DIVE LOG Australasia

The walls at Palau are covered in pretty corals.

paddletail snapper. We explored another pretty dropoff at Clarence Wall, seeing more reef sharks, schools of squirrelfish and a banded sea krait. All these dive sites were west of German Channel, so for something different we dived the eastern side at Ngerchong Wall and Ngerchong Coral Garden. Both were lovely dives with reef sharks, schooling fish and a spotted eagle ray at the wall and lots of reef fish at the coral garden, including numerous blennies, gobies and pygmy angelfish. For our final day of diving, we dived Virgin Blue Hole, which was another incredibly large cave, and explored two more walls at Big Dropoff and Barnum’s Wall. For our last dive we were going to explore Blue Corner again, but I was hoping to have one last look at German Channel, and it was agreed we would dive here if the visibility had improved, and fortunately it had. The visibility was now 15m, but with lots of particles. We headed down the reef slope and found a broad cowtail stingray resting under a layer of sand. We then moved to the reef edge, where the mantas come to get cleaned, and looked up to see a massive ball of fish above us feeding. Thousands of fusiliers, midnight snapper, rainbow runners, trevally and drummer were feasting on the plankton soup. Suddenly they were joined by a reef manta ray, then another, and another two. Our guide Epi indicated we should leave the bottom and swim in midwater to watch the mantas feeding, which we did for the next thirty minutes.

It was amazing sight, seeing four manta rays swimming back and forth, spinning around and around and doing somersaults with their mouths open wide to consume the plankton. They swam very close at times, and then would disappear for minutes, only to suddenly reappear amongst the fishes. The feeding fish were also entertaining, grabbing the plankton with wide open mouths as they swarmed around us. When the mantas finally departed, we did a drift through German Channel, encountering reef sharks, schooling snappers, triggerfish and even a large crocodilefish. We had an incredible week of diving in Palau, only experiencing a small fraction of the nation’s incredible dive sites. I will be back to explore more. Each year Nigel Marsh leads special photography group trips to dive destinations across the globe. On these trips Nigel is on hand to help improve your underwater photography and does regular talks on photography and marine life. In September 2025 he will be leading a special trip back to Palau on Ocean Hunter III – visit his website for details. www.nigelmarshphotography.com

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DIVE LOG Australasia #408 - October ‘24

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