Like fish

Friends, for our second day of sampling, Hanny and I went to two sites, Drop Off and Taoch. Drop Off is a barrier reef on the eastern side of Palau, and it is one of our outer reef sites. We made sure to dive there during high tide, when the current was likely to be slowest, because the site is very exposed and can have dangerously fast current. As it was, we were only 10 feet below the sea surface and got tossed around by the surging waves, so it was very challenging to hold position while sampling. As I hammered steel rods into dead coral to deploy our settlement tiles and chiseled pieces off of young corals, Hanny acted as my anchor. She held onto a dead coral piece with one hand and gripped my gear with the other. Teamwork.

The entrance to Taoch. Pictures do not do this place justice,
and I need to get better at photographing birds.

Exhausted, we crawled back into the boat and asked the driver to take us to our next site. The current was picking up, so we headed in to an enclosed lagoon site, Taoch. Friends, I wish I could take you each personally to Palau and show you the pure beauty of this place. Taoch is my favorite site so far, and pictures just do not do it justice. We drove through the narrow passage into the enclosed lagoon and anchored the boat. We were surrounded on all sides by sheer rock cliffs covered in green plants - trees, vines, flowers. The air was completely still, as was the water. It was protected and hot and shaded and silent. Then there were birds - black and white, with long, thin feathers trailing behind them and sharp, angular wings that made them look like spacecraft. One flew closer, and I could see a white oval on its forehead crowning its jet-black body. The white ones had streaks of light blue on the sides of their face and neck. I followed them with my eyes as they dove and glided and flapped. I wondered what bird family they might belong to, and I thought about what the first humans must have been feeling when they arrived in this place centuries ago. Wonder, adrenaline, awe, relief, curiosity. Dear goodness, I love this place.

Colorful coral reef at Taoch

The other reason why Taoch is my favorite site is because of the diversity of corals in the lagoon. I had always been told that the Pacific had a much higher diversity of corals than, for example, the Caribbean, and after seeing Taoch, I believe it. There were star corals and brain corals and this branching thing that I think is called Anacropora. They were orange and purple and yellow and brown, and they were all growing next to each other in this complex mess of shapes and textures. Thank goodness there was no current in the lagoon, because if I had struggled to hold position, I would have run into and damaged the beautiful creatures. Taoch was absolutely gorgeous.

By the end of the day, Hanny and I had spent 6 hours underwater. We felt like fish as we finally hauled ourselves back into the boat. It was a beautiful and successful day.