Monad Memories
These days it’s fairly tricky to travel, even to a neighboring province in the Philippines, due to all the pandemic-inspired travel regulations. I’m not suffering from dry gills, I get to dive a lot in the Dumaguete/Dauin area, my home, but I do sometimes reminisce about the brilliant diving in the locations close to me which I haven’t visited in a while.
One such spot is Monad Shoal, the home of the famous thresher sharks, which is close to the island of Malapascua, the base from where divers explore Monad. The sharks are of course amazing, but there is quite a bit more to see in Monad – let me show you!
Travel tip: Evolution Diving Resort is a great dive shop in Malapascua, I did a lot of my tech diving training there, and their recreational diving operations are also great, and environmentally responsible.
So, let’s hope for a soon-to-be end to the pandemic-inspired travel restrictions, and look at what I saw when I dived Monad Shoal:
Sharks, Gobies and Wrasses
Alopias pelagicus, the pelagic thresher shark, and three of them. Beautiful, elegant, enigmatic, fast and swift. I love sharks and I especially love these.
A flasher wrasse! One of the most gaudy, flashy of all reef fishes. The makes are the peacocks of the fish world, with their fantastic colors and their confident displays meant to mark the volume of ocean which they consider their territory. These are not easy to photograph, since they are wary of divers, but the results of patience can be worth it. The flasher wrasse live on Monad on the opposite side where the sharks are usually seen.
This fish above is a rare, possibly undescribed goby which we found during a tech dive in Monad. We described the goby biodiversity study in this manuscript:
This isn’t a peer-reviewed paper, but a mere manuscript on a pre-print server, but I’m actually very stoked about this study – a survey of one fish family (the gobies) in one location with two distinct habitat types (island versus shoal) from the surface down to 60 meters. Not many studies exist like that.
This is a nudibranch of the genus Halgerda. The precise species is unclear, at least to me, the species in all ID books which I found is only known from New Caledonia. The ocean is full of enigmas, the more, the closer you look. Generally, the walls of Monad shoal are vibrant, alive and full of interesting macro photo subjects, especially in the small crevices along the wall (where we also found this nudi).
Thresher Shark Video
And I got some footage of the famous thresher sharks, albeit not enough of it. I’m happy with this video, but I’m burning to get back to the top of Monad and get more footage of these incredibly elegant animals. There used to be a phase in my life when I traveled to Malapascua at least once a year, and while I never got tied of the thresher sharks, I got a bit used to them. It will be a true blast when I can visit this location and dive with the thresher sharks again.
