It is almost the first thing you see after you leave Maya Harbour, before you even reach Malapascua, a ‘bump in the sea’ called Chocolate Island. It may not seem like much above water, just another rock covered with trees, but underneath the surface it’s a completely different world!
With a mix of walls, slopes and boulders, Chocolate Island has got a bit of everything. Start in the rubble amongst cuttlefish, so many nudibraches and flat worms, that you will soon loose track of the number, and the possibility of seeing a seahorse or even a frogfish or two if you are really lucky! Finish off the dive at 5 meters, closer to the island, where the walls and slopes are covered with soft corals, where a moray eel might hang out with a cleaning shrimp in a hole, or a lionfish resting and waiting for sunset and hunting time. So to put it simply, focus is on the small stuff and make sure to bring your macro lens!
With a max depth of around 16 meters the dives become long and without much focus needed on the no-deco limit, unless it is your third dive of the day of course!
There might not be candy at Chocolate Island, but the diving is still pretty sweet. We are very ‘fondant’ of this treat just waiting to be unwrapped!
