Wednesday 16 February Thresher sharks

I confess. We came to Malapascua and didn't do the shark dive. We suffer from asking too many questions and having dived too much. Asking at the dive shops and talking to the punters we discovered all was not as publicised. The threshers visit a 30m deep shoal 5 miles to the south of Malapascua for personal hygiene. It's a cleaning station. If the sharks don't come there's not a lot to see on top of the shoal (except one to two hundred divers. Because of the depth (top of shoal is 18m) bottom time is limited and right now visibility is down to 10m. Apparently two sharks were seen yesterday.

We've dived too much. David and I have both been very fortunate to have seen threshers before in the Red Sea.

Perhaps if we'd been able to stay a few more days the visibility would have improved and we would have joined the pre dawn rush out to Monad shoal (the sharks are only there at sunrise). However, there was a shift in the wind last night which the anchorage very roly. Neither of us had a comfortable night. I decamped to the pilot berth and wedged myself in behind the lee board. David spread eagled in our bed.

And that is how we left Malapascua without doing the famous thresher shark dive. Yes, we were disappointed but when you live on a boat the boat has to priority.

I did do a shallow dive where we were anchored, on mostly dead coral, and saw plenty of anemones and clown fish plus eight pipe fish (straightened out sea horses) and visibility then was less than 10m.