Today was pretty packed and wasn’t all just diving. I woke up early on my own around 5 am and since I couldn’t go back to sleep I decided to greet the sun as it rose over Palau. It was nice, calm, and quite in the early hours and not too long after the sun was up, the boat engines started and our captain piloted us to the very southern end of an island called Peleliu. There we dove the southern tip, Peleliu Corner, which also happens to define the border of the Pacific Ocean and the Philippine Sea. The currents there were pretty strong so we drifted along a wall and hooked in to sit and watch a bunch of sharks drift by. It was fun to watch them glide into the current, hardly seeming to put much effort into it at all, then turn and swim away with the current in the blink of an eye.
After we regrouped on the boat, a number of us split off and went ashore at Peleliu for a land tour. Peleliu is where a battle ocurred over 80 years ago between the US and Japanese during World War II. A number of artifacts from the battle are still there so we got to tour them. First we visited Orange Beach where US Marines made an amphibious attack on the Japanese. We also got to see an old airfield, the bombed out Japanese headquarters, some abandoned tanks and planes, and 1,000 man cave where the Japanese held out. It was quite interesting as most of the sites were still littered with bottles, cans, dishes, and ammunition that had been discarded at the time of the war. Ghosts of the battle were all around the island.
Once our tour was over, we made our way back to the boat for lunch before continuing on with more diving. Our first dive took us to the drop off just off shore from Orange Beach. There, we got to see a little more of the battle scars; some sunk amphibious vehicles and rounds of ammunition could be found along the dive site though by now they were mostly overgrown with some pretty stunning coral.
After our dive at Orange Beach, we motored to our next dive site, Ngerchong. Along the way, we encountered a pod of dolphins that traveled with us for a ways, playing in our bow wake. It was fun watching them chase after fish and race ahead of our boat as we passed. Eventually we made it to Ngerchong and set out for our first dive there. The dive was quite pleasant since there was no current but still lots to see including an octopus!
We returned to the same dive site later in the evening for our night dive. Night dives are always fun; you get to see things that only come out at night and diving in the dark always feels a little spooky. On that dive I saw a two spot lionfish, some lobster, and a crocodile fish. There were also plenty of fish asleep, tucked in amongst the corals.
Tomorrow there are five dives schedules; four during the day and another night dive. It sounds like we’ll be heading back to some of the places we visited the first day including the German Channel and we’ll try to dive the New Drop Off again. These packed days definitely wipe you out but I’m excited for more great diving!