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Malapascua Island: Thresher shark capital of the world
by MONTY HALL
"Great Ocean Adventure" TV series

For every moment of these trips spent arguing with a bovine check-in clerk at an airport, or sitting on a loo in a fly-blown hotel as the latest local delicacy thunders exuberantly out of your system, there is an ultimate reward.

As a firm believer in karma, and having braved the three-hour trip up the coast of Cebu in the Philippines with a driver who must have held equally strong views about reincarnation, it seemed apt that the island looming on the horizon was classically beautiful.

Unusually for one of our filming projects, we would be spending our entire Philippines trip on the tiny island of Malapascua, measuring about 2km by 1km. Our huts on the beach were perhaps the ultimate in romantic hideaways, the perfect place then for me to share with a big hairy cameraman.

We had been assured that our dive operator was just 10 minutes' walk away. This ignored the warren of tracks and paths through the tiny fishing villages that dotted the island. My first trip, begun in the glow of a tropical dusk and ending in pitch darkness an hour later, was made possible only by two tiny children.

Finding me crashing, sweating and swearing among pigs and chickens in the darkness behind their hut, they took a hand each and led me to the dive operation before skipping off to find more tourists. I got the impression that this was a well-worn routine.
The reason Malapascua should loom large in any itinerary lurks off the steep sides of Monad Shoal, an undersea mountain several kilometres off the coast. This is the thresher-shark capital of the world. The steep sides of the shoal plunge into dark waters that are the home of this mysterious shark, yet every morning they spiral up out to visit the cleaning stations at the lip of the drop-off.

Morning in Malapascua really does mean morning. The inhuman hour of 4am saw me pawing at my alarm clock before shuffling towards the dive boat, the distant horizon touched by the gentle glow of the day to come. In my semi-conscious state, it seemed only moments until I was rolling into the dark water, the edge of the shoal an enigmatic outline beneath me.

We drifted down to the edge of the drop-off, and settled beside what was plainly an ancient cleaning station. I looked down to find a spot where I could lie for the entire dive without damaging any coral. Settling like some gigantic cuttlefish in a puff of silt and sand, I glanced up and there, about 5m ahead, was a thresher.
I stared dumbstruck for a moment as it swept past, that magnificent tail undulating gently, the huge eye regarding me with what seemed to be genuine curiosity. It was an encounter I had believed would never take place.

I turned and babbled at the camera. The shark dutifully circled us for several minutes, despite my rapidly increasing enthusiasm and volume, even pausing for a swift polish and brush-up at the cleaning station before finally drifting back into the deep water at the edge of the drop-off. The finale of our programme happened in the first moment of the first dive of the first morning.

We trudged wearily through thick white sand to breakfast. As coffee was poured and toast demolished, I glanced at my watch. It was 8am, and our target animal was already framed, filmed and filed. Some day, all wildlife filming will be like this.