Tropic Dancer Captains Report Nov 4 14, 2012
Air/Water: 29-32C
Visibility: Great
Topside Conditions: Mostly calm
Sea Surface: Mostly flat
We spent a whooping 10 nights at sea for our latest charter; we had a very cosmopolitan mixture of guests from Russia, Germany, Belgium and the United States.
We started our diving after a wonderful power point inspired dive deck briefing on Monday morning. We loaded up our dive skiff that goes by the name of Sherman and descended from our cradle into the beautiful calm Philippine Sea. We spent our first day of the charter exploring some shipwrecks from the Second World War. The
Helmet wreck was our first dive and this unknown wreck gets its name from the Japanese helmets that are still in one of the cargo holds. We saw a crocodile fish, which was a nice bonus. Next up was
Iro Maru, another wreck that is a huge tanker. Here we saw a huge school of horse eyes jacks and a lot of anemone fish can be found around some of the king posts. After lunch our history lesson continued at the
Chuyo Maru where we saw a lot of lionfish. Our last dive of the day was on a small Taiwanese fishing boat, which is on the bottom of
Lighthouse Channel.
We moved over to
Ulong Island on Tuesday and spent some quality time in the famous channel where we saw everything from tiny head shield slugs to six foot grey reef sharks. At one time we counted sixteen sharks in the mouth of the channel.
Siaes Tunnel was next and we found some pretty rare fish inside this huge tunnel including the pygmy blue back angelfish and the decorated dart fish. We went to
Siaes Corner after lunch and hooked into the reef and watched a school of grey reef sharks including some very cute juveniles go cruising up and down in front of us.
German Channel was our first dive on Wednesday and we were lucky enough to see a couple of manta rays at the cleaning station one of which went straight over Jan and Marys head. We saw a cuttlefish on the way through the channel and a couple of white tip sharks were crashed out on the sand.
Turtle Cove was next and everybody enjoyed the wonderful wall, which is covered in soft corals of many colors, and there are plenty of turtles to see around the place. After lunch we went to
Ngedebus Corner where again the wall is covered in soft corals, wire coral and huge sea fans. A leopard shark was the highlight of dive four at
Ngedebus Coral Garden. The shark was happy to just lie on the sand and let everybody take pictures. We had the added bonus of seeing a couple of cuttlefish that looked like a courting couple about to lay their eggs on the reef. It was a nice surprise to see the cuttlefish as we have not seen them for a few months.
Thursday morning began at the jewel of Palaus crown
Blue Corner. We had a good current on the incoming side and the shark action was out of this world as right now it is mating time. The poor female sharks we covered in bite marks and scratches and the amorous males were chasing them all over the place, We had huge schools of black snapper, giant trevally and barracuda all mixed in with the sharks and it really was a great way to start the day. Next was
New Drop Off and again this dive had so much going on you needed eyes in the back of your head to see everything. We had a huge hammerhead at the hook in area and we watched a hungry moral eel devour an octopus. We were surrounded by big schools of fusiliers, stripped jacks, and barracuda. There were even a couple of green turtles that had remoras attached to their shell. We visited
Blue Holes after lunch and the great day continued with an awesome dive in the huge cavern where we saw the disco clams, which caused some of our guests to break out into a Bee Gees style disco dance! We finished up the day with a couple of wall dives at
Big Drop Off were we saw some nice nudibranchs and flat worms.
We headed south to Peleliu on Friday morning and spent the morning at
Peleliu Corner. We had a good current as we drifted towards the hook in area. Again the shark action was awesome and we also saw some humphead parrotfish scraping away at the reef with their powerful beaks.
Yellow Wall was another great dive and we lost count of the amount of green turtles that we saw here. Most of our guests took the chance to visit the island of Peleliu after lunch while the others dived on
Orange Beach Coral Garden.
West Wall was the four thirty dive and we saw plenty of anemones along wall home to Clarkes anemone fish and porcelain crabs.
We explored the cut side of
Peleliu Corner on Saturday morning and were greeted by over twenty reef sharks. We stayed hooked in and watched the show with schools of unicorn fish and snapper hanging in the current. When we unhooked we drifted over the plateau and saw the famous palette surgeonfish that is also known as Dory from the movie
Finding Nemo. This is the only dive site in Palau where you can see this wonderful fish. We revisited
Yellow Wall due to popular demand before leaving our anchorage in Peleliu to head back towards the German Channel area. We saw another four manta rays at
German Channel feeding in the shallows. We did a fourth dive at the
Coral Garden and saw many lionfish hunting. We were joined by a few hawksbill turtles and saw a couple of nice nudibranchs.
We made a final trip to
Blue Corner on Sunday morning and counted over twenty grey reef sharks at the hook in area.
New Drop Off was next up and we saw a couple of green turtles sitting on the reef. There was a well-camouflaged scorpion fish and the titan triggerfish were in defensive mode as they guarded their nests from intruders. After lunch we went to
Ferns Wall where we enjoyed great visibility and some good macro subjects like long nose hawk fish and boxer banded shrimps.
German Channel was dive number four and again we were blessed to see five different manta rays during the dive.
We headed to Ulong Island on Monday with
Shark City being our first dive.
Sandy Paradise was next up where we explored the sandy patches looking for stingrays and white tip sharks.
Ulong Channel was our first dive after lunch and we had a great show from the grey reef sharks that were so close to our guests that you could smell the fish on their breath. We drifted inside the channel and looked in awe at the biggest formation of lettuce coral that you will ever see in your life. We finished up at the two giant clams that are coated with soft coral and are over a hundred years old.
Tuesday started with a snorkel with thirteen million jellyfish at the world famous
Jellyfish Lake. We finished up an excitement filled ten days with a dive at
Chandelier Cave and a sneak peak at one of most colorful fish in the world - the mandarin fish.
The crew would like to thank our guests Rita, Mary, Jan, Mary, Regine, Benny, Horst, Alexey, Tanya, Roman, Sergey, Alexey, Nurlan, Benny, Regine, Mikhail, Alexey, Vlad, Alexandre and Nikolay for making the trip to see us in Palau this week. It was a pleasure seeing some familiar faces again this week and we hope you enjoyed your time with on the Tropic Dancer.
Written by Kris Mears (Tropic Dancer crew)