Dive Of A Lifetime

Yesterday we had the opportunity to go out diving again. We headed out to the Peleliu island to check out some of its' dive sites. Apparently, Peleliu is known to be a moody area to dive. Upon questioning our divemaster (Marcel) about it, he told us that any given Peleliu dive can be the best dive of your life, the worst dive of your life, or the last dive of you life. This seemed like awfully good odds to me (Jason), a 1/3 chance to have the dive of a lifetime.
The first dive site was called Yellow Wall, named because of the predominance of yellow coral in the area. It was neither the best, worst, or last dive of my life, but it was a really great experience. We were able to see a few Clown Triggerfish (picture below doesn't do it justice), turtles, and a two new kinds of anenome fish.

Above is a Regal Angelfish. It is common at all of the dive and snorkel sites around Palau.
While we came up completely satisfied with the dive, Marcel didn't think it was all that great. He said that because there was no current, there were not nearly as many fish as there can be.
Then we headed to Peleliu for the other members of the group to take a tour of the island. Since we had already seen the same sights, Marcel offered to take us out on another dive. For this we went out to Peleliu coral garden. This was the most colorful and active coral garden either of us had ever seen. Larissa got to see an octopus, which changed colors several times before it hid in a hole, just after which I arrived to see what all of the excitement was about.
When we returned back to pick up the other divers, Marcel proposed that we leave Peleliu, and dive German Channel for the third dive. He claimed that he had just experimented with a new way to dive the channel that resulted in really close encounters with Giant Mantas. The four of us doing a third dive were all game, so off we went. Marcel's plan was to find a school of fish and stay inside of the school and wait for the Mantas. Sounded fun to us, but not all that realistic.
When we arrived at the channel the waters were calm, and there was a huge school of fish near the surface that we could see from the boat. When we got in the water, we knew we were a part of something very special. Within the first 5 minutes, after seeing a porcupine fish (pictured below) we were surrounded by a school of thousands of Blue-lined Fusiliers.

Soon a few hundred Black Snappers and Humpback Unicorn Fish joined the school. After a couple more minutes, Black Jacks and Giant Trevally started darting through the schools trying to catch the fusiliers. The following picture shows primarily Black Snapper in the foreground (the larger fish), and (look closely) the dark ring that makes up the bottom half of the picture is one big mass of fish, mostly the Fusiliers.


The water was not completely clear, and as we looked closer we could see millions of krill suspended in the water. The fusiliers and snappers were feeding on the krill, and the bigger fish on the smaller fish. The bottom half of this picture shows mostly Black Snapper, and the top shows Fusiliers.Just as we thought the dive could not get any better, four Giant Mantas (various sizes, probably 12-18ft.) came swimming right toward us, they too were there for the krill. They flew within feet of us, then disappeared into the distance. We went back to enjoying the thousands of fish surrounding us. Every couple of minutes for the remaining 45 or so minutes of the dive (we were only at a depth of about 20feet.) the Mantas would come back to see what we were up to. Several times they did flips within arms reach of us. They were truly huge and magnificient. After I took a couple of videos early in the dive the camera heated up and caused condensation to form in the underwater housing, so it got all fogged up. so the pictures weren't all that clear, but hopefully you will get the idea.