Palau October 2012 Day 5

10/19/12

We all made it to the boat around 8 a.m. to set out a little early to see if we could hit the current right at Ulong Channel.  I think this is one of the prettier dives here in Palau, but like I said before, they are all pretty.  This dive can vary greatly depending on the current.  If there is a really strong current this dive can be a pretty wild ride.  Today we dove when the current was in its change-over from incoming to outgoing.  

The water was extremely clear and the current was very mild.  There were quite a few sharks at the beginning of the dive on the outside of the channel and quite a few people got some good photos and video.  Jody got some really close up video of a shark that swam right toward her.  She is becoming quite the shark enthusiast.  Unfortunately, I did not get any video on this dive because when my camera got installed in the housing Eric did not notice that the silica packet was in front of the lens.  This is unfortunate because I could have gotten some awesome shark video.  

Even thought the current was pretty slack we did manage to make it to the huge wall of lettuce leaf coral.  This is one of the most amazing underwater formations of coral I know I have ever seen.  I think everyone else that had not seen it before was pretty much in awe also.  Eric and I like to call it the giant fish condo.  We ended this dive right after the two giant clams that can be found fairly shallow on the reef.  

For our surface interval our boat captain took us over to Ulong Island (the Island where Survivor Palau took place).  This is a beautiful island with a very large incredibly soft white sand beach.  We spend about half an hour here wandering around checking out the island.  Fabio took some group photos of us on the beach.  

Then we headed out for a dive spot called Sandy Paradise.  This is a very pretty dive with tons of beautiful coral of all different colors and a nice sandy bottom where you can sometimes see white tip sharks resting and sting rays in the sand, etc.  Fabio took some group photos of us underwater here.  We saw another crocodile fish on this dive and the usual school of big eye snapper that hangs out here.  

After we surfaced we had lunch on the boat and slowly headed for our final dive site of the day--Chandelier Cave.  This is an amazing four-chambered underwater cave.  The first chamber has a really amazing formation hanging down from the ceiling, thus the name Chandelier Cave.  Everyone had fun checking out the different chambers.  We then turned off all our lights and exited the cave simply following the glow of sunlight coming from the exit hole.  It was really neat seeing everyone’s silhouettes as they exited the cave.

After we exited the cave we found the resident group of razor fish that hang out there and then spent some time trying to see if we could get some photos/video of the mandarin fish that live in the coral head just outside the cave.  I spent quite a bit of time there and finally got some good video of the male (probably the best video I have gotten to date of a mandarin fish).  They are extremely hard to get pictures or video of because they tend to dart in and out of the swiss-cheese like coral head that they live in.  They generally only come out of their coral head to mate every evening.  This is an amazing site to see if you ever get the chance.  Just after sunset (every evening) the male and female will rise together above the coral and in a split second they mate and dart back down into the coral.  We actually got an opportunity to witness this on our trip to the Philippines earlier this year.  It was pretty amazing.  

I also got some good video of a really cute big eyed goby or blennie type fish that was living in a coral head just next to where the mandarin fish were living.  After that we surfaced for the short boat ride back to the dive shop.  We all got cleaned up and several people met us in our room for drinks and snacks and to swap and look at photos before we met up with Fabio in the lobby at 6:30 to head to dinner.  We decided just to go back over to the Drop Off because it is so handy to the hotel, the food is good, and they have free internet.