Palau 11/20

            Today was an amazing day.  We woke up about 4:20 a.m. and had some breakfast and got the cameras and our stuff together and headed across the street around 5:25.  Mandy had just arrived at the shop and we located our dive gear in the gear room and loaded it onto the cart and wheeled it down to the boat.  About that time our boat driver, Logan, arrived. 

            After getting our equipment set up on our tanks, we waited a bit before taking off from the dock.  Mandy told us the story behind the discovery of the aggregation and spawning of the bumpheads.  Apparently some of the Japanese operators take customers out to do dawn and dusk dives and at some point they came across this aggregation.  Fortunately or unfortunately they posted the exact location and time of day information on their website.  It was posted in Japanese of course so Mandy got one of the Japanese guides to translate and she found out it gave very detailed information.  Now pretty much everyone in Palau knows about it. 

By the time we got to the dive site there were about five boats, most packed with Japanese and Chinese.  Luck for us they generally run out of air faster.  The Japanese usually have a couple people in the water snorkeling to see when the activity starts and when to get in the water, so we watched their lead.  We got in the water around 6:34 a.m. and once we swam down the reef a ways we encountered masses of bumpheads.

For those of you who have never seen a bumphead parrotfish, they are interesting looking fish.  They are large (2-3 ft.) long blue fish with a large bump on their head (looks like they ran into something and have a really big knot on their head) and they have big buck teeth to bite off chunks of coral in order to feed on the algae.  They actually look kind of nerdy—but we can thank them for our beautiful white sandy beaches—which is what they produce.  So the next time you are laying on the beach, you can thank a parrotfish for pooping it out for you. 

  

This is quite an event to see as it only happens once a month with a few hundred fish, but in November/December can reach into the thousands of fish—and believe me there were thousands.  Normally they school in masses and then head out into the blue and drop down to about 70 feet.  The males heads will become bright white and when the females are ready they shoot toward the surface along with several males to spawn.  There must have been too many people for them or the current was not right or something, as we swam around watching them for quite some time, but they never finished the job so to speak.  It was still cool to see such huge masses of these fish together as the most we have ever seen together is probably two or three. 

            After this dive we headed back to the dive shop and we got cleaned up and had a little nap after check out our footage from the first dive and getting the cameras ready to go for the afternoon.  We were to meet Mandy back at the shop around 2:00 p.m. to go out to German Channel to try and see some mantas.

            We met at the shop at 2 p.m. and made way for German Channel.  On our way out of the lagoon area, Mandy spotted something’s fin on the surface of the water and she could not quite identify what it was.  So our boat driver, Logan, headed over there to see what it was.  Mandy thought it might have been a hammerhead shark as some people have apparently been spotting them.  We waited for a minute or two and then we saw it resurface again.  We headed over to it and it was three Dugongs, which are extremely rare to see by boat.  Mandy has been heavily involved in Dugong preservation efforts over the last few years and she said it is next to impossible to see them by boat.  Once the three of them surfaced for air, they disappeared.  Unfortunately, we did not get any photos or video, but it was still really neat to see—something we had never seen before and most in Palau will never see. 

           

            After that we continued on our way to German Channel.  When we got there there were about five other boats, but many of the divers were already surfacing from their dive.  The current looked pretty good, so we got in the water around 3 p.m.  Just after we got in, the mantas started to appear.  Luckily there was only one other group in the water that we had to deal with for a little while.  Then the action really started.  There were about 9 mantas, but it seemed like many more.  They were everywhere dancing, gliding, playing, feeding, doing loop-de-loops, and it looked like they were having fun.  By this time we had them all to ourselves—which is extremely rare.  We spent about 75 minutes in the water with them.  Mandy said it has been a long time since she has seen them like that so comfortable in the water and unphased by the diver’s presence.  It was truly amazing just watching them. 

            After this dive we again headed back to the shop.  We got back a little after 5 p.m. and had some dinner at the Drop Off before going back to our apartment for the night.  We are planning on going out with the regular dive group tomorrow for two dives and then Mandy is going to try and pick us up after our second dive and we will attempt to do another dive with the mantas at German Channel again.