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Diver's Log

This is the start of my writing career; July 21, 2005

Palau & Truk Lagoon, June 26-July 11, 2005

At the beginning of every adventure

 there is a great story to be told . . .

June 27:

It’s 4:15 am and there a light mist in the air, as my taxi cab rumbles through the streets of New York City’s Harlem. USA.  I am beginning the dive/vacation of a lifetime. This trip begins with mixed emotions, I will be halfway around the world for 14 days, away from my wife Barbara and our two-year-old twin “sons, Elijah and Isiah. This is not my first dive trip away for my family, but it might be the longest. Lot of things runs your mind at 4:15 am in a taxicab in Harlem.

As I snap back to my senses as the cabbie barks out the $55 fare request, we pull into the Continental Airlines International Terminal at Newark Airport.  He looks for a tip without even helping me take the bags out of the trunk. This adventure won’t be taking me to my favorite playground and my parents’ heritage in the Caribbean; but to the South Pacific islands of Micronesia.

After 24 hours of air travel, 9000 miles in the air, six movies, seven meals and four changes of plane, my first stop on this adventure to the South Pacific is the Republic of Palau in Micronesia western most island chain located about 900 miles southwest of Guam, 1,500 miles west of Hawaii and 9,000 miles west of New York City.

My dive buddies accompanying me are members of their local African-American dive clubs. I am proud to have divers from such clubs as the Atlanta Underwater Explorers, Nubin Dive Club of Houston, Texas, the Detroit, Michigan, African-American Scuba Klub “M.A.S.K., Washington D.C.’s Underwater Adventure Seekers, New Orleans Le Bon Temps Divers and my club and trip host, the Atlantic Rangers Scuba club of Philadelphia

Koror is the capital of Palau and is inhabited by approximately 70% of the state’s 17, 000 inhabitants. Koror is the center for most of Palau’s tourist activities, with about 20 resorts and hotels of varying quality and size. For those North American travelers seeking relaxation with all the comforts of home, world class resorts in Koror provide white sand beaches, swimming pools with swim up bars and top-notch restaurants. We stayed at the West Plaza by The Sea, a small hotel with a bar and restaurant that was clean and very friendly.

For the diver and snorkeler, Palau is one of the most extraordinary dive  and snorkeling destinations in the world today. Palau’s Gin Clear coral reefs provide home to more then 1,500 species of fish and over 700 species of coral. When the time comes for us to finally get into the water, we will be treated to a paradise of fabulous steep walls, blue holes, breathtaking gin-clear coral reefs and even World War II U.S. and Japanese shipwrecks.

June 29-July-3:

As we shake off the shackles of jet lag, we are picked up by Sam Scott of Sam’s Tours. A true tour guide at heart, Sam’s love of Palau and reputation for going the extra mile for his guests has earned him recognition for unparalleled personal service. As we arrive, we are warmly greeted by Matthew, Jimmy and Kevin, our dive masters for our Palau experience. As we board the Great White, our dive boat, we speed out to the world famous Rock Islands. Sam and his staff have decided to begin our diving experience at the world famous Blue Conner, sheer electricity of big fish action.

After  our initial briefing and checkout of our dive equipment, our group jumps into the clear blue warm waters of the Pacific. We descend down the wall through schooling fish of all types and are warmly greeted by eight curious gray reef sharks. We swim along the wall at about 85 feet and our new friends, the gray reef sharks, swim with us, although preferring to maintain about 30 feet of personal space. The wall at the Blue Conner is breathtaking.  In spite of the big fish action, I hardly noticed the colors of the coral on the wall. As we climb up the wall to about 55 feet, Matthew, one of our guides, brings us up to a flat spot on the wall where we hook up our reef hooks to dead coral. The Blue Conner is famous for its strong current, so I see why our reef hooks are so important. By this time our gray reef sharks are joined by white and black tip sharks, schools of over 100 arrow barracudas, Napoleon wrasses, schooling jacks, big groupers and countless schools of fish that I have never seen before. Our sharks seem content and happy with the amount of fish that visit the Blue Conner. When a couple of sharks treat us to a display of their raw horsepower and jet against the four-knot current for a quick snack, we now fully realize that we are humble guests in their house. It’s easy for me to see why the Blue Conner has become a must for serious divers from around the world. As we unhook ourselves and begin our slow climb back up to surface I feel almost like a child on Christmas morning.

Over the next three days with Matthew and Jimmy leading the way, we dive Ulong Channel, Siaes Tunnel, Ngemelis Wall, Virgin Hole, Blue Hole, Jellyfish Lake and return two more times to the Blue Conner for the sheer electricity and unparallel excitement.

Palau has a wide variety of restaurants, most with Asian themes. It seems I am the only one in our group who has difficulty using chopsticks,.  Everyone attempts to give me a crash course in their use, but after looking as if I might pass out due to the lack of food, a waiter compassionately provides me with western silverware. We also visited Dragon Tei, a very hip Japanese restaurant in Palau. One of the ladies in our group a world renowned traveler sampled some of the local high end cuisine including Fruit Bat Pie Soup covered with crusty Pie Shell. As her Fruit Bat Pie was brought from the kitchen, the action in Dragon Tei came to complete halt and quiet prevailed.  As she began to taste the Bat Pie and smiled, a cheer went through the restaurant along with the proud looks of the Master Chef Yuriko.This further proves that this was a ground breaking trip in and out of the ocean.

July 2, 2005:

Today is our last full day in Palau. Our flight to Palau doesn’t leave until 12:40am for the island of Chuuk, with 17-hour layover in Guam. At noon we are picked up at our hotel for a city tour of Koror, courtesy of the Palau Visitors Authority and Sam’s Tours. Our first stop is the Koror City Men’s Jail, that ‘s right the Koror City Men’s Jail. Were here not to review their prison management, but to visit their storyboard workshop for male prisoners. Storyboards, handmade wooden boards with local legends carved onto them, are Palau’s most popular souvenirs. We were impressed by the quality of the storyboards and the cash register began to ring. After we boarded the bus and compared notes, we found out the ladies seem to have 45% price advantage over us guys. It seems that even in Palau, it’s still a man’s world.  Our second stop on our city tour was Bai, a traditional Palauan meeting house.

There are two different types of Bais. One was for chiefs only, used for important meetings. Another was type of clubhouse. Youngsters were taught about fishing, hunting and carpentry, and young girls were brought from other villages to entertain the men during meetings. A Bai stands on a stone platform with four corner stones which served as back rests for chiefs during meetings.  The four corner posts of a Bai stood for the four leading Clans of a village whose chiefs governed the area. Many Bais were destroyed during typhoons, local wars and even World War II, when Palauans were moved away from their traditional villages. Today, only one original Bai stands in Airai State, built in 1890. Three replicas have been built in recent years, in Aimeliik, Melekeok and Koror which we visited.

Our third stop on our city tour of Koror was the aquarium. The Palau Aquarium is the interpretive division of the Palau International Coral Reef Center, a non-profit organization which opened in January of 2001 and has become one of the best land-based attraction for tourists and Palauans alike.We observed exhibits with green sea turtle, nurse sharks, white-tip sharks and groupers. In addition to coral reef animals, the aquarium also exhibits animals and plants found in mangrove and seagrass ecosystems.

Our last stop of the tour was to visit Sam’s Tours Bottom Time Grill and Bar during happy hour. After three rounds of drinks and a breathtaking sunset, we said farewell to our hosts in Palau with our dive log books filled with great dives and memories in our hearts

July 3, 2005:

It’s 12:30 a.m. and we are our on our first leg of our flight over to the Island of Chuuk; Truk Lagoon. We arrive in Guam at 4:45 am and our flight for Chuuk does not pull out to 7:40 pm. With a 15-hour layover, we hop over to the Guam Hilton Resort and Spa for some much needed rest. The Hilton. a beachfront property, is located in the Tumon Bay Resort area. We spent the day doing a champagne brunch and relaxing by the pool. At 5:45 pm a Hilton van takes us back to the airport for a 7:40 pm departure to Truk Lagoon. We pull away back from the gate on time, and within minutes, we are rolling down runway 32-L towards Chuuk.  Ninety minutes later our captain puts our Boeing 737-400 into a steep decent and banks hard over the lagoon and we land at Weno Airport. In the back of my mind I am wondering if the U.S. Navy pilots form Task Force 58 Operation Hailstone had the same kind of flight plan as they flew over Truk Lagoon and sent some 50 Japanese Imperial Navy ships to the bottom of the lagoon. One of the Pacific’s largest lagoons, Truk Lagoon was a major naval base for the Japanese Imperial Navy during World War II. During two days of heavy bombing on February 17, 1944, the U.S. Naval Task 58 sent some 50 Japanese Naval ships to the bottom of the lagoon. The U.S. Navy attack, code named Operation Hailstorm, began that morning and lasted 48-hours.When the dust settled, Truk Lagoon was effectively destroyed, although it wasn’t liberated by U.S. Marines until after V.J. Day.  Sixty years later we are here to visit and dive these Japanese Naval ships and airplanes. The Odyssey’s Captain Lenny with his two vans is there to meet us and take us right over to the Odyssey, our home for the next eight days. After filling out some minor paperwork with the operations manager, Cara, we unpack and settle in to our spacious cabins. The Odyssey is a fully carpeted and air conditioned luxury yacht with huge cabins with flat screen TVs and DVD players. After a late night snack a sip of sake, we turn in for the evening.

July 4-6, 2005:

The roar of the Odyssey’s engines jars me from a deep sleep at 6:30 am. Captain Lenny has begun backing us away from our mooring in front of the Blue Lagoon Resort. As I come upstairs to the dining room, Head Chef Poorly has a full hot breakfast waiting for us. There is a buzz of excitement has Captain Lenny pulls back on the throttles and begins docking maneuvers. Our first dive of the week will be the Heian Maru.At our dive briefing, we learn that the Heian Maru was a submarine tender packed with torpedoes, periscopes and artillery shells. Finally, Captain Lenny declares that the pool is open and everyone hits the water except me. I am the last person to get dressed, so I enter the water for a solo dive.Eveyone should always dive with buddy, although this morning I am a little anti-social due to the fact that I am missing my family. I double check my gear and bring a pony bottle as redundant air supply for my dive down to the decks of The Heian Maru. I inform Madison, our dive master, of my solo dive plan, and I slip under the clear warm waters of Truk Lagoon. I hit the deck mid-ship in about 75 feet of water. I made a quick 360 degree sweep of the deck to get my bearings.  I observed two ladies from my group checking out Hold #2 where submarine torpedoes were stored. I begin to swim in the opposite direction towards the promenade deck level walkway. As I turned on my underwater flash light, it seems that the crew of the Heian Maru had used this walkway to stash submarine periscopes. Only 20 feet down the walkway there are four periscopes lying side by side. Just as in The Hunt for Red October, the distinctive fold-up-handles and eye pieces can be seen at the far end of the of the 50-foot long periscopes. Since I am diving solo, I choose to stay in the open walkways with natural light and pass on going down some stairs into the dark deep center of the Heian Maru.After checking my air computer, I find out that I am down to 1800 psi and I begin my slow climb back up to the Odyssey.

Over the next five days we log dives on the Shinkoku Maro, the Destroyer Fumitzuki, Hoki Maru, Sankisan Maru, Fujikawa Maru, the Rio De Janeiro Maru, Kensho Maru and the Japanese sub I-169, which was part of the Task Force which bomb Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

July 7, 2005:

The high point of our diving in Truk Lagoon was the San Francisco Maru, where history was made. On this date four African-American women divers, Melvina Edwards of the Atlanta Underwaters Seekers, Tara Gauither from Le BonTemps Divers of New Orleans, Adrienne McAdory Underwater Adventure Seekers of Washington D.C. and Brenda Berliner of NABS were the first group of African-American women divers to descend to  this world class wreck. The San Francisco Maru lies upright in 210 feet of water, making it one of the deepest wrecks in the lagoon. This wreck is still in reasonably good shape structurally and is loaded with three Japanese Light Type 95 Mitsubishi tanks, Isuzu 94 light trucks, airplane engines, stacks of aircraft bombs, ocean mines, crates of ammunition and aircraft wheel assemblies. Personal effects belonging to the crew can be found along with cooking utensils, china pieces, beer bottles and medicine bottles. The San Francisco Maru is considered by many to be an exemplary standard for wreck diving excitement in Truk Lagoon.

July 10, 2005

Over the last thirteen days, I have logged 29dives in between Palau and the Truk Lagoon. I have found Micronesia’s culture, its underwater landscape, World War II era wrecks and marine life priceless. Not many countries can come close to Micronesia’s combination of the big city resorts of Guam, the world class diving of Palau and the Truk Lagoon and the simple life found in Chuuk.

As I climb the stairs to our waiting Continental Micronesia 737, I know now why so many people have left their hearts in the islands of the South Pacific.

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