Tubbataha Trip Highlights 24-29 April 2009

* 2 Bronze colored silky sharks seen at the washing machine.
* Juvenile Whale shark and a hammerhead seen at the shark airport on one dive.
* Record 12 pygmy seahorses found by guides
* Big jacks and bump heads at the kook corner
* 5 huge turtles seen together at the corner of the delsan wreck and staghorn
* Weird icy cold up current milky surge on one dive at black rock.
* Flat calm weather all week

Tubbataha Trip Highlights 17-23 April 2009

* Manta on cleaning station at Shark Airport. Day 1
* Pygmy seahorses found by guides and seen by all divers on numerous dives
* Huge school of Jacks at Kook Corner. Day 2
* Huge school of Barracuda at the Delson Wreck. Day 2
* 5 Napoleon Wrasse together taken in one photo at Washing Machine. Day 4
* School of Bump head Parrotfish at Twreck. Day 3
* Awesome White tip shark action at Malayan Wreck. Day 1
* Nice even One way drifts on most dives - No switch currents this week.
* Plenty of Turtles and close encounters with the Mantas on Numerous Dives.

Palau Trip April 25 - 2 May  2009

By: Paul Collins

Palau Trip March 14-21, 2009

By: Paul Collins

This week started with the arrival of 7 guests; two English guys escaping the rat race and five Germans on a long awaited holiday. We spent the first day diving around the port area. We visited the helmet wreck for our first dive, marvelling at the treasures left on it from the Second World War, it having been passed over by the Japanese on retrieval missions. Gas masks and sake bottles aplenty! After that we headed up to short drop off in search of the baby sharks! We were not disappointed, there on the corner waiting for us were close to fifty of them, all in a huddled cluster with one huge grey reef shark, presumably a mother, floating protectively nearby. We hovered nearby watching them swerve in the current and eventually head off deeper as we ascended for our safety stop.

We ended the day with chandelier cave, a beautiful long cave structure with stalactites hanging from the ceiling, one particularly impressive formation giving the name to this cave system. That night we all slept soundly as it would be an early start for the rest of the week and a busy schedule awaited us the next day.

We awoke at 6am and departed by chaseboat shortly after for Ulong. Usually we visit this site only once a week however this week we were lucky as the tides were right to do it Sunday morning too! On arrival the channel was going in so we did too. We floated at the mouth watching the bait ball swarm in between hungry sharks, giant trevallies and jacks. A couple of groupers looked hopeful but soon returned to their camouflaged positions in the corals. We hooked on for a while as big grey reef sharks came floating by, one guest asking after if they were bulls! They were very big. Then we drifted into the channel, marvelling at the pristine coral and beautiful fishes therein. Towards the end of the channel we came across its crowning glory, the highest cabbage coral colony in the world. Like high rise flats for squirrel fish and soldier fish it looms out of the water, a formidable natural phenomenon. Floating past this we saw more Malabar grouper and a few sleeping white tip sharks in the sandy bottomed lagoon at the end of the channel. Saies corner came next. The baby eagle ray greeted us on our descent in the water and hovered by us the whole dive. At one point it had a large and seemingly hungry grey in its slip stream, inches from its tail, so it came and hung behind us over the reef, a safer haunt! Then, one of the greys reacted to something below the reef and darted down with surprising speed. Several other juvenile greys followed and we all peered over. Something on the wall of the reef had been and unwitting meal!

In the german channel the week flew past. Turtle cove with the laser clams was a hit and we found endless turtles on the cleaning station at the end. On one of the soft corals we saw an Orang-Utan crab, wafting in the current, trying to persuade us it was an alga, however we stood and watch his flowing dance until it was time to head on to the plateau. Blue corner of course did not fail us. The snapper were waiting in the cut as usual and the sharks were there in their dozens. Some had the signs of mating on them, big rips in their flanks from where the males had latched on, and we knew that this would mean more and more sharks and mating activity. The jacks were schooling near us in their usual place in the cut and the ever friendly napoleon wrasse hung behind us as if he himself was hooked on. We then went to find the leaf fish, successfully finding both of them this week, the black and the yellow one. They were wedged between a rock each and doing there best to believe we couldn’t see them.

The one manta we saw this week happened to be on Blue Corner too! Hooked on to the incoming side there was a commotion at the end of the line. Annette and Stephan, a couple from Germany, had spotted a manta barrel rolling out in the blue at thirty metres. It rolled around for a couple of minutes before heading off behind a school of jacks. It was Annette’s first manta and her only words for the first hour after the dive were “Manta!! Manta!!”. Everyone else was over the moon too.

New Drop Off also pulled a few tricks out of its hat this week, whilst hooked on to the incoming side towards the end of the dive there was a commotion below at about 30m. Swimming a little way down to have a look it was realised that there was an abundance of Grey reef sharks all swarming together, around 40 of them. They were at about 40m and we were on our third dive so we hovered at 30 watching the action below. This all happened on Stephans birthday and he was ecstatic, as was everyone else. Things were just about to get better though as the next day we headed down to Peliliu.

Yellow wall, just before the Peliliu express, was where we decided to jump in. This was proved a very good idea as once we hit the water we saw in front of us the Sailfin Snapper that come up to these walls to breed once a year before returning to the depths where we cant see them. We followed them for a while and come across schools of blue line snapper and chevron barracuda. The visibility was breath taking and the current perfect. The oriental sweetlips were in their usual position by the cabbage corals formed in whorls and we were graced with a banded sea crate at the end of the dive. The Peliliu Cut came next and the leaf fish were in their usual place, the sharks were out in numbers and at the end we saw the school of giant trevallies closer than they’d ever been before, from the plateau up to the surface shimmering in their hundreds. Orange beach with its world war remains came next and a ribbon eel with it. Then Peliliu pocket with the giant clams nestled between the corals.

We continued our time at german channel, big drop off proving it was not only the favourite wall of Jacques Cousteau but also of our guests. Then we returned to port via Ulong again where the bait ball was doing its thing in the mouth and we found a plethora of nudibranchs within. A flabellina was the best find, no more than a centimetre long and beautiful. The Titan triggers were out and nesting so were well avoided by all. Their final day of diving led to a dive at Lighthouse channel with huge remoras and many turtles. There was macro to find all over with a leaf fish, a pipe fish and a nudibranch only found on this dive site which I believe the most beautiful of all. The evenings dive was at mandarin fish lake and all managed to snap at least a half decent photo of this elusive yet stunning little fish. The guests left on the Saturday happy and overwhelmed at the diversity and excessive abundance of the marine life in Palau.

We had a great week with our 8 Australian guests. After a beautiful morning cruise down to our German Channel mooring site on Sunday, we started our diving week with an easy and relaxed check-out dive at the Ngedbus Coral Gardens. Following lunch and another easy and relaxed dive at Turtle Wall, we finished our diving day at the German Channel.

Almost immediately upon decent we spotted a beautiful 3m manta feeding at the surface. We briefly watched from the sandy bottom, but quickly decided to ascend to 5m to get closer to the action taking place right on the surface. The manta circled and swam through the thick plankton, slicing through the dense school of black snapper who were also feasting on the bountiful harvest brought by the incoming tide. As the beautiful, majestic creature continued to fly by all of our guests were treated to extreme close-ups and despite the low visibility in the channel, everyone was able to take as many photos as they desired. The manta stayed with us for nearly 40 minutes as we swam into the gentle current to stay with her before drifting through the channel to do our safety stop.

The next morning we started our diving at Blue Corner where we were treated to a perfect current: moderately strong, but very manageable. We were not the only ones taking advantage of the current as we were greeted at the corner by a lark school of big-eyed jacks and close to 20 grey and whitetip reef sharks. We also were treated to a rare Blue Corner visit of a banded sea krait who swam right through the legs of a guest and directly in front of the group as they were hooked on. As usual, there were tons of reef fish swimming in the current and everyone was inspected by a couple of friendly napoleon wrasse.

Later that evening we were again lucky to have another great manta encounter in German Channel, this time with two mantas feeding for the entire 45 minutes of the dive. They would come in one behind the other and then split left and right directly in front of the guests and would perform loops in the water as they fed.

The next day we ventured down to the island of Peleliu. We had four great dives in Peleliu with great viz, a little current, and some great hooking. We also had a brief glimpse of a spotted eagle ray cruising the shallows of the plateau. As we headed back to the mooring in German Channel a pod of pacific spinner dolphins came by to check out our chase boat and jump in our wake. They would rocket into the air spinning wildly before crashing back down while others were content to swim furiously at the front of the boat being pushed along by the bow wave of the boat.

Through the rest of the week we were blessed with beautiful weather and had great dives at the Ulong Channel, New Drop Off, Big Drop Off, Blue Corner (twice more), and a night dive in the German Channel as well as many others. We were also able to catch a number of yellow fin tuna and enjoyed some brilliantly fresh sashimi. All the guests were very happy with their week aboard the Eco Explorer.

Trip 11/3/07-11/10/07

The dive staff and crew of the Eco Explorer pulled off another great week of diving. With a very eclectic group of divers including two Japanese couples, Belgian, German, and Russian couples, and a small group from the United States it was an international affair all week. Diving began early in the week for those who were flexi-diving and they got to see more of the wrecks of Palau which is a treat not many people get. The Iro Wreck was a big hit both times it was dived thanks to a juvenile cuttlefish who appears to have taken up residence near the aft crew quarters of the old tanker.

Other diving highlights included Blue Corner, which is consistently brilliant with large resident schools of big-eyed jacks, black snapper, yellow-fin barracuda, chevron barracuda, bar jacks, and of course sharks. We were also able to continue our long-running streak of good luck with mantas in the German Channel. We were treated to three mantas feeding near the surface of the channel for almost an entire dive. Most guests were lucky enough to have extreme close encounters as the mantas performed underwater acrobatics as they fed. Visibility was low, but it hardly made a difference as the mantas came close and continued to fly through the group.

Peleliu was also a success with a great encounter with a banded sea krait on the Peleliu Express, and a nice strong hook-on dive on the Peleliu Cut. Many guests also took and enjoyed the Peleliu land tour with a local guide that explores the history of the once battle-torn island.