Diving in Palau: The Best Adrenaline Diving In the World

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If you are a diver intent on experiencing world-class scuba, you should definitely add diving in Palau to your bucket list. Get ready for action-packed, adrenaline inducing scuba diving – with sharks, manta rays, Hawksbill & Green sea turtles galore!

Where is Palau Located?

Palau is in the western Pacific Ocean, 950 miles (1500 km) southeast of the Philippines. Guam is its other closest neighbor.

Declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in July 2012, this scuba diving mecca is comprised of 250+ islands.

Interestingly, it’s also home to cool World War II wrecks, since some significant battles took place in Palau. Jake Seaplane and the Iro Maru shipwreck are a few of my favorites. The Japanese Navy plane crashed as a result of engine trouble after take-off. And, Iro Maru sank after a submarine’s torpedo hit her engine room.

Diving in Palau = World-Class Adrenaline Dive Adventures

Since Palau diving can involve ripping three to four knot currents, it’s best suited for experienced/advanced divers.  Given that many of the dives and wrecks are at deeper depths, having your Advanced Open Water (AOW) certification is helpful. AOW allows you to dive to 100 feet, whereas Open Water recreational limits are 60 feet.

Additionally, accumulating 50-100 dives in Hawaii, Cozumel, the Caribbean, and/or Thailand will allow you to perfect key scuba diving skills.

Ensuring you are comfortable with the following will prepare you for Palau and improve your diving confidence:

• Controlling your buoyancy
• Inflating/deflating your Buoyancy Compensator Device (BCD)
• Deploying a Safety Marker Buoy (SMB)
• Swimming against current
• Back-rolling into the water

During my first visit to Palau in 2008, I had only 60 dives and ZERO current experience. The Blue Corner and New Drop Off dive sites scared the beejezus out of me.

On my second trip, New Drop Off treated me to my first ever down current and then a ripping current that switched directions, making for an exhilarating dive.

FUN FACT: Did you know that watching which way the fish are facing will tell you which direction the current is coming from?

Fortunately, our Palau Siren dive guide reminded us of this before we dropped in. Seeing pyramid butterfly fish suddenly face upward alerted me to the fact I would soon find myself in a down current.

In this short video below, you can tell those scuba divers hooked in next to me are facing into a strong current as their bubbles are flowing behind them horizontally. With no current, bubbles usually travel vertically.

While I loved the adrenaline rush at these action-packed dives sites, I feared (and rightly so) the strong currents might rip my mask and regulator off. Using my right hand to secure them to my face anytime I pivoted my head ensured this didn’t happen.

Fortunately, 300+ dives, and heavy current diving experience from Maldives, Indonesia, and Philippines diving trips, had improved my skills and confidence. This allowed me to enjoy the challenging dives and even calm another diver who freaked out after the down current.

Credit Palau’s government for its biodiversity

Palau’s remarkable biodiversity is a direct result of its leadership’s vision.

Recognizing the need to protect its underwater riches, Palau named the “70 Islands” as a Wildlife Preserve in 1956. And, in 2015, Palau designated 193,000 square miles as a National Marine Sanctuary. This reserve, larger than the state of California, is now the sixth largest in the world!

Sharks are the stars of Palau diving

Look forward to seeing 25-60 sharks during one dive in Palau! Blacktip, whitetip, silvertip, and grey sharks are plentiful and cruise Palau’s walls and corners. This spectacle is attributable to the fact that Palau recognizes the sharks’ importance to the ecosystem and created the world’s first shark and ray sanctuary in 2009. The President has been quoted saying “a shark is worth $1.9M USD in tourism over its life span.”

Sadly, other countries don’t have the same protections for sharks. The shark fin trade has decimated shark populations worldwide, resulting in population declines of 90-99%. As we’ve dove around the world the past 10 years, we’ve noticed precipitous declines. We are often lucky to see 10 sharks in a week.

CONSERVATION TIP: When traveling in Asia, don’t consume shark fin soup as this contributes to the shark fin trade.

Blue Corner Palau – the greatest underwater show on Earth

Blue Corner attracts huge numbers of sharks surfing the current and patrolling the plateau. Tidal shifts at this site, which juts into the ocean like an elbow, bring in the action and incredible visibility. Having had the privilege to dive it four times now, it ranks as one of my top 5 favorite dive sites in the world.

Hook in and hang like Superman in the current

After drifting along the wall, your dive guide will signal you to ready your reef hook, kick over the top of the plateau, and hook into dead coral at the corner’s edge.

PRO TIP: Don’t swim in front of other divers who are hooked in and scare the sharks away. If you make this mistake, they will yell at you through their regulators and flip you off. Make sure to swim behind the divers and drift past them until you find an open area.

After hooking in and inflating your BCD with a small burst of air, you’ll float effortlessly in place above the coral, thereby minimizing any chances of damaging the coral or scraping yourself. Hanging in place like Superman and marveling at the sharks and jack fish surfing the current is an experience like no other.

FUN FACT: Many believe Palau dive guides invented the reef hook, which is a stainless steel hook attached to a six to eight feet long rope. After getting my reef hook in Palau, I’ve used it in the Maldives, Komodo and Raja Ampat.

You should hope for ripping currents as this will multiply the action exponentially. Large aggregations of sharks, jacks, barracuda and beautiful schools of fish are pretty much guaranteed. Strong currents allow sharks to rest and ride the current. Watching as they pivot their streamlined bodies to face the current head-on and maximize flow into their gills is mesmerizing.

After unhooking, you’ll drift over the plateau and various encounters will emblazon in your memory why this dive site is so unique. As two green sea turtles were swimming in front of us and foraging for food, we had three eagle rays glide in from the right.

We then came across two Bumphead Parrotfish chomping on the coral, a huge Napoleon Wrasse swimming in the distance and a massive yellow striped barracuda flitting past.

Opt for Palau’s liveaboards for early access to the best dive sites

Liveaboard dive boats are floating hotels with 12-24 divers with the mantra “Eat, Sleep and Dive.” You dive directly from the large boat or a smaller “chase” boat for 7-10 days. If given the option, we almost always opt for liveaboards. Why you ask?

• Visit more dive sites and access remote areas since the boats often travel overnight
• Dive the premier locations during the best currents/tides and avoid the crowds
• Log more dives – typically 3-5 per day are offered
• Minimize dive transit time – 5-20 minutes vs 45-60 with day boats
• Indulge in relaxing onboard massages

I highly recommend liveaboard diving for Palau as it allows you to arrive at dive sites before 7AM to avoid the influx of day dive boats that congest the sites by 8:30AM. Notably, the popular dive sites (Blue Corner, German Channel, Ulong Channel, Siaes Corner) were substantially more crowded in March 2017 as compared to December 2008.

Titan Triggerfish are the bane of my existence

When diving in Palau, be on the lookout for aggressive Titan Triggerfish defending their nests. We encountered crazy ones on three different dives – the worst of which came at us with a vengeance as soon as we back-rolled in near Blue Corner.

They can be relentless, biting at your fins and legs with a razor-sharp beak. Tag teaming with the dive guide for 2+ minutes, wielding my GoPro stick and his pointer stick as swords, was necessary to defend my husband.

My unpleasant encounters with them in Palau, Thailand and the Maldives reinforces my desire to always wear a full wetsuit.

PRO TIP: Make sure to swim away horizontally rather than vertically as their territories are cone-shaped and get wider as you go higher.

Revel at manta rays cleaning in German Channel

German Channel is another dive that leaves you awestruck. As you are descending to the cleaning stations, you’ll often encounter mantas at the surface and/or swimming through the channel.

Dropping down onto your knees on the sandy bottom and watching them circle and clean is enthralling. We had six on the cleaning station and two in the water column on our first dive, gliding between the stations. And, we had two on our second dive, with one cleaning for 30 minutes!

PRO TIP: Be respectful of the mantas and others by not swimming over the cleaning rocks. And, don’t block the mantas’ paths as they glide away from the cleaning station.

If you are on a liveaboard, you might also get treated to mantas feeding and circling off the back of your boat at night as they are often attracted to the boat lights. We were lucky enough to have two different mantas visit our boat – one for six hours!

Ulong Channel and Siaes Corner won’t disappoint

At Ulong Channel, we enjoyed watching grey reef sharks chase jacks while yellow fin barracuda circled above. Once we unhooked, we sailed through the channel, admiring beautiful sea fans and one of the world’s largest lettuce coral gardens.

30 sharks, yellow striped Barracuda and three turtles made for a fun first dive at Siaes Corner. During our second dive there, we saw 60 white tip sharks schooling deeper.

And, I saw my first ever shark cleaning! Pivoting vertically, opening its mouth and flaring its gills seemed to give the cleaner fish the green light to proceed. Fascinating!

Kayak amongst Palau’s stunning Rock Island karsts

The incredible action underwater is rivaled by the spectacular above water scenery.

Multi-hued turquoise bays, vibrant green mushroom-shaped islands, and thousand-year-old rock graffiti ignite your imagination.

PRO TIP: I highly recommend adding a day or two before your trip to kayak with Sam’s Tours and visit Nikko Bay or Risong Bay. Gliding and snorkeling your way through these beautiful nurseries and observing juvenile fish is awesome.  And, enjoying your lunch on a pristine, secluded white sand beach is lovely.

The wonders that await you include: mandarin fish flitting between the finger coral, glimpsing shy baby blacktip sharks darting past, and laughing as juvenile pufferfish figure out how to balance their bulbous bodies with their tiny fins.

Snorkel with stingless jellyfish in Palau’s Jellyfish Lake

Palau boasts a lake where 8 million stingless golden jellyfish (Mastigias papua) previously resided. While I admit initially being suspect of this evolutionary phenomenon, it is an incredible sight to behold and experience. Pulsing and migrating through the water to photosynthesize the algae living within their bodies is meditative to watch.

Sadly, due to an El Nino driven drought, global warming, sunscreen and careless visitors’ handling and kicking, their numbers declined to 600,000 as of March 2017. Although tourists were not permitted to visit Jellyfish Lake for a couple of years, the lake has re-opened for visitors as of 2019.

Fortunately, the population rebounded like it did after a similar massive decline in the late 1990s. Jellyfish Lake will always be one of my fondest and most unique memories and definitely worth a visit.  The picture above and video below is from a much smaller jellyfish lake that we visited.

PRO TIP: When you do visit, use “coral safe” sunscreen. Zinc oxide and titanium dioxide won’t harm the jellyfish or damage the reefs. Be sure to avoid oxybenzone and octinoxate. Read more about my favorite for reef safe sunscreens here. Since the jellyfish are very delicate, don’t wear fins or handle the jellyfish.

HOW TO GET TO PALAU

• Airport: Koror (ROR)
• Flights: Given its remote location, it takes 18-24 hours to reach from the Western U.S. United Airlines has the most flights, routing Honolulu-Guam-Koror or Tokyo-Koror.
• Currency: US Dollar
• Departure Tax (as of June 2020): $20 + $30 green fee (funds Marine Protected Areas and a sewage and water fund)

PALAU DIVING SEASON – BEST TIME TO DIVE IN PALAU

• High season: December-March. February and March are the driest months. 
• Low Season: May, June, September. The most rain and wind occurs during these months.
• Transitional Months: April, July, August, October, November. Be prepared for more rain and rougher seas.
• Temperature: 80-82° F(26-28° C) air and water temperature year-round means most people opt for a 3mm wetsuit. Since I get cold easily, I always opt for a 5mm.

PALAU SCUBA DIVING INFO

• My Favorite Palau Dive Sites

  • Blue Corner, Siaes Corner, Ulong Channel, New Drop Off, Blue Holes, German Channel
  • PRO TIP: I prefer liveaboard diving in Palau so that you can dive the popular dive sites before day boats arrive

• Palau Liveaboards

  • Palau Siren, Palau Aggressor, Ocean Hunter. I dove with Palau Aggressor in December 2008 and Palau Siren March 2017. Both are great operators.
  • PRO TIP: Ask the operator their Guest to Dive Guide ratio. I prefer 4:1 for both safety and fish identification reasons. It’s a bonus when Palau dive guides have underwater slates to identify the species. It’s also helpful for filling out your dive log and labeling your Palau diving pictures when you are back on the boat.

• Palau Dive shops

• •  Sam’s Tours Palau, Fish ‘n Fins Palau  are both well-respected Palau dive operators that offer myriad dive packages.
  • PRO TIP: Make sure to book two kayaking days with Sam’s Tours to explore and snorkel in different secluded turquoise lagoons. I loved all the tiny reef fish in Nikko Bay. Risong Bay offers a shark nursery and the stunningly beautiful mandarin fish hiding amongst finger coral.

• Palau Scuba Gear

  • Given Palau’s heavy currents, I carry five signaling devices with me. While some might feel this is overkill, it reassures me that I have all the gear necessary in the unlikely event that I’m separated from the group during a heavy current dive. I dive with:
    • Surface Marker Buoy (SMB) – I prefer an SMB 6 feet tall to ensure it can be seen above high swells
    • Dive Alert Plus Air Horn – I prefer the plus version as the shrill horn can be heard a mile away above water and the honking underwater can alert a dive buddy in case of emergency
    • Nautilus Lifeline – This GPS device transmits your location to boats up to 34 miles away. You can also use it to speak to boats in the area
    • Whistle – I keep this in the velcro pocket of my SMB as a backup to my Diver Alert Plus. The Dive Alert is much louder and more effective
    • Mirror
  • Reef Hook  – Key for hooking in and observing the action at Blue Corner, New Drop Off and Siaes Corner. Both liveaboards I dove with sold them aboard.

If you are looking for more Palau diving pictures and inspiration, check out my Palau article on Fodor’s.

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