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Spawning bumphead parrotfish.

With so much spawning happening the visibility was quickly reduced to only 10m! Our next dive was on the Iro, a 143m long fleet oiler and supply ship sunk in Operation Desecrate in March 1944. During this operation in World War II, around 50 Japanese ships and planes were destroyed and sunk in the lagoon at Palau. Today about a dozen are regularly dived. The Iro rests in 40m, with much of the ship’s structure between 15m and 30m. We swam a lap of the wreck, seeing winches, the bridge, king posts, the hold and the massive 7-inch bow gun. The wreck is covered in corals, home to many fishes and while the visibility is not always great in the lagoon, we enjoyed 12m viz. We then dived the 87m long tanker Chuyo Maru. This was another impressive shipwreck with masts, guns, winches and other items of interest. In the late afternoon we explore a Jake Sea Plane resting in 17m. This plane is in surprisingly good condition after 80 years on the sea floor, and a fascinating dive. Unfortunately, the reef around it was a little dull after the wonderful reef dives we had already done. Overnight we relocated further south to German Channel and welcomed four new passengers, a family from America. For their checkout dive we did Fairyland, which was a sloping coral wall with no sharks or pelagic fish, but plenty of colourful reef fishes. The next two dives were far better at New Dropoff and Turtle Wall. Both these walls are covered in beautiful corals and patrolled by reef sharks and pelagic fishes. We saw green turtles at both sites, but with more current at New Dropoff it had far more fish action including giant Maori wrasse and a massive school of midnight snappers. The afternoon dive at German Channel was a little disappointing, as the visibility was poor, at only 10m, and there were no reef manta rays, which are usually a feature at this site. We were outside the main manta season, but still encountered reef sharks and schools of snapper.

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