SNAPPING UP THRILLS
Countless conversations with the local fishermen and several hundred dives were needed to find out the exact place and time when the snappers mate
– Paul Collins, Unique Dive Expeditions
It is half past four in the morning on Koror, the main island of Palau. The night is still pitch black and almost nobody is out and about on the streets. A few lonely figures shuffle over the sandy byways with their flip-flops in the still very sultry night. From afar, a faint
“kling-klong” rings familiar in their ears, and the seemingly lost people are shown the way. The origin of the bizarre sounds is the dive centre of Sam’s Tours, where dive tanks are being loaded into a boat, calling the characters like a beacon from a distance.
“Couldn’t the mosquitoes have at least been able to stay in bed?” asks American diver Jessica Hardy, who takes a break from loading her fins to swat a bloodsucker on her arm. All those present–other than the flying parasites–are voluntarily awake at this hour because they want). Palau is not the only place where this event takes place, it goes without saying, but certainly one of very few where the spawning ground is mapped and is visited by a dive centre with some regularity.
