In October 2019 Mick Todd and I spent eight days diving Palau with Sam’s Tours. 

Their friendly staff took us to some of Palau’s most famous dive sites including Blue Corner, Blue Holes, German Channel, New Drop-Off, Peleliu Express, Siaes Corner, The Iro (Wreck) and Ulong Channel. The diving was very enjoyable but had no wow factor. We did see a Rockmover Wrasse which I was thrilled about as this is a species I had never seen before.  However there were few really close shark encounters and no manta sightings at all. I thought maybe we had just been unlucky but Mick said the guides were diving very conservatively. At the Ulong Channel entrance, as if to prove his point Mick dropped 10 to 15 metres below our group and returned with video footage of at least fifty juvenile Grey Reef sharks. I wished I had followed him! To be fair to our guides, with Enriched Air Nitrox mixes of only 22 to 24%, conservatism seemed prudent. Apparently, the guides had had to cope with these low mixes for nearly a month which must have been frustrating for them. Certainly it was for me as like everyone else I had to very careful with my dive profiles.

More puzzlingly for me was the lack of manta sightings particularly as divers from another dive centre, who were staying at our hotel, had some great manta video footage. It wasn’t puzzling for Mick. “We are being taken to the Manta Cleaning stations at the wrong time, we needed to visit them on an incoming current, we’ve been taken there on outgoing currents”.

On a more positive note, the shallow waters in front of the dive centre offered some wonderful macro photography opportunities and Mick and I thoroughly enjoyed exploring this small dive site.