Smaller animals
So-called House Reef is teeming with life and was one of my favorite dive sites. Despite the name, it isn't really a reef; rather, it's a sandy area with some short-bladed seagrass and the occasional small coral-encrusted rock. I regret only doing one dive at House Reef, where I saw a couple of ornate ghost pipefish, 6 or 7 different seahorses of a few different colors, 6 or 7 small frogfish of various colors, some sea moths, a couple of small flounders, the heads and necks of a number of snake eels burrowed in the sand, occasional pipefish, miscellaneous nudibranchs including an orgy of 6 mating tuberculous nudis, etc. etc. My buddy on that dive was a guy about to begin his tech training, who had been working as a DM at Dumaguete and Dauinwell-known for muck diving/macro lifeand he said that in terms of critters, House Reef was as good as or better than any dive he'd done at Dumaguete or Dauin. Another diver compared House Reef (or Malapascua more generally) favorably to Lembeh, saying there's similar marine life but Lembeh also has lots of bacteria and garbage in the water, whereas Malapascua doesn't.
Deep Slope is one of a couple of local sites with pygmy seahorses: the DM showed me some purple ones on a purple gorgonian fan, and some yellowish ones on a couple of yellowish fans. At Gato Island I saw a couple of little bamboo sharks, some squids, some cuttlefish, a couple of ornate ghost pipefish, and lots of nudibranchs including many species I'd never seen before. A dive at Lapus-Lapus offered only moderate visibility (maybe 8 or 9 meters) but I didn't mind because the marine life was good and I saw a couple of ornate ghost pipefish, a fingered dragonet, a big frogfish, a mantis shrimp, and some nudis of a few species that I hadn't seen before plus some that were familiar friends. I recall seeing a couple of cuttlefish on that dive, too. On a dusk-to-night dive at Lighthouse Reef, the DM pointed out a handful of seahorses here and there in the fading light until we approached some coral heads in the rubble where we watched some mandarinfish do their courtship dance. Finally they rose up from the rocks in mating pairs. By shining his light on them only briefly, our DM could show us their color patterns and allow cameras to focus without spooking them or disrupting their mating. Other highlights of that dive included some cuttlefish and some very small (½ - ¾ cm) bobtail squids.
Wrecks
I really like diving wrecks. Wrecks were an important reason why I chose to go to Malapascua.
I didn't dive the so-called Tapilon wreck, a Japanese maru (presumed to be the Oakita Maru) sunk in World War II. I was told that it's fairly broken up and has been salvaged for scrap metal, etc., but still has a lot of marine life on it and is a nice dive. I also didn't really dive the Lighthouse wreck, a very broken-up Japanese WWII landing craft lying in only about 5 meters (I did a skills practice dive or two near this wreck but didn't really explore the wreck or its marine life).
I did, however, dive both of the wrecks that I'd heard about and had really wanted to dive before I started my trip: the Doña Marilyn and the Mogami Maru.
I've found the World War II wrecks I've dived over the years to be especially interestingso although the Mogami Maru doesn't compare to dives like the U-352 or the U-85, nevertheless the two dives I did on this wreck were among the highlights of my trip. And the Doña Marilyn was an excellent dive, too.
It's wreck dives like these that motivated me to get into tech diving, because on reefs or in kelp forests, etc., I'm usually content to stay fairly shallow.
So-called House Reef is teeming with life and was one of my favorite dive sites. Despite the name, it isn't really a reef; rather, it's a sandy area with some short-bladed seagrass and the occasional small coral-encrusted rock. I regret only doing one dive at House Reef, where I saw a couple of ornate ghost pipefish, 6 or 7 different seahorses of a few different colors, 6 or 7 small frogfish of various colors, some sea moths, a couple of small flounders, the heads and necks of a number of snake eels burrowed in the sand, occasional pipefish, miscellaneous nudibranchs including an orgy of 6 mating tuberculous nudis, etc. etc. My buddy on that dive was a guy about to begin his tech training, who had been working as a DM at Dumaguete and Dauinwell-known for muck diving/macro lifeand he said that in terms of critters, House Reef was as good as or better than any dive he'd done at Dumaguete or Dauin. Another diver compared House Reef (or Malapascua more generally) favorably to Lembeh, saying there's similar marine life but Lembeh also has lots of bacteria and garbage in the water, whereas Malapascua doesn't.
Deep Slope is one of a couple of local sites with pygmy seahorses: the DM showed me some purple ones on a purple gorgonian fan, and some yellowish ones on a couple of yellowish fans. At Gato Island I saw a couple of little bamboo sharks, some squids, some cuttlefish, a couple of ornate ghost pipefish, and lots of nudibranchs including many species I'd never seen before. A dive at Lapus-Lapus offered only moderate visibility (maybe 8 or 9 meters) but I didn't mind because the marine life was good and I saw a couple of ornate ghost pipefish, a fingered dragonet, a big frogfish, a mantis shrimp, and some nudis of a few species that I hadn't seen before plus some that were familiar friends. I recall seeing a couple of cuttlefish on that dive, too. On a dusk-to-night dive at Lighthouse Reef, the DM pointed out a handful of seahorses here and there in the fading light until we approached some coral heads in the rubble where we watched some mandarinfish do their courtship dance. Finally they rose up from the rocks in mating pairs. By shining his light on them only briefly, our DM could show us their color patterns and allow cameras to focus without spooking them or disrupting their mating. Other highlights of that dive included some cuttlefish and some very small (½ - ¾ cm) bobtail squids.
Wrecks
I really like diving wrecks. Wrecks were an important reason why I chose to go to Malapascua.
I didn't dive the so-called Tapilon wreck, a Japanese maru (presumed to be the Oakita Maru) sunk in World War II. I was told that it's fairly broken up and has been salvaged for scrap metal, etc., but still has a lot of marine life on it and is a nice dive. I also didn't really dive the Lighthouse wreck, a very broken-up Japanese WWII landing craft lying in only about 5 meters (I did a skills practice dive or two near this wreck but didn't really explore the wreck or its marine life).
I did, however, dive both of the wrecks that I'd heard about and had really wanted to dive before I started my trip: the Doña Marilyn and the Mogami Maru.
- The Doña Marilyn. The Doña Marilyn was a passenger ferry that sank in a typhoon in 1988. Many lives were lost, and the name Doña Marilyn still evokes feelings of sadness among many Filipinos. The wreck's now lying intact on its starboard side in 32 meters of water (about 18 meters at the top of the wreck). Stretching about 100 meters from bow to stern, the Doña Marilyn is thoroughly encrusted with soft corals and other marine life and offers a good dive for both recreational and technical divers. I did it as a tech dive and spent much of the dive enjoying penetrations beyond the natural light zone, although I also enjoyed the outside of the wreck. My first penetration began just aft of the smokestack, down through what I think was the engine room skylight; there were a couple of places where I had to move my deco bottle a little bit, reposition myself and my twinset's manifold a bit, etc., in order to squeeze through narrow restrictions, but otherwise it was an easy enough penetration. A couple of other penetrations led us to various artifacts which we examined and then left behind for future divers (I think it was the aft storeroom where there were some medical supplies and other miscellany; elsewhere there were stacks of dishes, etc.). Average depth for a tech dive here is 28 meters and maximum is 32ish, so you can use EAN32 for back gas and 50 for deco gas and not incur much hang time at all after 45 minutes of bottom timeall accomplished without keeping the recreational divers waiting around for very long. After we did our deco and got back onboard, the recreational divers were discussing their dive which they seemed to have enjoyed almost as much as I enjoyed mine. So I recommend this wreck to recreational and technical divers alike.
- The Mogami Maru. The Mogami Maru (sometimes wrongly called the Pioneer, which was a ferry) lies in 52 meters of water so it's a technical dive. Originally a fishing trawler, she was converted into a submarine chaser during the war. I forget whether it's 50 meters or 60 in length from bow to stern (and fairly narrow of beam), but reportedly this wreck matches the dimensions of the Mogami Maru, which was sunk in an air raid by U.S. Navy Task Force 38 in this vicinity on September 12, 1944. Artifacts found on the wreck (a vinyl LP record of a singing geisha, gas mask canisters, etc.) show it to be a WWII Japanese wreckand it certainly isn't the Pioneer ferryso it's presumbly the Mogami Maru. The superstructure is basically gone and the first deck level has collapsed onto the lower one, but otherwise it's largely intact. The engine room and cargo hold can be entered, but are more like swim-throughs than true penetrations (you certainly don't need to lay a guideline). The gun mounts are bare, so either she didn't have any guns when she was sunk, or more likely the guns were salvaged. The propeller is still attached but the rudder and other parts of the stern are missing, evidently blown off by U.S. Navy bombs. On the bow end of the wreck you can see the anchors and windlasses. There are a handful of small artifacts on the wreck, which we left for future divers to examine. With air for back gas and EAN50 and O2 for deco gases, bottom times of 30 minutes gave us total run times of between 70 and 80 minutes following V-Planner on a +2 conservatism setting.
I've found the World War II wrecks I've dived over the years to be especially interestingso although the Mogami Maru doesn't compare to dives like the U-352 or the U-85, nevertheless the two dives I did on this wreck were among the highlights of my trip. And the Doña Marilyn was an excellent dive, too.
It's wreck dives like these that motivated me to get into tech diving, because on reefs or in kelp forests, etc., I'm usually content to stay fairly shallow.
