3 FEBRUARY 2015 BLUE CORNER HOOKING IN Palau is one of the few places that uses "reef hooks", allowing you to stick a big steel fishhook into DEAD coral at the top edge of the reef. The you put SOME AIR (not full) in your BCD - now you're an underwater balloon - a diver tied to the reef by a string. This holds you in place so that you have two hands for your camera to take pictures of the pelagics swimming by. You have to take care not to put too little air in because: 1. You'll float without tension and might drift in front of your own hook with the surge and unhook from the reef. This is a problem because if you're not paying attention (tunnel vision), you could shoot to the top of the water column doing an injury to yourself; or 2). if you're quick and realize what's happened, you might not rocket to the surface, but you'll certainly drift way from the group. With the strong current, you may not be able to hold yourself, or kick back to your starting point. SHARKS, SHARKS, SHARKS . . . raw in the wild . . . not feeding or chumming: white-tipped, black-tipped & grey, two pods of dolphin - and the pet Napoleon cruising by every so often, thinking he was our mascot Due to upwelling cold currents. the visibility did not allow for great photography. SOMETHING NOT OFTEN SEEN - a predator having a meal. I saw this round-nosed unicorn fish grab TWO meals as I was watching the sharks at Blue Corner. Napoleon wrasse I wasn't joking about that Bumphead wrasse getting friendly. He came in so close that the camera couldn't adjust quickly enough. LUNCH ON AN ISLAND Boats coming in for lunch . . . Our individual "lunch bucket" Serving lunch . . . Eatin' & talkin' CHANDELIER CAVE, Malakal Harbor From FISH 'N FINS: Chandelier Cave is a cave system made up of five separate chambers. Each chamber is connected to the other and each can be entered. Important Notice: Divers who are claustrophobic and/or have concerns about caves or diving in darkness should avoid this dive. This cave is "live" and still producing stalactites and stalagmites
You swim in a line into a large BLACK hole in the reef; an UW sort of Mammoth Cave (KY) (but smaller); the floor is WATER. The chambers are still sealed, and even though divers exhale CO2 and air, there are still drops forming. Of course you have to have a guide who's been there and knows the route - in & out with a good light - so as not to surface into the pointy end of a stalactite and get a nasty head wound. The smudges or blurs in the photos are water drops from the camera being lifted into the air to take photographs.
Neal writes: Yesterday at Sam's after the boat gets back and I'm washing and packing gear like crazy, an Aussie comes up and says, "Hi, mate. I just wanted to say you're the jolliest Santa I've ever seen!" I replied, "That's because Santa is on vacation where it's WARM!"
Then I'm in the lobby - shorts, yellow t-shirt, do-rag on my head, shark tooth around my neck, when TWO Japanese tourists approach and want pictures with me. Natcherly, I said of course. Pic taken in January 2009, Florida. Shark teeth from dives at Venice Beach, FL

DIVE JELLYFISH LAKE