Malapascua Diving

We’ve been waiting for this moment for months, but finally it is here, our new restaurant is now open!!!

“Oscar’s” brings a new type of dining to Malapascua. We serve an eclectic mix of exciting international dishes made from the freshest ingredients, with an ever-changing menu based on the best produce available that day.

Executive chef, Gareth Brown, oversees all kitchen activities.  We are also happy to welcome Charlie, an experienced chef and Marciel, our sous-chef. Together with the line cooks they make a dynamic team.

One of our aims is to bring a new type of dining experience to Malapascua: Good food served within 15 minutes, with top quality service and something for everyone.

After a great day’s diving, what better way to finish off your day than with an incredible meal? And it’s an excellent place to share your day’s photos, complete log books and browse our extensive library of fish books.

Strictly speaking this is not really a new dive site. We have known about it since we first arrived on Malapascua Island, but have never dived it before. The PIONEER WRECK is a WWII wreck very close to Malapascua Island. At 54 meters it is beyond the safe limits of recreational and air diving. As far as we know, no-one else dives there.

But today after weeks of problems with suppliers, we FINALLY managed to fill our twin sets with helium to do our first ever TRIMIX dive at TSD!!!

As we (Andrea and Trevor) made our way out to the dive site, the excitement was building. We have been wanting to dive this wreck for 5 years and it has turned into something of a mythological dive site for us, the stuff of legends, our Atlantis.

We kitted up on the boat, tested our air and checked it was indeed trimix by squeaking to each other in our high-pitched helium-laced voices.

As we made our descent, the dark leapt up to meet us, and I wished I had brought my faithful Kowalski. Down and down we went, 10 meters, 20 meters, 30 meters, 40 meters. When was the dark going to end? Would the bottom ever appear? Did we even have the right place? Was this dark mass of nothing really worth the months of effort that had gone into making this dive possible?

Then at about 42 meters I spotted a white patch below me. All of a sudden the visibility cleared and a whole coral encrusted wreck magically appeared before me!

“Woo-hoo!” I squeaked to Trevor as he beamed back at me.

We had found it!

What a sight. The boat was teeming with fish. Massive schools of small fish darted everywhere over the boat. A school of jacks swam by. Huge barramundi and sweetlips hung over the side, I’ve never seen any so big. And to top it off, three eagle rays glided over the deck without a care in the world.

The wreck was intact, covered with 60 years of coral growth. Incredibly, the massive propeller is still there, although one blade is missing. Further exploration will come soon.

Despite the trimix, our bottom time was up too quickly, and we started to make our ascent.

What an exciting day – two firsts, trimix and the Pioneer.

We will be going back again soon!

We have another new dive site, the second in as many weeks. This site is called Deep Rock and it is only a 5 minute boat ride away. It is a sunken coral mound, covered in soft corals with a sandy slope on one side. Depth is 12m-25m so it is perfect for all levels of divers. So far we have found Frogfish, several Pygmy Seahorse fans both yellow and pink, loads of Banded Boxer Shrimp and Malapascua’s usual great macro. My personal favorite was the tiny Juvenile Shaded Batfish like the one pictured here. It was very well camouflaged among the corals. At only one inch long it was the smallest I’ve ever seen and unbelievably cute as it did its wiggling “I’m a poisonous flatworm so don’t eat me” dance.

Yesterday, we did a fabulous dive at our other new dive site, Secret Point. On our safety stop, a completely unexpected school of literally thousands of tuna came to check us out. They circled around us for a while then bombed past us at top speed. What an incredible sight! Also spotted on yesterday’s dive, a school of oriental sweetlips and mating surgeonfish.

We have found an amazing new dive site in Malapascua. It is teeming with fish including a school of 50 batfish who seem to be permanent residents.

The batfish will sometimes follow you around like puppy dogs or sometimes shoot off, their sides glistening in unison in the sun. Whichever it is, it will take your breath away!!! The sight is simply spectacular.

Until someone thinks of a better name for this site, we’ll be calling it Secret Point. We hope to have some photos soon!

The EFRI (Emergency First Response Instructor Course) is now available at Thresher Shark Divers.

Mike and Andrea completed their EFR Instructor Trainer Certifications this weekend with Thomas Kendrick, a top trainer from PADI headquarters. We will be adding this course to the ever increasing list of courses available at TSD.

From next year EFRI will be a prerequisite for the IDC, so for anyone wishing to become an instructor it is a must. But you do not have to be a PADI Dive Instructor to complete this course. Anyone can do the Emergency First Response or Emergency First Response Instructor Course, even a non-diver. It is also a great skill for Divemasters to have to make them more marketable. Contact us for more info.

International Cleanup Day this year was a great success as always.

We split up into two groups for the day.  Our non-divers, staff members and other volunteers started in the morning with a beach cleanup. We included empty pieces of wasteland near to the beach that are often used as impromptu trash cans. We also cleared away debris that was still left from Typhoon Frank in June.

In the afternoon, divers went on a free dive courtesy of TSD to collect any underwater rubbish. Everyone was keen to get stuck in and do their part. The prize for most enthusiastic goes to Tata - before most people had even got into their wetsuits, he was already tugging half a tree back to the boat.

We found the usual assortment of nappies, clothing, crisp packets and plastics at Bantigi Cove, though as usual we were pleasantly surprised at how little trash we managed to find.

The marine life watched curiously. Moray eels were coming out of their hidey holes for a closer look and lionfish hung around in expectation. It seemed for once that they were the audience instead of us.

International Cleanup Day 2008

We finally finished as it was getting dark. As everyone was gathered ready for the photograph, Andrea presented a beaming Jun-Jun, Senen and Erwin with their newly arrived PADI Open Water Diver Certification cards. Our compressor man, boat captain and boat man respectively finished their OW courses with Andrea in July.  Erwin is already quickly on the way to becoming our next Divemaster while Jun and Senen are currently working on AOW. Congratulations to all three of them.

Andrea scooted upstairs to make her lethal fruit punch, as is traditional, free to all contributors in thanks for their hard work today. Mike, who organized today’s cleanup, celebrated his XX-th birthday today, so the night turned into quite a party at the Pub Upstairs.

Tata recently went wild with his hair clippers and the next day most of staff sported severe number ones. Edgar and Ondo of them even went so far as to show us how much they love their jobs…

As divers, especially divers who see sharks every day, we care dearly about the declining worldwide population of sharks. Shark finning is the prime contributor to the slaughter of over 100 million sharks each year.

At TSD we violently oppose shark finning, though not literally. In the UK earlier this month, an artist violently opposed shark finning, this time literally.

Ouch!

We heard about this event from Neil Hambleton, one of our regular customers, on his diving blog. Full report in the Daily Telegraph.

Lembeh Straits is considered by many to be the Muck-Diving Capital of the world. But many of our customers have said that the muck diving in Malapascua is equal to Lembeh, if not better. We got more support for that today:

What a beauty!

Today we saw that prized of all creatures, the MIMIC OCTOPUS!

Whachoo looking at?

Sightings of the mimic octopus have been becoming increasingly common at TSD, thanks in part to Tata and Botchoy, who have become quite adept at spotting these elusive creatures.

Mimic Octopus mimicking the sand

All shots were taken by Rohan Suppiah using a Nikon D200 with Nikkor 105mm lens.

Work on our new restaurant is moving very quickly and we are licking our lips in anticipation. Gareth, our “Executive Chef’ has already started experimenting and we are lining up to be his test subjects.

Yesterday we had our first official BRITISH SUNDAY ROAST DINNER. Staff and customers joined together to indulge in this much missed Brit tradition.

Everyone agreed that the feast of roast chicken with all the trimmings was delicious and all plates were licked clean. Dessert and liquors rounded off a great evening.

We expect the restaurant to be fully open by November this year. Until then we are looking forward to many such pleasant surprises from ‘Gareth’s Makeshift Kitchen’ as well as Sunday Roasts every week.

After dinner smiles all round

Present on this historic occasion were (clockwise round the table): Mike, Simon, Karen, Julian, Dave, Toby, Lisette, Marlene, MJ, Ken, Diana, Andrea and Gareth

Next up, chicken tikka masala. Could it be the first of its kind in the Philippines????