The Icebox

Today we rode our bikes to Malakal island, for our third trip to the park known as The Icebox. During the Japanese occupation of Palau, which began in the early 1900s and continued almost through WWII, there was an icemaking plant at the current location of the park. The park provides some convenient access to a nice snorkeling spot. We have had the whole place to ourselves in all of our trips there so far.
There are alot of the colossal clams called Tridacnidae there, which we mentioned in an earlier post, though I (Jason) don't think we knew there exact name yet. Turns out these guys are the largest of all bivalve molluscs. Here is a picture of Larissa saying hello to one of them.


This (above) is about the size of the clam that the boat anchor got caught in (see Jellyfish Lake post).
It seems that the smaller Tridacnidae are, the more colorful they are. Some are very bright blue. When you come near, they close up in a hurry.
Larissa is a gifted snorkeler. I love having her around because she finds so many things that I would have otherwise passed right by. She is particularly good at finding anenome fish, which we both very much enjoy watching. This is a picture of a Red and Black Anenome Fish


We may be going diving tomorrow. We still need to see a hammerhead shark, a whaleshark (unlikely), and a clown triggerfish, which I have designated as my new favorite reef fish, even though I have never seen one.
Just so you can plan ahead, early next Wednesday morning we will start our trip to Vietnam. We predict that blog posts will become shorter and less frequent at that point. We'll see. Take care for now, and thanks for the comments and feedback.