My two new favorite words are “Bait Ball”! We discovered the magic of bait balls in the German Channel, Palau during our time there in January. During incoming currents tons of nutrients are swept into the channel. This infusion of plankton brings in school after school of fish. These extraordinary aggregations of small fishes are called bait balls—they’re bait for ocean predators.
We found ourselves in the middle of layers of fusiliers, black snappers, jacks and unicorn fish all swirling around us and obscuring our vision in the most wonderful way. Below us swam graceful reefs sharks that were happy to be invited to the dinner party.
And then….cue the Mantas! Soon Mantas swooped in joining the food orgy. At one time there were seven Mantas around us giving us a spectacular underwater ballet performance. It was poetry in motion as they came towards us in formation and then somersaulted (called “barrel rolling”) so close to us we had to be careful not to touch them.
It was truly glorious and this alone is worth returning to Palau to experience.
Even though Jellyfish Lake was closed due to a die-off of the jellies we had plenty of other areas to explore.
German Channel and Ulong Channel were favorites due to the variety of marine life and coral.
In Mandarin Lake we found the small but spectacularly-colored mandarin fish. Soft coral arch featured voluptuous soft coral. Big Drop off had a magnificent wall that we liked so much we returned twice.
-
- Mandarin Fish
Our home for out time in Palau was the Rock Island Aggressor. The friendly crew, the incredible food and comfortable accommodations made us very sad to leave. I think the only remedy is a return in 2020!
-
- Long jawed mackeral
-
- Beautiful corals
