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  • Good morning everyone, It's Saturday, May 7th.

  • I recently got back from my trip to Palau, and wanted to share some of it with you.

  • Now, even though I was there for work most of the time, I did get a chance to go diving.

  • The first place we went was a place called "Turtle Wall", which aptly lived up to its

  • name.

  • Now, all species of sea turtle in the United States are on the endangered species list,

  • so they are protected in the United States. However,

  • the same is not true down in Palau. It's actually open season on them during certain

  • parts of the year. People actually kill them and

  • make soups. After seeing them swim around like this and seeing how cute they are I can't

  • understand how anyone would go out and kill them.

  • Now, the Republic of Palau is a small island nation about a two hour flight from Guam.

  • We work with them a lot with search and and law

  • enforcement so I get the opportunity to fly down

  • there once or twice a year. Now, their main industry is actually tourism, specifically

  • for people coming down for SCUBA diving. It's

  • literally ranked as one of the top places in the

  • world to go SCUBA diving. In fact, during my last trip back to the states, when I was

  • flying out of Norfolk there was a whole SCUBA dive

  • trip that was going on the same flight as me from

  • Norfolk to Guam, and then on continuing on to Palau just to go SCUBA diving down there.

  • Kind of shows how popular it is.

  • Now, I asked the dive master what made Palau so much better for diving than anywhere else

  • in the world. His answer was one word: Currents.

  • See, Palau is uniquely situated. There are a whole bunch of islands that are very closely

  • spaced together. And the currents in that area are also very strong. The islands actually

  • help shape and funnel the currents into a very narrow portion. So when you go to those

  • narrow portions, all the nutrients in the water are

  • all funneled into one tiny space. So all the tiny fish like to congregate in that tiny

  • space to get the nutrients, and the larger fish go

  • after the smaller fish, and so on and so forth.

  • Of course, that also means the area is home to predators as well.

  • Now recently Palau has put into effect a lot of new fisheries laws aimed at protecting

  • their natural resources, including the first in

  • their kind; creating a shark sanctuary throughout their exclusive economic zone. It's illegal

  • for any one to catch, kill, or harvest any sharks.

  • Now Guam and the CNMI have also recently introduced shark protection laws and the US is

  • considering implementing it nationwide, although that law hasn't taken effect yet.

  • Have no fear, the sharks that were here weren't exactly large enough to be too much of a

  • concern. They were nice to watch floating around, and hopefully not get too close to.

  • And getting too close to wildlife is actually one of my pet pieve while SCUBA diving. See,

  • one of the commonly accepted tenants for SCUBA divers is that you're not supposed to do

  • anything which may hurt, damage, harass, or interact with the wildlife. You know, touch

  • any of the coral, which takes long to grow -you

  • don't want to break pieces off. You want to be

  • careful with your buoyancy, so you stay off the reef and don't affect anything. and

  • generally try to be as minimally invasive as possible.

  • Which is why when we saw these Japanese guys with their TV cameras, we were kind of

  • disappointed. Clearly, based off the size of the cameras and everything, this was actually

  • for TV, but still, they;re going around harassing

  • this manta ray pretty strongly, which we all thought was a pretty boorish thing to do.

  • Well, I hope you guys liked this and I'll see you next time.

Good morning everyone, It's Saturday, May 7th.

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潛水帕勞 - 2011年5月7日 (Diving Palau - 07 May 2011)

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    Yue Hua Liu 發佈於 2021 年 01 月 14 日
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