A few shots from Malapascua Island, Philippines

Spent a long weekend on Malapascua Island, Philippines (off the northern tip of Cebu). The thresher sharks were there each early morning and wee also got a pair of devil rays and large manta to boot. In fact we had a scene where a thresher and a manta were colliding as they came onto the cleaning station at the same time (of course, I didn't get a good picture of it... )

We had a minor storm come through the area so our dusk dive got delayed and we missed the mating mandarin fish (1 of my favorite places for viewing mandarins).

The morning thresher sharks dives are done around 5:30-7:00am, so the weak morning light, low visibility, and timid subjects always makes for tough shots. And no strobes are allowed for fear of scaring them off. Here are couple b&w conversions to salvage them. Shot around 1000 ISO I believe.

The mobula rays were more cooperative and gave us a couple of close flyby's..

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(con't)

Malapascua and the surrounding islands are also a great location for macro where you'll find mandarin fish, frogfish, pygmy seahorses, pipefish, harlequin shrimp, and many other colorful critters.

Male Banded Pipefish carrying eggs

Mating cuttlefish (struggling to fit them in with a 100mm lens)

Rush hour at Monad Shoal as divers ascend from the thresher shark dives. That's my fiancee refusing to budge a cm from 5m during the safety stop !

Looks like you had a blast. That's a lot of great shots for a long weekend. I bet the Thresher dives were fun, I'm jealous.

Steve

Hey, any shots of threshers are hard to beat!!

Well Done!!!

I once had a thresher come really close to us at Lembongan, Bali. Total, total surprise and yes we were all too "in awe" to even get a good picture of it. Funny thing is it wasn't afraid of us at all - but still it didn't stick around either, just checked us out closely and swam off. How big were your threshers here? The one I saw was 6 feet plus 6 feet of tail. Just awesome!!!!!

So you did better with photos than I.....!

Like your other creatures too.

Thanks for sharing, Carol B)

good stuff mr pak..

no strobes allowed? when did that rule come into being?!

Speaking from my own (frustrating) experience at Malapascua, those are outstanding shots of the Thresher. BTW, which lens did you use? As for the strobes, that seems to be a very tentative rule. I've been there three times, and there's never been any enforcement. That said, I've never been close enough for a strobe to even matter. -David

dsbierman, I was using a Sigma 18-50 f/2.8 on a Canon 40D.

As for the no strobe, both shops I have used on the island (Exotic and TSD) have enforced that although as you say, I have only had them come close enough once for strobes (if I had them) to be effective.

If you ever watch the TV docu episode of Great Ocean ADventures with Monty Hall (The Brit, not the "Let's Make a Deal" US host ), one of the local Filipino pro u/w photographer who goes down with Monty is clearly seen blasting his strobes at the threshers and I'm guessing they probably used lights for the video...

Hi.

Good shots !! They were not allowing me use strobe when I was there about 5 years ago. I used dive shop name by 'Bubble-0-7'.

I suffered same storm at Southern end of Cebu Isld lasweek.

Sam

At Exotic, it all depends if you are a friend of the owner or not. When I was there a few years ago, we were told to strictly not move once the threshers came (strobes were allowed). There was one point during the frenzied shooting that my buddy turned towards a thresher to get a better shot, the Swiss DM gave him holy heck when we got back on the boat, on how we weren't supposed to chase the sharks...I didn't realize turning one's body constituted chasing. However, on the same dive, a fellow who was a buddy of the owner was shooting video and was actively swimming at animals, did he get a post dive tongue lashing...heck no!

Stu

Great shots; how deep were you for the thresher shots?

The macro are beautiful, I especially like the cuttlefish shot.

thanks loftus. Monad Shoal is around 22-24m, literally a flat submerged island.

Stu, not allowed to turn your body? lol... that's a bit extreme... I would love to have been able to use the strobes on my first trip as one thresher did come in close, but I would hate to be the guy that 'scared off the thresher" and deal with that ride back to Malapascua with angry group of divers ...

Monty's cohort was Scott 'Gutsy' Tuason, a mad pinoy (sorry gutsy but you know it's true ). As you all have figured out, the rules have various levels of enforcement. When I went to Malapascua the first time, there were no rules. But with 50 divers and strobes going off, the threshers will move off and some rules are a good thing. Personally I'd enforce rebreathers only and get a rebreather manufacturer to set up show there. I have to say the food at Malapascua was better than most of the other dive destinations in PI.

Awesome shots pak...Threshers are always a pleasure to see, The composition and clarity on the macro shots is super.

Cheers,

Diggy

cool. Amazing shot of thresher shark!!! thanks for sharing!!