PORT OF PLENTY

Text by Roni Ben-Aharon

Images by various contributors

Wrecks, muck, wild topography – with something for everyone, Puerto Galera has it all

This world-famous shark destination offers the intrepid diver a rich variety of underwater delights

UTTER THE WORD “MALAPASCUA”

to anyone in the dive community and you will see their eyes widen with excitement and hear the words “thresher sharks” fall from their mouths. In the underwater world, there is probably nowhere else that is both so small and has attained such a singular reputation. It is indeed the best place to see the elusive thresher shark and a pilgrimage to Malapascua sits high on most divers’ bucket list.

I too have repeatedly been drawn back to this island paradise in search of threshers, but Malapascua is about so much more than sharks…

THRESHERS AT DAWN

The quest to see a thresher doesn’t come without a little pain. These sharks spend most of their time in deep pelagic waters, below the reaches of recreational diving, and their forays into the shallower waters are hard to predict. In the 1990s, divers first took the plunge at Monad Shoal, a seamount in middle of the ocean and a thresher shark cleaning station.