Malapascua

The whole day is built backwards from one dive before sunrise. Because these are wild sharks visiting a cleaning station rather than a fixed attraction, most people buy the dawn trip on several mornings of a stay rather than stake a week on one roll, then fill the rest of the day with two or three ordinary dives once breakfast is done. Everything runs by outrigger, loaded off the beach rather than from a dock, so expect to wade; there is no shore diving to speak of.

Monad Shoal is a submerged, flat-topped seamount whose plateau ends abruptly in deep water, with cleaning stations spaced along the rim at around 25 metres. Divers settle behind the ropes marking the viewing areas and wait, facing outward into weak early light, while threshers come up out of the dark to be worked over by cleaner wrasse. Stillness is the whole skill: silt kicked off the plateau ruins the view for everyone behind, and strobes are not allowed at the stations.

The rest of the diving belongs to a different island. Close-in sites are shallow coral and sand a few minutes out, and they carry the macro and the dusk diving. The outer sites are half-day or full-day runs across open water and are the first thing cancelled when the wind gets up. A ferry wreck, the Doña Marilyn, lost in a 1988 typhoon, lies on its side past 30 metres, beyond a standard recreational profile. Current is moderate rather than dramatic, but the boats are small and sea state decides the plan.

It suits divers willing to organise a week around one animal. Several pre-dawn starts in a row, dark and breezy crossings, and a dive that consists largely of holding still and waiting are not for everyone, and the shoal dive runs on a fixed turnaround at depth, so the time actually spent at the stations is short. The swell that calls off the dawn crossing comes with the northeast monsoon and eases by March; April and May are the calmest months, and the middle of the year dives better than its typhoon reputation suggests.