The sea around Malapascua has far more for divers than just the Monad Shoal and thresher sharks.
Nearly 25m below the surface, on the Monad Shoal, the waters are quiet.
On Scarborough Shoal, meanwhile, flags are being pulled down and new ones hoisted at an alarming rate.
With the voices of Geoffrey Rush, Barry Humphries, Willem Dafoe, Allison Janney, and the funniest of the shoal Ellen DeGeneres.
The Philippines said it withdrew its two government ships from the shoal on June 15th, citing bad weather.
Tensions have already risen in these waters, with a two-month standoff between Philippine and Chinese vessels at another remote shoal.
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Meanwhile Chinese state media also reported that the country's navy has visited the southern-most shoal it claims in the South China Sea.
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Similar heavy-handed action was used against the Philippines in a spat over the Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea in April 2012.
The Philippines and China have territorial disputes in the South China Sea, and engaged in a lengthy stand-off over the Scarborough shoal last year.
His job was to shout when he spotted a shoal of fish enter the cove, so the team below could trap and catch it.
Eager divers watch in wonder as these five to six metre creatures swim stealthily around the shoal in search of breakfast, their distinctive tails cutting silently through the water.
The row between Manila and Beijing has been rumbling since April 2012, when government vessels from both nations faced off for several weeks at the Scarborough Shoal.
Mr. Schettino dropped anchors on one side of the ship, forcing the massive vessel to make an abrupt 180-degree turn that brought it to rest on a shoal.
What started out innocuously as illegal poaching by Chinese fisherman in waters off the shoal in April 2012 soon developed into a stand-off at sea that lasted several weeks.
The Army officer, who was living in Surrey, had been diving from a local boat on the Adamant Shoal, near Lulworth Banks, when she failed to return to the surface.
The waters off North Carolina's coast, for a host of environmental factors including sharp winds, shifting currents, hurricanes and a large shoal off shore, make it particularly dangerous for shipping.
"The ambassador of China took the view that they have full sovereignty over the Scarborough Shoal, " Mr. del Rosario told reporters after the meeting at his Manila office, according to AP.
Monad Shoal is classified as an intermediate dive, and most shops require divers to have advanced open water or deep dive certifications since the depth surpasses the normal 18m limit for open water divers.
Most interestingly, while Philippine government vessels have withdrawn from the shoal area in an agreement reportedly struck by both sides in June 2012, the Chinese governmental vessels have apparently yet to comply.
One of those involves an increasingly shrill argument with the Philippines about who has sovereignty over the Scarborough Shoal, a group of rocks in the South China Sea called the Huangyan Islands by China.
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Philippine Foreign Secretary Albert Del Rosario said he met with Chinese Ambassador Ma Keqing and both reaffirmed their governments' positions that the Scarborough Shoal where the ships are facing off was part of their own country's territory and neither was ready to stand down.
The two navies engaged each other after the Philippine vessel a former Coast Guard cutter provided by the U.S. Navy attempted to arrest the crew of several Chinese fishing boats who were anchored at Scarborough Shoal, off the Philippines' northwest coast but which is also claimed by China.
Chinese navy and marine surveillance ships are patrolling a reef known as Ayungin Shoal in the Philippines and Ren'ai Reef in China to stop Manila trying to "reinforce control" over disputed waters by repairing a warship stranded on the reef, Global Times quotes insiders as saying.
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