is not done so often. Callangaman island i haven't had the chance doing yet, due to it being far of and Evolution just recently i think starting to do this trip. Dona marylin i didn't do coz i'm not a big wreck fan.

Then apart from diving there is the beautiful white sandy beaches and Evolution also has a nice bar/restaurant. Small tip is though to also check out the village inside the island. Food there is extremly cheap and still very nice!

I love love love your post!
Because you've been to many awesome places, you have the big picture and you know exactly which is where in that picture and so your comments are truly valuable and worthy!!

Thanks for the other tips so much as well!!

 

[Hike]

I was in Malapascua April/May of this year, we dove with TSD and they were great. They basically let us choose where we wanted to dive in the morning, all the guides were friendly and very qualified. I dove with them as the group I went with have dove with them many times in the past. The can book you at any hotel you want, and in my opinion are on a much better location than the other ops. 5 minute walk to the best restaurant on the island, second best restaurant is Oscar's upstairs from TSD. Breakfast was good, especially the nasi goreng. From what I understand hammerheads are best seen earlier than april, as they need the cold water. We did see threshers everyday (7 days in a row) and several sharks everyday, with devil rays as a bonus. Also did the afternoon dive for mantas and saw them both times.

 

[AlMitch]

We did see threshers everyday (7 days in a row) and several sharks everyday, with devil rays as a bonus. Also did the afternoon dive for mantas and saw them both times.

Hike you are one lucky son of a gun!! Threshers everyday & mantas!! What lucky charm do you use??
Glad to hear you had a good experience with TSD. Did you get to Gato and Callanagman Islands??

 

[jbb]

I was with TSD in the second half of May. Not as much luck with the sharks but one day with the proper settings on my camera and that shark came closer than I have seen in all of my 13 trips to Malapascua. I did have the presense of mind to take my eyes off the camera to appreciate the great beauty of that silver shark swimming by though.

 

[yuhtnav]

Matt advised me to take video of the thresher sharks with my compact camera. It was great advice! With poor visibility, in the first day I couldn't take any good photos of any of them. On the last thresher shark dive, I got 5 minutes with one shark. It was so great that the shark kept coming back. That was the best 5 minutes of my entire trip! And there was a moment there were 3 sharks all in the frame (3:45). There was rainbow over us right before we entered water. It must have been a good sign.

[video=youtube;waK06hZ_Gkw]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waK06hZ_Gkw[/video]

We saw sharks in every dive. There were plenty of them!

 

[gee13]

Nice video! What time was it when you shot the video, I remember being quite dark in the mornings underwater looking for them.

So hangon I just read back on the thread - you got excited about MP last month, then you went to MP to check it out yourself?

 

[yuhtnav]

Nice video!

Thank you! ^_^

What time was it when you shot the video, I remember being quite dark in the mornings underwater looking for them.

So hangon I just read back on the thread - you got excited about MP last month, then you went to MP to check it out yourself?

The boat always left at around 4:50 to 5:00. It was about 20mins ride to the site, so about 5:20 we entered water. Took only few minutes to get to the cleansing station. That was where I shot the video.

When we entered water, the sun wasn't out, but we could see sunlights, hence the rainbow over us! It wasn't as dark as in the video actually. My camera was just bad.

Malapascua had always been my list. So it wasn't just last month I started getting excited about it. Last month was when I finalized my schedule, but I couldn't decide which of the 3 dive shops to go with, so I started the thread.

The underwater world there was amazing, so diverse, but I guess you all knew. What was so surprising to me was the sea surface and the sky there. I had never seen such beautiful sea and sky anywhere and enjoyed them that much.


link to bigger image

 

[caz777]

Just got back from Malapascua 2 weeks ago. Stayed with Exotic, where our experiences were top notch. Due to the amount of boats there were lots of choices for day trips, many dive guides (at most we were 3 divers per guide), and they were quite flexible (had originally paid a 15 dive package, which we would not get to use completely, so we changed it to 10 dives + Nitrox course + plus some other things).

The restaurant was nice, with good food. Not too impressed with the wifi signal however....

Havent tried TSD or Evolution, but from the general hype its seems all three posibilities are great places.

 

[Mucksavage]

Great video Van. Especially as your camera is rated to 10m!

 

[auddy]

Can't wait to go next month! I'll be staying @ Exotic again (thrice in 3 years)