SPOILER WARNING: Do NOT read this report unless you plan to go to Palau in the future. Pre-dive SCUBA traumatic stress disorder may occur if you can't ever make this trip and know what you're missing.ASPCSD Notice: No divers were harmed during 7 days of diving, eating and drinking.
SCUBA police warning: What happens in Palau, stays in Palau.
Poorly educated fish spotter at work:My fish identification skills are extremely poor. Most days I can tell big fish from small ones. I have also pointed out coral that I thought looked like a nudibranch - causing one experienced diver to lose buoyancy control, spew regulator and ingest significant seawater while recovering from laughing spasm.
Getting there:
The adventure begins with the trip to Palau. Situated 900 miles SW of Guam, you're looking at 17 hours of flying if you live on the West coast. From Dallas, it was 22 hours door to door, but those who live in Houston would not have to take the puddle jumper from DFW to IAH.
Accomodations: West Plaza Malakal - Very nice, nothing fancy, but plenty of hot/cold water, AC and just a short walk to the pier. Bring your travel alarm cuz the electricity drops off several times per day/night - and their alarms do NOT have a battery backup. Slow internet ($1 per 15 minutes) and no cell phone coverage for our US models. Phone cards are $10 for 30 minutes.
Things to do: Sashimi for $5 for a huge platter in many bars and restaurants. Plenty of restaurants, night club reports will have to come from someone else. Proper Mai Tais are challenging to find, but a suitable substitute is the Blue Shark, topped with 151 rum. Actually, it is not much like a Mai Tai, but who cares after 5-6 of them? For the advanced divers, there are abundant supplies of tequila and shot glasses.
Kayaking, dolphin experiences and land tours are also available. There is a wonderful spa where we decided to spend our last day/no dive day getting exfoliated and other exotic treatments.
Dive operator: Keith Santillano is a great guy who has been there for 17 years, along with his SO / DM / Photo goddess. He gave much thought to what we wanted to do, and planned the dives knowing the currents/tides and other factors that would maximize our experience.
Running out to the sites was a nice morning drive - about an hour. Returning in the afternoon was sometimes a real filling loosener when the wind kicked up 2-4 foot swells and whitecaps. There are lots of small islands enroute, so the current/tide/wind combinations would create some fun rides.
After a thorough brief, even at repeat sites, we'd gear up and go. Keith takes a conservative approach without being a dictator, let SOME of us get 70+ minute runtimes (if only I had brought doubles
) always worked it so we ended the dive in a nice shallow spot to off-gas while touring the top of the reef. He brought EAN32 for some of us, which I used for all but a couple of dives that were either real deep or real shallow. You can also get 100cf tanks if your SAC is even worse than mine. Lunch on board was a choice of Philippino lumpia, sandwiches, bento (beef, chicken or fish) and probably anything else you'd like. Between dives they were awesome. On shore, they'd probably be like better than MREs.
Wednesday - Day One:
Big Dropoff - 79' 1:01 81F
Beautiful soft corals and sea fans. Lots (technical term roughly equivalent to bazillions) of small guys (pyramid butterfly fish?). Keith showed us the unusual square spot anthias (males) and the dull orange female equivalents. The coral varieties included green tree corals, sea fans, tube corals, and sponges. Saw a couple of deep sharks cruising along and some other big fish.
Too ensure perfect diving, no DCS, lots of fish of every variety and ample supplies of tequila, I elected to sacrifice my mask to Neptune at the site as we took off our gear to board. A team player all the way. If you want to look, it's in about 2000' at the NE corner of the wall.
Blue Corner - 65' :52 80F
The signature dive. Note we repeated almost every day. It's situated at the SW corner of the lagoon, and the tip splits the Philippine Sea from the Pacific Ocean. Huge upwells from deep water bring most of the food chain into one spot for continuous feasting. No one leaves hungry.
We started from the Northwest end and cruised across the plateau to hook in on the East side. The "hook" is simply a fishhook-shaped piece of steel tied on to a 7-8' nylon line with a snap ring on the other end to connect to a D-ring. You just find a little outcropping of rock, set the hook end and put a little air into your bcd. The current holds you up and away from the reef and you have both hands free to applaud or shoot pictures.
I've seen "schools" of barracuda before, but you could see through the group, and count individuals - a big school might have 20 fish. Here, we're literally talking thousands of black spotted barracuda. Incredible. Equal numbers of Big Eye Travally. White tips and Grays were on patrol - we probably saw 10-15 sharks per minute - I think some were repeats, as they'd cruise back and forth. Wow. Double wow.
Thursday - Day Two:
German Channel - 61' :54 81F
A natural channel expanded by the Germans during their "administration" 18xx - 1914. There is a big cleaning station where mantas are regularly spotted. No exception on this trip. "Rosa's Manta" showed up on schedule and paraded around for us. I also saw and even got a picture of a small octopus squeezed into a rock. A few whitetips - and lots of small thingys.
New Dropoff - 86' :56 86F
Three small corners on a nice wall. LOTS of action - we could see sharks at our level (85 - 60) and down deeper in the shadows there were more sharks cruising. Huge "schools" of jack/barracuda/travally (school seems so inappropriate - so small - maybe we should switch to "districts" to give a better name).
Friday - Day Three:
Blue Hole - 88' :56 81F
This was truly spectacular. There are four holes on top of the reef that all drop down and join into one very large cavern. The bottom underneath the holes begins at 80' and is as deep as 140'. The cavern is very big but the best spot is the ceiling watching the little guys flitting around upside down. We had our choice of windows to leave by - we went through the 70' one and out along the wall and on to Blue Corner (see Day Two)
Blue Corner - 67' :51 81F
See Day Two - still awesome, still swarming.
Saturday - Day Four:
SCHEDULED NO DIVE DAY - are you kidding? We kept diving. Repeated Blue Corner (68' :54 81F) and New Drop Off (76' 1:01)
Sunday - Day Five:
Turtle Cove - 74' :44 84F - Gorgeous wall that starts with a short swim through down a hole and out onto the wall. Saw a few sharks cruising and lots of black snapper, trevally, barracuda. Also enjoyed my first case of daytime vertigo. Trying to look at some little guy and the surge pushed me into the wall. "bubbles always rise" seemed like a good plan, so after awhile I got my head back on and continued after sucking down 500# or so that I really would have liked to have had back.
New Drop Off - 64' :48 82F - hooked in here to watch the show. It looked like the same Napoleon wrasse that cuddled up to us at blue corner was here - but probably a different guy (girl?).
Chandelier Cave - 28' :27 86F - Interesting dive close by the docks for Sam's tours. Entry at 15', and about 3 kicks to the first of 4 chambers where you can surface and enjoy the gorgeous limestone stalactites and crystal formations. A few little critters, and of course the little mandarin fish in the harbor. A beautiful little guy, that only Keith could find in the shallow hard coral formations.
Monday - Day Six:
Blue Hole - 138' :40 84F - We decided to do an air dive to the bottom since we'd seen some bigger stuff down there on our earlier visit to this spectacular site. Went to the bottom window, and poked around (I headed up when I was within 4 min of ndl). Our large friends weren't around, but SOME of us saw the small stuff. I tried to get a shot of the windows looking up from the bottom, but the viz was on the low side, and my dream pictures didn't turn out.
Blue Corner - 64' :48 82F - See previous write-up - just more sharks, more trevalli, more dogtooth tuna, more black mackeral, more barracuda.
Helmet Wreck - 92' :44 85F - In the inner harbor real close to the pier. Interesting undocumented wreck that appeared to be an accident rather than a result of US air attack. Name comes from the stacks of helmets that are part of the cargo - along with gas masks, depth charges, radial engines, and other detritus. She lies upright with the stern in about 100' of water and sloping up to the bow which is around 50' A good deal of life, a lionfish, two pipe fish and the usual other small suspects. The water was pretty cloudy, but we were there late in the day, and followed a larger group of divers.
Tuesday - Day Seven:
Ulong Channel - 54' 1:01 86F - a natural cut through the reef, and although we were there 3 hours before high tide, the current was running seaward, so we dropped mid channel and worked our way out, then followed the wall to the north with the prevailing current for another half-mile or so. Saw some cool feeding anemones in the channel, an eel and some cucumbers. Afterwards, since we dropped to seaward and missed it, some of us did a free dive to 35' to check out a couple of giant clams.
Met a few black tips swimming towards the lagoon, a turtle, woke a couple of sleeping white tips and several anemones with their resident anemone fish. One really cool coral area(Cabbage Coral) each having a fish or two in residence. Also saw many (1 is too many) aggressive triggerfish, and quite a few grouper getting worked up for some mating.
Siaes Tunnel - Siaes Corner - 116' 1:06 83F A two-for-one for us since we had a great current we got one of the best dives on our last dive. Siaes tunnel is on the western side of the atoll, in a vertical wall on the Philippine Sea side. The tunnel is about 50' high, and cuts through a corner of the wall - we went in the southern entrance and headed north - you can see from one end to the other, and I'm guessing it's about 100-150 yards. Top is at 90', bottom at the southern end around 140. It slopes up south to north, so the exit bottom is around 110. We saw a school of bigeye trevally when we entered, and the cool little dartfish hanging around upside down on the overhead of the tunnel.
We left the tunnel and continued drifting north and ascending - finishing close to a mile or more north in shallow reef. More shark parade, trevally, more wall/table reef life - a great finish to a great set of diving.
Hopefully, the experts (Rosa, Nicolle & Mitch) will chime in with more details, and especially the truth on species.
Edited by Capn Jack, 31 March 2007 - 07:02 PM.
