Archive for April, 2009

Dive for Earth Day 2009

Wednesday, April 29th, 2009

Another successful cleanup day for Dive for Earth day with a two part effort.

In the morning we cleaned up the beach collecting many sacks of rubbish. TSD staff and customers along with enthusiastic local children got well stuck in.

Underwater Cleanup

In the afternoon TSD offered free cleanup dives for all volunteers. We sent out 2 boats to different sites to collect rubbish. As the boats pulled out we were hit with a torrential downpour, but it cleared up quickly. As is usual, we luckily were NOT able to collect huge amount of rubbish as our dive sites were pretty darn clean! That is always good news.

The worst place was Cemetery where we do confined water. It seems an extraordinary amount of old plastic pipes had been swept into the sea in the recent storm and so we managed to collect all of those. Also after the storm there was a lot of surface debris so Gareth & Co went out in Big Jim and did their best to bring that in.

Participants from our Underwater Cleanup

Participants from our Underwater Cleanup

Afterwards we gave out certificates and I mixed my usual lethal ‘Clean-Up Punch”. Many thanks to all our volunteers – customers, staff and locals alike.

Certificates and cocktails all around!


Whale Shark !!!

Tuesday, April 14th, 2009

We have had reports recently of whale sharks congregating in an area a couple of hours from Malapascua and are in the process of investigating it more fully. Occasionally we see whale sharks from the surface including one recently at Lighthouse only 300 meters from shore and in 10 meters of water. But they are rarely seen on dives. But that may all be changing.…

Who would have ever believed it? In my six years on Malapascua, even I could never have imagined – WHALE SHARK on this morning’s dive at Monad Shoal!!!

Juvenile whale shark under our boat Amy

Juvenile whale shark under our boat Amy

Our delightful group from Thailand arrived 3 days ago and requested thresher sharks, hammerheads, frogfish, harlequin shrimps and pygmy seahorses. Well, we gave them all of those, and their next request was for a whale shark. We smiled indulgently and said we would try our best but apologized that they probably would not see one. But boy, were we wrong, and did they ever get their wish!

On Monad Shoal as they were watching a thresher shark circle, a whale shark came up over the side and made straight for them! All 25 of the Thai divers saw the four meter baby whale shark as it swam past, then upwards and right under our boat.

Whale Shark

Whale Shark

The table was buzzing at breakfast this morning as everyone talked about the dive – a whale shark and a thresher shark at the same time – no one knew where to look!

Does it get any better than this?

Hammerheads!

Monday, April 13th, 2009

April last year was the best month of the hammerhead season, and April 2009 is certainly living up to that. We have had incredible hammerhead sightings over the last couple of weeks. Throughout the 2009 hammerhead season, which starts in December, hammers have been coming right up to us on dives, often in ones and twos, sometimes more.

But that has got a lot better during the last two weeks: a school of ONE HUNDRED HAMMERHEADS has been seen several times. On this morning’s dive, five sharks came up to Mike’s groups to check them out, and then all of a sudden there were hammerheads coming at them from every direction, everywhere they looked there were hammerheads. Every one of our divers saw this incredible sight. Needless to say, there were big smiles everywhere in the dive shop this morning.

See our facebook page for video!