cim72lando

The Bahura Resort has very spacious grounds and 2 pools, one quite large and very nice accomodations. The house reef has a wide variety of critters. You can always visit other resorts' house reef as they are not off limit to non-guests.

The dive site by the lighthouse in Malapascua, Cebu, Philippines never failed me in 3 dives. Plus, the bonus of seahorses, cuttlefish, pipefish, etc. after the mandarin fish stops mating.

"From the above linked thread, it seems the first destination banning strobes is Malapascua, Philippines. They have banned the use of artificial lighting on Monad Shoals for the thresher sharks. Since Malapascua is probably the most famous destination to view thresher sharks, it's a very important piece of information for shooters to know before going there." I agree that strobes would be of little or no use use for shots of the thresher shark in Monad Shoals. My own gut feeling is that banning the use of strobes actually increased the number of times this skittish shark comes up from the deep to use the cleaning stations on the top of this sea mount and consequntly resulted in more sightings by divers. Talking to divers during my trip in 2005 when strobes were allowed and in 2007 when they were not, this unscientific survey revealed about 3 to 1 sightings in favor of 2007. My own experience was seeing 2 treshers in one dive in 2007 and none in 2005. Also, what other critters you can see in Monad Shoal requiring strobes for proper picture taking, you will see them in other dive sites in Malapascua.