PHILIPPINES
Malapascua Island
22 A tiny moon wrasse
rises to greet an
oceanic thresher shark
at Monad Shoal
Text and images by SIMON ROGERSON
The island of Malapascua lies in the heart of the
Philippine archipelago, just across a strait from
the island of Cebu. Nearby, oceanic thresher
sharks spend the night hunting in the abyssal
trenches that lie close to the Philippines, but as
dawn approaches their minds turn to a different
behaviour. Having picked up parasitic copepods
while hunting, they have to find cleaner wrasse to
remove the stowaways. The sharks are adapted
for life in the abyss, but the cleaner fish are
diurnal, so there is a golden hour around dawn
when the ritual has to take place.
The presence of the threshers
has created a thriving
tourism-based economy
on the island
The setting is a submerged island called Monad
Shoal, a 35-minute boat ride from Malapascua.
Each morning, a small flotilla makes the journey in
expectation of getting the divers in front of one of
the ocean’s hardest-to-find sharks. And most days,
people see them. The encounters can be distant
and fleeting, or they can be close and sustained,
but the key thing is that people keep seeing the
threshers. The presence of the threshers has
created a thriving tourism-based economy on
the island.
People come to Malapascua to see the sharks,
but there’s more variety at nearby Gato Island,
a sea snake sanctuary with a mixed habitat that
ensures a vast array of marine life, including
painted frogfish and many nudibranchs. You don’t
always see the resident sea snakes, but they are
pretty much guaranteed on night dives around
Malapascua, which also yield mandarinfish and