Where to see Thresher Shark Cleaning in 2026

Best months

Difficulty & experience

Best locations

• Malapascua

  Philippines

  primary

  Monad Shoal is one of the only reliable daily thresher shark sites in the world.

Sites at these locations

• Monad Shoal

  Malapascua, Philippines

  A submerged seamount about 8 km east of Malapascua that rises from 200 m to a flat coral plateau topping out around 16 m, and the only site in the world where pelagic thresher sharks (Alopias pelagicus) reliably appear at cleaning stations almost every dawn. Divers descend before sunrise to roughly 22–28 m and wait behind a designated rope line at the plateau edge while the threshers — with their elongated upper tail lobes nearly as long as their bodies — circle in to be cleaned by moon wrasses and cleaner shrimp. Devil rays and reef mantas also pass through; pygmy seahorses cling to gorgonians on the slope. Currents can run hard along the drop-off into deep water on three sides.

• Gato Island

  Malapascua, Philippines

  A small rock islet about 16 km northeast of Malapascua in the Visayan Sea, designated a sea snake and fish sanctuary in 1997. Its signature feature is a roughly 30 m tunnel that cuts through the southern flank of the island between about 6 and 15 m, where divers swim past whitetip reef sharks resting on the sand floor and exit onto a coral wall on the far side. Outside the cave, the walls drop to 25–30 m with abundant macro life: painted and giant frogfish, mandarinfish at dusk in the shallow rubble, pygmy seahorses on red gorgonians, blue-ringed octopus, and yellow-lipped sea kraits (Laticauda colubrina) hunting over the reef and ascending to the surface to breathe.

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