Diving in Malapascua

Kimud Shoal. Most of the threshers stopped cleaning at Monad in 2022 and moved 7 km to Kimud, which is shallower and about an hour out by boat. They still turn up at Monad occasionally, so it is not a complete abandonment, but Kimud is where the dive happens now. Many operator pages and guidebooks have not been updated and still name Monad as the thresher site, which is worth checking before you book.

No, and the shorthand has now outlived the rule that produced it. Kimud Shoal has had its own municipal ordinance since February 2026, and that ordinance names Open Water as the entry certification. What it asks of every Open Water diver, at any logged-dive count, is a buoyancy control workshop before the dive. Fifty dives is a second threshold stacked on top: below it, an Open Water diver is also supervised, at a maximum of four per instructor or two to three per divemaster. Carry the card and the logbook, because the dive team checks both. Discover Scuba, try dives, Open Water course training dives, snorkelling and freediving are prohibited outright.

Yes, and the law says so rather than just the shops. Open Water is the entry certification for Kimud Shoal, with the buoyancy workshop first and supervision below 50 dives. Operators sell the dive to Open Water divers and one prices a package that puts an instructor alongside. The usual shape is a preparation dive at Monad Shoal, which is deeper, then Kimud, where the sharks are cleaned at 12 to 15 metres. Depth is not the limiting factor. Buoyancy is: Kimud is covered in coral where Monad is sand, and hovering still without touching anything is the whole skill the dive asks for.

Low on any given morning. Reports from late 2025 through 2026 settle at around one animal seen per week at the shoal, shared out across every boat on the mooring, and the rate swings with whether a particular tiger is in residence that month. The 10 to 20 percent figure on one operator's page has nothing independent behind it. Monad is still worth the dive as the historic shoal and as the depth and buoyancy dive before Kimud. Treat the tiger as a bonus, and ask your guide to work the drop-off rather than sit on sand.

No. A chamber for Malapascua was contracted in late 2024 and was not operational as of February 2025, when the whole country had three working chambers. The nearest is at the TIEZA field office in Mandaue City, a four person unit that has run since 2014, which sits at the far end of a three to four hour road transfer plus the boat crossing. Ask a centre how much emergency oxygen it carries on day trips, and carry dive insurance.

The island is, the tunnel is not. Gato came back about a month after the magnitude 6.9 Bogo Bay Fault quake of 30 September 2025, and the walls, the cavern and the whitetips have been dived normally ever since. The traverse that runs right under the island did not come back. Divers were still being told it was banned in June 2026, and nobody has put a reopening date in writing: not the shops, not the municipality, not any survey. The island was surveyed for structural damage around 24 November 2025 and the results were never made public. Much of the confusion comes from the word swim-through, of which Gato has several, so a diver passing one of those is not passing the tunnel. Nothing was published about the shoals, the local reefs or the wrecks either, so descriptions written before October 2025 should be read with that in mind.

Allow four to six hours door to door. From Mactan-Cebu it is three to four hours by road over about 130 km to Maya Port, by private transfer, taxi, bus or van, then a 30 to 40 minute boat crossing. A Government Environmental Fee of 140 pesos per person and a boat manifest are handled at the check-in office. The coastguard stops crossings in the late afternoon, so arriving at Maya after about 17:00 usually means a night on the mainland or a private boat.

Not on the public boat. The first crossing is around 07:00 and the shark boats leave between 04:30 and 06:00. Divers who have made it work were collected at Maya Port by a dive boat and taken straight onto the trip with their luggage aboard, arranged with the centre in advance and paid for separately.

The island dives year round and so do the sharks, so the season affects clarity and comfort rather than whether the headline dive happens. The Visayan Sea has a dry season from November to April and a rainy one from May to October. Visibility is usually best from January to April. Water sits at 26 to 29°C for most of the year and drops to 24 to 26°C in January and February. Tropical cyclone signals stop the crossing outright, which is a trip risk rather than a diving one.

They are different products on the same island, three to four hours apart by road. Malapascua is a pelagic destination with a pre-dawn clock and a macro roster around it. Moalboal is a resident sardine baitball you walk into from the beach, with turtles and a wall, on a normal schedule. Choose Malapascua if the thresher dive is the point of the trip, Moalboal if you want easy diving and a lie-in. Divers who combine hubs more often pair Malapascua with Bohol or Southern Leyte than with Moalboal, because the road transfer within Cebu is the real cost.