1. 29-JUN-00  Palau Pacific Resort. My very first dive off the shore of PPR.
2. 29-JUN-00  Palau Pacific Resort. My second dive ever!  
3. 30-JUN-00  Pinches
4. 30-JUN-00
5. 03-JUL-00  New Drop Off  First Fun dive, and what fun indeed! We went down to 95 ft. to experience what Nitrogen narcosis was...I started feeling a bit lightheaded and began to laugh.  This caused my mask to be lifted off my face allowing water to flood my mask, which in turn caused me to laugh even more!
6. 03-JUL-00  Ngemelis Coral Garden
7. 10-JUL-00  ?? Advanced Open Water Dive
8. 11-JUL-00  Palau Pacific Resort.  Night Dive at PPR.  Saw lobsters for the first time.
9. 11-JUL-00  Helmet Wreck. First wreck dive.
10. 11-JUL-00  2-Dog Island. Shallow water diving during lunch break.
11. 11-JUL-00  Whiteface  Underwater naturalist dive.
12. 12-JUL-00  Lighthouse Channel.  A lot of Scarids.  S. oviceps, S. bleekeri, C. sordidus, Labroides dimidiatus, Myripristis murdjan, P. indicus, A. nigroris, P. diacanthus, E. insidiator, Scorpaenopsis sp., A. dussumeri, C. ephippium, R. Rubroviolaceou, C. vagabundus, A. nigricans, H. varius, P. cyclostomus, C. oxycephala, C. unimaculatus, C. bicolor, A. nigropunctatus.  Also saw female Sepia latimanus (?) laying eggs in fire coral.
13. 13-JUL-00  Lighthouse Channel
14. 15-JUL-00  Lighthouse Channel  Sex on the Reef.  Watched spawning Scarus Oviceps at 5:30 AM.  These fish spawn right over the reef crest at high tide on the outgoing tide.  This maximizes the dispersal of the larvae and increases their chances for survival.
15. 15-JUL-00  Lighthouse Channel
16. 16-JUL-00  Lighthouse Channel  Dawn on the reef (6:00 AM).  It is wonderful to be out at sea at this hour.  As we were leaving, the sun was just peaking out from behind the rock islands facing the CRRF dock.
17. 21-JUL-00  Lighthouse Channel  Saw some predatory fish.
18. 21-JUL-00  Blue Corner  Saw some spawning out here.
19. 23-JUL-00  Lighthouse Channel  Diving with Pat Colin, Ph.D., who is doing research on the spawning activity at Lighthouse Channel.  I have taken this opportunity to get to know my Palauan reef fish.  Many of these fish will be my best friends for the next year when I analyze my results for my thesis.
20. 26-JUL-00  Lighthouse Channel
21. 27-JUL-00  Lighthouse Channel
22. 29-JUL-00  Ngemelis Coral Garden
23. 29-JUL-00  German Channel
24. 30-JUL-00  Blue Corner
26. 01-AUG-00  Lighthouse Reef  Dove the lagoon - very murky.
27. 02-AUG-00  Lighthouse Reef  Watched Chlorurus bleekeri spawn - they do a beautiful courtship "dance" whereby the male and female join at the bottom of the water column and then spiral opposite one another up towards the top of the water column and when they reach the top, they release their gametes together. Very beautiful, "tender" behavior.
28. 03-AUG-00  Lighthouse Reef  Dove for 2 hours!
29. 05-AUG-00  Lighthouse Reef  Day 1 of transect videos.
30. 06-AUG-00  Ulong Channel  Saw a lot of sharks.  Beautiful weather and Ulong is just the greatest!
31. 06-AUG-00  Siae's Corner  Really gorgeous anthiases everywhere! 
32. 07-AUG-00  Peleliu Wall  West side on incoming tide: WOW!  I turned 22 underwater!  Went down to 100 ft.
33. 07-AUG-00  Peleliu Coral Garden Peleliu is my FAVORITE PLACE IN THE WORLD! Great soft corals here.
34. 08-AUG-00  Lighthouse Reef  Research Diving.  These dives were done mostly by myself with Emilio, the boat driver waiting for me in the boat.  I am doing a really cool fish survey for my senior thesis on the Trophic Assemblage of Fish at Lighthouse Reef.  There is a resident shark that frequents my deepest site which sort of gives me the creeps because I am diving alone.  I know there are more lurking around because Emilio said he saw some juvenile white tips swim by...great!
35. 09-AUG-00  Lighthouse Reef
36. 11-AUG-00  Lighthouse Reef
37. 21-AUG-00  Lighthouse Reef
38. 22-AUG-00  Lighthouse Reef
39. 31-JUL-01  Blue Hole  Water was very murky because there was a lot of debris.  We dove the wall just outside blue hole.
40. 31-JUL-01  Big Drop Off
41. 01-AUG-01  Iro Wreck
42. 01-AUG-01  German Channel
43. 10-AUG-01  Ngerchong  Buddy with cool Aussie named Jay McLean - he knows Garry Russ, a marine biologist at JCU!
44. 10-AUG-01  Helmet Wreck
45. 14-AUG-01  Ngerchong  Poor visibility and water was murky and COLD.  Saw an octopus, a large 1.5-ft (prob. female) cuttlefish.  Also saw unusually large nudibranch (4-5"), and a moray eel.
46. 14-AUG-01  Ngerchong  This site was very close to the first but had very different dynamics.  The current was extremely STRONG and my fins were extremely short!  I saw a really awesome (and very up close) shark feeding frenzy - about 10 white tips feeding on yellow-tailed fusiliers.  REALLY COOOOOl!  I also caught a glimpse of a mature ornate eagle ray with a very long tail.  There were also a lot of harlequin sweetlips and groupers.  Saw a young turtle during our safety stop.
47. 15-AUG-01  White Face  *Did not use a computer for this dive*  I saw a really cool shrimp, Periclimenes kororensis, which is translucent and purple and lives in a symbiotic relationship with sea anemone.  Also saw a crocodile fish that was very well camouflaged, a juvenile Macolor macularis, a juvenile turtle, a lot of scarids including S. frenatus and some large S. microrhinos.  This dive included some very inexperienced (or dumb -- can't tell) divers.  We go down, they go up.  One woman doesn't know how to use fins and tries to doggie paddle with SCUBA gear on.  Her boyfriend wasn't too bright either - he decided to take off his fins before he got onto the boat - not too smart when the current is STRONG and there's heavy surge.  They don't know how to do buoyancy control!
48. 01-AUG-01  Mandarinfish Lake  The weather in Palau has NOT been that great this summer -- very stormy, which is not at all conducive to diving.  This is good weather for surfing!  Mandarinfish lake was kind of eerie.  There are a LOT of mandarinfish, as the name implies, but there are also tons of jellyfish.  They're harmless, of course, but they do this strange thing where they swim into the bottom and then continue to swim in that direction so that the movement from their tentacles stirs up the sediment and buries them under the sand!  What the hell are they doing??  OK, I'm pretty sure this is a Cassiopea medusae and apparently these jellies like to be upside down because when the bell pulsates, thereby allowing water and food to move across their oral region.  Weird!
49. 15-AUG-01  Buoy 6 at Lighthouse  Surge was too heavy to really go anywhere outside the channel.
50. 28-AUG-01  Ulong Channel  Awesome dive! I saw 15 sharks feeding on fusiliers, which was very beautiful and exciting.  I dove with a couple from Parma, and Miwa...nice, small, relaxed group of divers.
51. 28-AUG-01  Siae's Corner  The current was extremely strong.  First we went one way but were struggling too much so we turned around and did a drift dive in the other direction.  One woman (who didn't go on the last dive) on this dive had a fear of sharks, and as this IS Palau, home to thousands of sharks, we were bound to see some sharks at some point, and we did.  She panicked, of course, and we all had to go to a shallower depth, and rather than going along the wall, we dove over the top of the reef (which typically means a stronger current).  I saw about 10 Chlorurus microrhinos swimming along.  Also saw a turtle and an eel.
52. 29-AUG-01  German Channel  There were a lot of sharks here -- I even saw a leopard shark which was probably the biggest one I have seen so far.  I saw 2 turtles and some interesting anemone:
53. TBA  Hook Island  Can't wait for my first diving experience in Australia!!