We are sitting in the restaurant/bar of our hotel, Kokay’s Maldito Dive Resort. Lunch is spring rolls and Coke on ice. It is already 3:00 as we did three dives today. We traveled to Monad Shoal and then Kinod Shoal.
The dive at Monad Shoal is to search for tiger sharks. There have been sightings this week, so we are hopeful. The shoal is about the same size, on top, as Malapascua Island. When I hear this, I think to myself that it is going to be luck that we see one. We dive for an hour and no sightings. Just as we are getting in the boat, the dive master signals that there is one below us. We just stick our faces back in the water, and see the shark swimming away. It is so large it looks like a whale shark. BJ, our dive master thinks it was about 4 m long! Not a stellar sighting, but it still is one.
The next two dives are at Kinod Shoal, looking for Thresher Sharks. We jump into the water, descend and swim to the edge of the shoal and almost immediately we see one, then two. For the hour each of two dives, we almost constantly see these marvellous sharks with their big eyes and long tails. Murray shoots video after video and I shoot photo after photo, hoping to get one great video and shot. As we make our way back to the boat, our group of five is alone in the water and one final shark, swimming around and around getting cleaned, comes to say goodbye.