8 Pacific dive legends

THE REPUBLIC OF PALAU

We’re not sure how long it would take you to travel to the ends of the earth. But you can get from San Diego to Land’s End in just three hours.

Our dive begins in the most pedestrian manner possible: We giant-stride off the back of the boat and settle to a 35-foot bottom, mostly sand with some sparse corals. But as we lazily kick west, a cobalt horizon materializes before us. We approach and drop over it, and just like that, we’re in Wonderland.

It’s like looking at the Grand Canyon — from a viewpoint 50 feet out, in mid-air. Waterfalls of red, blue and yellow appear in the distance, only to materialize as dense schools of brilliantly colored tropical fish, following nutrient streams over the drop-off. A giant humphead wrasse tucks in next to us, mimicking our every move; all he needs is a collar and a tag to complete the illusion of an underwater Labrador retriever. As we level off at 90 feet, gray reef sharks cruise past and give us the once-over as turtles fin overhead and a pair of eagle rays bank in the open-water distance.

If our consoles had a gauge for sensory overload, its needle would be on the peg about now. We glide with the current, steadily gaining altitude on the vast underwater wall until, at a signal from the divemaster, we hook slender steel cables into dead spots on the coral up top, clip the tag ends to our BCs, add a puff of air and make like the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, floating in the current on our tethers. Within minutes, gray and whitetip reef sharks tuck in next to us, some within arm’s reach. They are wondering, probably, what these bubble-blowing visitors are having for lunch … and why we occasionally emit these @#$% blinding flashes of light. Then, too soon, we unhook and ascend through cylinders of hundreds of barracuda that drift with us into open water. And when we break the surface, the first mate doubles with laughter as we say, in perfect unison, “Let’s do it again.”

That, in a nutshell, is Blue Corner, a drift dive off the southwestern corner of an island called Ngobasangel in the Republic of Palau. Less than 178 square miles in size, peppered across the Pacific southeast of the Philippines, Palau is the westernmost island group in the Caroline Islands of Micronesia, and has been independent (albeit U.S.-protected) since 1994.

Local dive operators will quickly tell you that Blue Corner is the highest-rated drift dive in Micronesia and that nearby Ngemelis Island has Big Drop-Off, the best wall dive in the Pacific. But many visitors feel those descriptions are too limiting; these sites are often mentioned as the best in the world.

Palau’s islands — so lush and green that they often look like clumps of broccoli poking out of the sea — form a line of demarcation between the true Pacific and the Philippine Sea. The diving here is extremely diverse, from the big-blue experiences of high-current drift dives to the military wreckage of the lagoons to Jellyfish Lake, where snorkeling with non-venomous freshwater jellies is universally recalled as being like diving in an oversized lava lamp.

In a country where tourism is a major industry and the making of handicrafts is still a larger industry than, say, construction, visitors are always welcome, and you’re apt to see American, Japanese and Australian divers in equal numbers. Topside, you can hike into the hills and visit waterfalls on Babelthuap (the main island), visit caves and World War II Japanese gun emplacements on Peleliu and imagine what it must have been like to see half of the United States Navy coming your way, or stroll and shop for can’t-find-it-elsewhere items like hand-pressed coconut massage oil. If you’re looking for the full tropical Pacific experience, you’ll find it in Palau.

As the official publication of the PADI Diving Society, Sport Diver is the magazine divers turn to each month to find out what’s going on in their world. Sport Diver is the ultimate source for up to date information on dive culture, equipment, travel, training and PADI Diving Society activities.

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