Malapascua · Philippines · Seamount · Pelagic & blue water
Kimud Shoal
Where Malapascua's thresher sharks moved in 2022, at 12–22 m
Area photo: Petter Lindgren · CC BY-SA 3.0
Kimud Shoal is a sunken island in Leyte waters about 15 kilometres southeast of Malapascua, rising from more than 200 metres to a flattish top at 12 to 14 metres. Pelagic thresher sharks moved their cleaning here from Monad Shoal in September 2022, and this is now the dive the island is built on: shallower, brighter and longer than the pre-dawn shoal dive it replaced.
Also known as Kemod Shoal, Kimod Shoal.
Where it is and how deep
11.2830° N, 124.2541° EApproximate position — the dashed circle shows where the site lies; your operator's briefing has the mooring.
The dive
The crossing is longer than the old Monad run: 45 minutes to an hour by outrigger, southeast from Bounty Beach into Leyte waters. What you drop onto is a sunken island rising from more than 200 metres of water to a flattish top at 12 to 14 metres, with cleaning stations along it at roughly 18 to 22 metres. Divers settle back from the stations and wait, facing outward, the same discipline the shoal dive has always demanded.
The threshers come up out of the deep to be worked over by cleaner wrasse, and more than one animal in view at a time is not unusual. The difference from Monad is light and time: at 12 to 22 metres in daylight there is ambient light for the eye and the camera, no-stop time is generous, and the window runs from first light through the morning rather than closing at sunrise. The operators who run the dive daily report their best sightings in more than twenty years.
Beyond the threshers the shoal carries the traffic you would expect at the edge of a 200-metre drop: whitetip reef sharks along the reef edge, devil rays, the occasional manta, tuna, turtles and dolphins. These are still wild sharks at a cleaning station, so the rules that made Monad work carry over. Stay low, stay behind the group, and let the animals come in rather than swimming out to meet them.
Background
Until 2022 the thresher dive at Malapascua meant Monad Shoal, 8 kilometres closer to the island, and Kimud was a secondary stop. In September 2022 thresher sightings at Monad dwindled over a few weeks and then stopped altogether, and the sharks set up at Kimud instead. Operators disagree about why: Evolution Diving and Alert Diver point to tiger sharks beginning to patrol Monad, while Dive The World reports the threshers gave up the territory to hammerheads present from January to April. The move itself has held, and the early boats now run to Kimud.
Marine life and season
- Thresher sharks
- Reef sharks
- Mobula rays
- Manta rays
- Sea turtles
- Tuna
- Dolphins
| Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fair | Fair | Prime | Prime | Prime | Good | Good | Good | Good | Fair | Fair | Fair |
Season follows Malapascua: Threshers visit Kimud Shoal all year. March to May is calmest and clearest; October to January brings rough seas, green water and the most cancelled crossings.
Know before you go
- Threshers are shy: silt lifted off the plateau, or a diver pushing forward past the group, ends the encounter for everyone behind.
- The top of the shoal is small and its sides fall away past 200 metres, so keep the plateau in sight and ascend over it rather than out into blue water.
Dive videos
Threshers in Kimod Shoal Malapascua · emysy on YouTube
Questions divers ask
Are the thresher sharks at Monad Shoal or Kimud Shoal?+
Kimud, since September 2022. Sightings at Monad Shoal dwindled over a few weeks that month and then stopped, and the cleaning has happened at Kimud ever since. Monad is still dived from Malapascua, but for tiger sharks, hammerheads and mobula rays rather than threshers.
How deep is the dive at Kimud Shoal?+
The top of the shoal sits at 12 to 14 metres and the cleaning stations at roughly 18 to 22 metres, with the sides dropping away past 200 metres. That is shallower than the old Monad Shoal profile, which is why dives here run longer.
Do you still have to dive before dawn for the threshers?+
Boats still leave Bounty Beach around 4:30 to 5:30am, mostly because the crossing takes 45 to 60 minutes, and dawn remains the best window. But threshers are seen at Kimud from first light through the morning, so the narrow pre-sunrise window Monad demanded no longer applies.
Sources
- The Thresher Sharks of Malapascua — Evolution Diving Resort
- Malapascua — Alert Diver (DAN)
- Thresher Sharks at Kimud Shoal — Thresher Shark Divers
- Malapascua Dive Sites — Thresher Shark Divers
- Diving sites Philippines Malapascua — Dive The World
- OpenStreetMap: Kimud Shoal, Tabango, Leyte — OpenStreetMap
- Kimud Shoal — Scubago
In The Logbook
- Malapascua thresher sharks: Monad or Kimud?Big animals · 11 min read
- Cheapest places to scuba dive, and the catchTrip planning · 15 min read
More dive sites in Malapascua
Reef
Reef, mini wall and coral garden from 12 m down to 30 m
Reef
Blue-ringed octopus and frogfish among coral boulders
Coral garden
A gentle coral slope from 5 to 20 m inside a protected area
Pinnacle
A 20 m-wide coral pinnacle topping out at 5 m
Pinnacle
A rocky pinnacle from 14 m to 34 m, dived on tide changes
Wreck
A 1988 ferry wreck lying on her starboard side at 33 m
A 5 to 13 m coral and seagrass slope off the resort beach
A 30 m swim-through tunnel at 10 m with sharks resting inside
Similar dives elsewhere
An isolated seamount that pulls in barracuda and trevally schools
Seamount
Planet Rock
Madang & the North Coast · Papua New Guinea
Grey reef sharks on patrol and hammerheads in the deeper water
A submerged island from 12 m to 40, with current and big fish
A submerged pinnacle where the sharks hold in the current