I
am in the throes of completing a book on marine ecosystems.
It has taken more than a year of my life to distil the
knowledge of several hundred scientific articles combined
with the results of an exciting new way to model food
webs that are the basis of ecosystem functioning, i.e.
fish eat fish. It has been a dry exercise, difficult
initially to digest the information, difficult to present
it in an easily digestible way. The message is basically
that we (fishers, spearfishers) are fishing out the
seas, leaving only small inedible fish to look at, a
process called fishing down the food web.
But last week, it all came to life. I was submerged
on a tiny reef area called Ulong Channel in Palau (real
name Belau), itself a tiny dot in the massive Pacific
Ocean, 1,000 miles southeast of Manila, 4,500 miles
west of Hawaii. There I saw the whole food web in action
all at once--I could see its importance in the scheme
of things.
The
Ulong Channel is one of those places where water surges
out of the lagoon on the west side of the Palau islands
and is spat out along with stray divers into the Philippine
Sea, with a few thousand metres of water between scuba
tank and seabed.
The first thing you notice about diving in Palau is
the clarity of the water. Dive sites are reached by
fast--I mean really fast--outboard-powered boats that
skim between the 300 or more rock islands across a palette
of colours from pale sapphire to turquoise to deep blues
and purples. Breathtaking in more ways than one.
The second thing about diving in Palau is the organization.
There are marker buoys for dive boats to tie onto, and
these are right through the islands--no anchors on corals.
And between dives, there are beaches with a few benches
and discreet toilets. These surface-interval-cum-lunch
sites are incredibly pretty, locations out of dream
movies and, as I saw, cleaned daily, thanks to a US$15
dive permit that everyone pays, for one day or a month.
These were about the only differences I noticed in the
ten years since I had been diving there.
I back-rolled into the inner end of Ulong Channel with
my dive buddy Candy. We equalized our way gently down
and leveled out at about 20 metres onto a coral ridge
where there was no current, but apparently there was
some upwelling just beyond in Big Blue, where life and
death games were being played out in a subtle, almost
casual, manner between sharks, groupers, jacks and fusiliers.
On this dive, I was with Fish N' Fins, whose dive shop
is in a sheltered cove looking out on rock islands across
an emerald channel. There are now 27 dive tour operators
in Palau, so, although some are seat-of-the-pants outfits,
there is plenty of choice.
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However,
you get what you pay for: the bigger operators have more
activities and back-up, offer advanced diving courses,
and carry safety and first-aid equipment. When you think
about it, Palau diving combines the sophistication and
reliability you expect in much more developed localities,
but in a country of less than 20,000 people, with a scattered
land area of only 200 square miles.
Candy and I weren't thinking about such logistics when
we looked around us in the Ulong Channel. Oliver, our
relaxed but careful guide, had advised us to stay fairly
still and just watch. On the edge of the drop-off, there
they were, those sharks, groupers, jacks and fusiliers,
streaming past us as if on cue.
After
a few minutes, we began to see a pattern. The fusiliers,
and there must have been a thousand of them in a tight
school, were billowing along the reef edge, feeding on
plankton. On the sides and right behind the school were
about a dozen, giant, striped jacks looking like foxes
guarding chickens. Trailing behind were some nine grey
reef sharks and a few big brown groupers. The parade moved
backwards and forwards along the reef edge, sometimes
fast, sometimes slow. Outwardly peaceful but a tense scene--the
jacks seemed to be putting a bit too much energy into
their task, while the groupers were keeping up without
hardly moving a fin, pretending they were lumps of coral
(well, you don't usually see groupers strolling so far
above the reef) and the sharks were ambling along in their
sinusoidal way, looking as if they would rather be somewhere
else.
Suddenly, everything sped right up: the fusiliers turned
a little too quickly, the jacks darted in and the school
wheeled in confusion, flashing ventral white where we
had seen only their dull lateral colors before; the sharks
accelerated into the melee; the groupers continued to
act like drifting corals. It was clear from the satisfied
way the jacks returned to their cruising stations and
from the chewing motions of some sharks that there were
a few less fusiliers. The sharks fell back into their
ambling pace, the fusiliers got back into feeding mode,
and all was peaceful again, as if nothing had happened.
It reminded me of Philippine politics.
Palau
diving is rated best in the world according to surveys
by major diving magazines. There is a wide variety of
sites--drop-offs, tunnels, caves, channels and wrecks.
Some of the diving sites, especially Blue Hole and Blue
Corner, have become world famous. Dive and see why. And
there are other attractions, the rock island formations
themselves and their inland lakes. Snorkelling among the
countless jellyfish of Jellyfish Lake is an unforgettable
experience, particularly after hearing Divine and Jane,
from the new Pan Pacific Hotel in Manila, describe them
as pulsating silicon implants.
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Meanwhile,
at Ulong Channel, Candy was grinning wildly as the fusiliers,
jacks, sharks and groupers swirled by so close that some
of them swam around either side of us; you could almost
hear the fish talking to each other. After about 40 minutes,
our Fish 'n Fins guide motioned us off the ridge and into
the channel itself, where the current picked up and gave
us a leisurely ride over beautiful sand and coral terrain,
with sharks and a turtle to watch as we sailed along,
slowly rising to the surface.
Kayaking around the many islands is fast becoming Palau's
second most popular activity. Day kayaking tours from
several of the island's operators, such as Fish ‘n Fins,
include snorkelling and exploring as well as paddling,
and for the more adventurous might also include climbing
and cliff jumping.
For divers coming from other Asian cities, Manila is usually
the connection point for Palau. The Pan Pacific Hotel
in downtown Manila is a good choice for the stopover,
both because it is the sister hotel to the Palau Pacific
and because it has great rooms and service (for example,
the butler arrived within a few minutes of the wake-up
call with tea and coffee; no need to make that first big
decision of the day).
Looking back, Palau's underwater wilderness is a wonderful,
but fragile world. It would not take many fishers to turn
areas like the Ulong Channel into empty gardens. But,
with no foreseeable human population pressure and a very
environment-concerned government, Palau's reefs look set
to remain among of the world's best dive sites.
Jay
Maclean is a marine biologist and artist living in Manila
and Anilao, Philippines (jmaclean@epic.net).
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