Diving Malapascua Island: Logistics, Cost & Tips
If you want to dive with sharks in the wild, Malapascua Island in the Philippines is one of the only places in the world where you can do it reliably. Thresher sharks show up at a cleaning station just off the island almost every single morning. The catch is that Malapascua is genuinely not an easy place to get to, and once you’re there, the sharks live at exactly one dive site. So you end up with this weird contradiction: a remote, sleepy island that somehow still has a crowded dive site. That being said, diving malapascua island was one of the favorite dives that we’ve done.
The sharks themselves hang out at Kimud Shoal, about 45 minutes to an hour by boat from the main island. They’re most active right at first light, before the sun gets too bright because thresher sharks have huge, light-sensitive eyes, and once the sun climbs they retreat back down into deeper water. So you’re up before dawn and on the boat by 5am just to get the chance to get a few dives in with them.
Because Kimud shoal is so far away from the island, our dive shop recommended doing 3 dives on the same boat trip out there, 2 at Kimud and then 1 at Monad Shoal. The 2 at Kimud were for the thresher sharks and then for Monad, there was a possibility to see Tiger sharks but we weren’t lucky enough to see one. At Kimud shoal, we ended up seeing 17 thresher sharks when we went in late June!
What scuba certification do you need?
We dove with our PADI Advanced Open Water certification because that’s what our research told us we’d need. In reality, we would’ve been fine with just our PADI Open Water certification. The reason: the sharks used to hang out at Monad Shoal, a much deeper site (30+ meters) that genuinely required Advanced certification. However, since 2022, they’ve relocated to Kimud Shoal, a shallower plateau around 12 meters, and that site is diveable on an Open Water certification with an instructor alongside you. Be careful what dive company you choose, because we spoke to some other folks on our boat that mentioned that a different dive shop told them that they needed their advanced certification for the dive.
That being said, having our Advanced certification wasn’t wasted. It gave us a little more freedom to swim away from the pack of divers crowding around the same patch of reef and find our own angle on the sharks. The dive site is a pinnacle with a slope down to a steep drop-off, so we were able to go further down the slope than the Open Water divers. We also had our nitrox certification and decided to dive with that but it wasn’t absolutely necessary because of the sharks being at the shallower depth.
If you’re going to be diving Malapascua island, the advanced open water certification was nice to have but not absolutely necessary.
How do you get there?
This is quite the process, so here’s how our transportation worked for diving Malapascua island:
- Fly into Cebu International Airport. There are flights from around the Philippines and other parts of Asia. We flew from Manila and it was only about a 90 minute flight
- From Cebu, it’s about a 3.5-hour drive north to the Maya seaport.
- From Maya, you cross to Malapascua by boat, you can either use the public boat, which leaves whenever it fills up with enough passengers, or a private transfer, which is what we did.
We arranged our private transfer through our dive resort, Exotic Island Dive Resort, and it ran us around $148 one-way for the van-plus-boat combo for the two of us.
What is there to do on Malapascua Island?
There’s not much to do on the island besides diving, and that’s kind of the point. Malapascua is small, and it’s built almost entirely around dive resorts and dive shops. Our resort sat right on the beach, but there wasn’t a lot of actual beach. There were a handful of chairs, then dive boats tied up along the shoreline, so swimming space was limited. We wandered around a bit and grabbed a sandwich at another beachfront spot with some seating, but beyond diving and hanging out, there isn’t a long list of activities. If you’re coming here, you’re coming to dive.
What did our dive weekend cost?
The actual cost of diving Malapascua island was reasonable compared to other dives that we’ve been on, but the expensive part is getting to the island, and then the fact that you want to stay a few days on the island because it’s so remote. We had 2 people that shared a room and the airport transfer, then there were 3 other people on our boat for our dive day. Due to the distance of Kimud shoal from the island, our dive shop would not go to the dive site without at least 4 divers, so if you’re only 2 people, plan a few days of buffer time to make sure you’re able to get a boat to the site.
| Expense | Cost (Per Person) |
| Dive Day – 3 dives included | $150 USD (with $21 for Nitrox included) |
| Private Airport Transfer | $74 (One Way) |
| Hotel | $22 per night (2 person shared room) |
| Food/Drink at Hotel | $40.50 per day (Lunch + Dinner + drinks) |
| Total (4 nights) | $548 |
What exactly are Thresher Sharks?
Here are a few facts about the sharks that I’m sure will pique your interest like it did ours! A few things make them one of the strangest, most striking sharks you’ll ever swim next to:
- That tail is basically a weapon. A thresher’s tail fin can be as long as the rest of its body, and it’s not just for show, they use it to stun prey with a whip-like motion, snapping it forward to disorient schools of fish before feeding.
- Those giant eyes are why the dive starts so early. Threshers are extremely light-sensitive thanks to their oversized eyes, and they retreat back into deeper, darker water once the sun gets too bright, which is the whole reason for the 5am wake-up call and early morning dive requirement.
- Despite the size, they’re gentle. Adults can reach around 4 meters (12 feet), but they’re curious rather than aggressive, and there’s essentially no history of aggression toward divers at Malapascua.
- They didn’t always live at Kimud Shoal. In September 2022, thresher shark sightings at the longtime dive site of Monad Shoal suddenly dropped off, and the sharks relocated to the smaller, shallower Kimud Shoal about 45 minutes from Malapascua. This is a big part of why Open Water divers can now do this dive that used to require Advanced certification.
More thresher shark information can be found here!
Would we recommend it?
Yes, definitely! Diving Malapascua island with wild thresher sharks is a genuinely once-in-a-lifetime kind of experience, and there’s nowhere else on earth that offers it with this level of reliability. Just go in with realistic expectations: it’s remote, it takes real effort to reach, the dive site gets crowded, and the island itself won’t give you much beyond diving and hanging out at your resort. For us, that trade-off was completely worth it.
Have questions about Diving Malapascua Island? Drop us a message or find us on Instagram @CheckedOutToCheckIn for more information!
Planning more wildlife experiences in Asia?
Don’t miss our guides to tiger safari in India and leopard safari in Sri Lanka, and Komodo liveaboard in Indonesia.
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