OTHER ACTIVITIES

Wreck Diving

Often overlooked, except when bad weather prevents diving on the outer reef, is Palau's sunken fleet of World War II ships. Dozens of Japanese ships and hundreds of aircraft were known to have been sunk when American carrier based aircraft completely overran Japanese defenses and destroyed the usefulness of this major bastion of the Imperial presence in the Pacific.

In the late 1980s, after years of combing through wartime archives and reconnaissance photos, two notable wreck researchers systematically surveyed likely areas with magnetometers and hundreds of exploratory dives.

They found most of what remained of the Japanese fleet. Read the fascinating results of this research aboard Eclipse, see the war time photos of the attacks, then dive the amazing shipwrecks, still littered with weapons and personal artifacts, lost for more than forty years. Since these ships were anchored near port at the time of the attacks, they are fairly close to town, far from the famous reef dives, so are best dived from Eclipse during the first or last day of a trip.

Snorkeling

Spectacular snorkeling is found throughout Palau . Some of the famous wall dives, such as Big Drop Off and Turtle Cove, are equally fantastic for snorkelers since the reef walls descend straight down from the surface. Snorkelers are very likely to spot sharks and sea turtles within the massive clouds of fish at these and several other locations.

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