Trip Report palau visit and rock island aggressor july 2023

[bassplayer]

wanted to jot some notes down while it's fresh in mind -
I came to Palau July 11 to visit the islands and then join the Rock Island Aggressor July 16-23rd trip.
Even though this is the rainy season, we had a lot of good weather and a lot of good dives.
A few periods of torrential rains occurred but overall it was still a fine time to travel here.


Travel:
traveling to get here is a pain. I did it by cashing in united miles and splitting up the trip with several days in hawaii, but even still its far away and expensive. some of the other people i met were doing back to back weeks on the liveaboards here, which seems like a good way to make the punishing travel worthwhile. A lot of the tourism seems to be from Taiwan, Japan, and Guam which makes sense.

Koror:
I stayed in Koror for a few days before the liveaboard and a couple days after. It's a relatively high cost destination when compared with southeast asia in general, and i would say not necessarily the best value. If i understood right they recently added a 10% tourism tax.
Restaurants were at best OK.
Local dive shops quoted me prices in the range of $200-$220 for a two tank trip and a $50 every 10 days marine park fee is also required.
I hiked around a fair bit on foot including down to the southern tip of malakal island, completed the ngermalk trail, and all around Koror. stray dogs followed me for a good bit of that time but they were good natured.
I stayed at the DW (cheap, spartan, totally acceptable for my solo traveling needs, wouldn't bring a partner) and the Garden Palace (Japanese vibe, meaning fancy electronic toilet, japanese kitchenette appliances, shoes in the hallway, etc. nice comfortable place)
I visited the aquarium, which was small and humble. strictly in the "killing time" category for me.

The Aggressor:
We had 11 divers so I and several others ended up with our own cabins, pretty great deal especially considering this was a discounted trip.
The boat was very comfortable and i would say about the same as my other liveaboard experiences. plenty of good food, nice dive deck, friendly helpful crew.
diving was done from a large skiff where tanks and bcds stayed for the week, which docked to the yacht via a large hoist.
the yacht itself was only repositioned a handful of times; the skiff rides were usually 5-10 mins but one guest got a lot of laughs with the comment "that was the longest 10 minutes of my life" after one bumpy ride.

side note; they didn't offer diet coke, only regular. but i really shouldn't be drinking that garbage anyway. they had a few types of beer and some wine, both included. plenty of tea which is what i drank all morning every morning.

The Diving:
this was my first experience with pacific ocean diving so i found it quite great as so much was novel. the vast quanity of healthy coral of so many different interesting types alone was a revelation to me. Also had some great big animal encounters. tons of sharks, including a sleeping leopard and a fleeting moment with a hammerhead. some acrobatic manta displays and flybys. a few napoleon wrasse and a lot of bumpheads. some good sized tuna, a few extra large giant clams, etc etc. also constant turtles everywhere.

here are a couple of videos if anyone is interested, disclaimer this is just some guy with a gopro, not quality
mantas:
bunch of misc clips:

overall I'm glad I came and did this, it was very enjoyable and a different diving experience. having my own cabin for the current discounted aggressor price felt like incredible value for money given the quality of diving and the comfortable boat.

 

[bassplayer]

oh wanted to make some followup notes on the famous reef hooks and the current.
on this particular trip, the current was less than what i'm used to in cozumel. and some of the hook in spots had almost zero current, leading to the funny situation of divers hanging straight up from hooks for no real reason.
I'm sure there are times when the current is much stronger, but the feeling i had is that reef hooks are being used a bit mindlessly regardless of whether there is any point to it.

 

[cozcharlie]

With regards to using reef hooks when not necessary: while it is obviously hard for me to say what happened given I wasn’t there , in the past the Aggressor DMs have frequently adjusted their plans based on actual conditions (we probably only used our reef hooks only 1 out of every 2 times we were warned that we might need them ).

Also just wanted to flag that unlike Cozumel the Palau currents are heavily tide dependent (some Palau sites that have no current at slack tide will be blowing and going 30 minutes later ). Been there many times where I hooked in with minimal current and the current was trying to rip my mask off 15 minutes later. I would have thought Palau currents would be easier to predict with tide tables , but the last time I was there I noticed that a true local expert who had been diving there for at least 25 years only seemed to get the tide direction right about 2/3rds of the time.

I’m not trying to make a mountain out of a molehill from your one comment on reef hooks, just trying to make it clear for other divers that if the DM says to deploy reef hooks it is probably best just to roll with it even if it doesn’t seem necessary at the time (especially if you are carrying around a big camera like I do).

 

[bassplayer]

With regards to using reef hooks when not necessary: while it is obviously hard for me to say what happened given I wasn’t there , in the past the Aggressor DMs have frequently adjusted their plans based on actual conditions (we probably only used our reef hooks only 1 out of every 2 times we were warned that we might need them ).

Also just wanted to flag that unlike Cozumel the Palau currents are heavily tide dependent (some Palau sites that have no current at slack tide will be blowing and going 30 minutes later ). Been there many times where I hooked in with minimal current and the current was trying to rip my mask off 15 minutes later. I would have thought Palau currents would be easier to predict with tide tables , but the last time I was there I noticed that a true local expert who had been diving there for at least 25 years only seemed to get the tide direction right about 2/3rds of the time.

I’m not trying to make a mountain out of a molehill from your one comment on reef hooks, just trying to make it clear for other divers that if the DM says to deploy reef hooks it is probably best just to roll with it even if it doesn’t seem necessary at the time (especially if you are carrying around a big camera like I do).

thanks for the extra context, sounds like my particular trip happened to have low currents or we dodged them

 

[cetacean]

@bassplayer

Yep - there are times you hook into blue corner and there will be minimal or no current. This will also mean fewer grey reef sharks, and they will be farther off the wall. Having said this, many of the DMs will still have you hook in because it's part of the experience (somewhat lame).

You mentioned traveling to Palau was a pain. Palau is actually fairly well connected (you can get there on United, etc.). Glad you enjoyed the experience though. Diving in the Indo-Pacific is somewhat addictive...

 

[bassplayer]

@bassplayer

Yep - there are times you hook into blue corner and there will be minimal or no current. This will also mean fewer grey reef sharks, and they will be farther off the wall. Having said this, many of the DMs will still have you hook in because it's part of the experience (somewhat lame).

You mentioned traveling to Palau was a pain. Palau is actually fairly well connected (you can get there on United, etc.). Glad you enjoyed the experience though. Diving in the Indo-Pacific is somewhat addictive...

yah coming from phoenix for example it's not hard to end up with a routing like PHX -> LAX -> HNL -> GUM -> ROR and a very high price tag if you want to be in the polaris seats, that's all i meant.

we had the hooks out for 2 dives at ulong channel, 2 at blue corner, and 1 at siaes corner. maybe another one that i'm forgetting also.
of all those dives, I would say the hook was needed for zero, handy once, and marginal once. so it sounds like my experience was at the edge of the bell curve.

 

[cetacean]

yah coming from phoenix for example it's not hard to end up with a routing like PHX -> LAX -> HNL -> GUM -> ROR and a very high price tag if you want to be in the polaris seats, that's all i meant.

we had the hooks out for 2 dives at ulong channel, 2 at blue corner, and 1 at siaes corner. maybe another one that i'm forgetting also.
of all those dives, I would say the hook was needed for zero, handy once, and marginal once. so it sounds like my experience was at the edge of the bell curve.

Blue Corner and Ulong Channel - definitely useful when the current is running (if you want to stay put to view the sharks on parade)

 

[cetacean]

@bassplayer

Should have also added:
You could have taken the Island Hopper - HNL-MAJ-KWA-PNI-TKK-GUM instead... flgiht is twice as long but the landing strips you will see