Palau, Sharks and Manta Rays!!

The starfish here come in many forms and it seems there are countless small islands with beaches.

After a week in Truk we flew back to Guam and then to Palau, an island nation much more developed than Truk.  The Necco dive operation is first class with excellent  boats and dive shop.   Our dive guides are Fabio (Italian) and Jenny (English) who are very professional.  The flora, the temps, the water and the many islands that make up Palau are beautiful in every way.  Rolling off the boat into liquid jewel blue water you immediately see breathtaking reefs with multitudes of coral growth and fish of every kind.  First thing, we saw a school of about 35 small sharks and knew this would be exciting diving.  Sharks are seen on every dive and pay little attention to us except to keep their distance when we try to get close.  We are taken to a spot to hopefully see giant manta rays and we are not disappointed! At one time there were 5 circling around us! I have not been successful at loading my videos to this blog, but you can see the very reefs, blue holes, and jelly fish lake   we dove by watching this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iGgQT2tnjI and   (there are 3 videos)            http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_zTnuwncZU  This manta is the same one I believe we saw, and we swam with the sharks just as this diver does:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlfS4Unnx1w  Even dove off the same fast boats.  The schools of fish were a normal site on every dive.

                                                      Anemones were large and plentiful

White tip, black tip, and gray reef sharks were on every dive, but I could not get them interested in biting me, so I call them chicken sharks :)

Wow--Truk Lagoon Micronesia

This is what you might see snorkeling around Funomo Island

 After traveling 27 hours we landed in Truk, State of Chuuk, Micronesia and once we make the very rough road to Blue Island Resort it begins to be magic.  Everything here is beautiful, including the locals.  The diving is amazingly different for us--12 Abilenians with dive experience from mostly the Caribbean.  Four divers have been my scuba students years ago; 4 are scuba instructors; 2 are doctors and 3 are nurses. Truk Lagoon was the center of Japan's naval strength in WWII when American airstikes over two days sent 60+ ships to the bottom and crippled their ability to supply the Pacific war.  We have dived on 10 ship wrecks in 5 days and seen both history and the sea's ability to

soft corals are abundant

Private island of Funamo where we had lunch one day

I found Nemo

Turtle with remora

Many relics are left on the ships