Malapascua 2012, Day 3

April 8, 2012

Today was an early start. We woke up at 4:15 a.m. to do the 5 a.m. trip to Monad Shoal for the thresher shark dive. We dove with 11 other people. We had a quite diverse group of divers. Some from Sweden, Switzerland, Philippines, Canada, Germany, Holland and of course us from the U.S.

We got lucky and had quite a few shark sightings. Someone who was on the dive the day prior said they came in much closer this time. Unfortunately, I don’t think I got very good video today, but I am sure we will be going back. However, Eric got some good pictures of the sharks.

After the shark dive we came back to Evolution for breakfast and then headed out again for a longer two-dive trip to Kalanggaman Island. Both dives were wall dives. We started out shallow, then went over the edge of the wall and made our way along the wall for a bit and then came back up onto the top of the wall. We saw nudibranchs, tons of clownfish, lionfish, several pigmy seahorses and all the other usual specimens.

After the first dive we did our surface interval on the island and had our lunch, then went out to do the second dive. After the second dive we headed back for Malapascua and got into a heavy-duty Philippine thunderstorm. Only Eric and I and one other person on the boat had rain jackets. We were glad we had the jackets. They kept us dry but did nothing for warmth. It was a COLD, hard rain.

We made it back to just off shore and huddled together on the boat waiting for it to let up, but there appeared to be no end in site. It was low tide and so we were waiting for the small boat to come out and pick us up, but apparently it had flooded and they could not get it started. So the captain maneuvered the large boat around all the rocks and got us up close to the shore. We all got off the boat in the pouring rain and headed for shelter.

After we took a shower and got cleaned up we came over to the Craic House (the Irish pub at Evolution) to check out our photos/video from the day and get some dinner. Eric ordered the black and white chicken chili with tortilla chips--which he said was very spicy and I ordered the wild mushroom pancetta fettucini with pesto bread which was of course awesome.