Diving in Yap
Mark McGinley
Last winter I spent 4 days in Yap on my way to Palau. Yap is the classic tropical island with lush green mountains surrounded by beautiful blue water. As beautiful as the island and marine environment was, I found the culture and the people on the island to be just as charming. The island just got electricity a decade ago and many women retain the tradition of going topless (however, it is considered inappropriate for women to show wear short shorts and show their thighs- go figure).
The main factor drawing divers to Yap are Manta Rays. The mantas come into the channels to feed and be cleaned which offers a unique opportunity to dive with mantas. Most of the manta dives take place in Mi’l Channel which is reached by a slow but beautiful boat trip through the mangroves. Once in the channel, divers settle by a cleaning station (a place where the mantas come to have parasites removed from their bodies) in about 50 feet of water and wait for the show to begin.
My first manta dive occurred shortly after a fairly bad storm had passed through so the mantas were not behaving normally and none showed up at the cleaning station. Thus, we went searching the channel for the mantas. By now the tides had changed and the current was flowing pretty swiftly out of the channel. By the time we saw our first manta, only John, the divemaster, and I were left in the water because the rest of the divers had run out of air. John had me hold on the rocks and pull myself along the bottom against the current so that we could see the manta up close and personal. Amazing! On my second manta dive, the next day, we saw a total of thirteen mantas, with one group of 6 mantas line up in a row swimming past.
But diving in Yap has a lot more to offer than just mantas. The reef dives were spectacular as well. Diving the reef meant 30 – 50 minute boat rides outside the barrier reef, but these trips were well worth the effort (I especially liked the banana bread they served during the surface interval). The hard coral was in nearly perfect shape and we saw large schools of bumphead wrasse, many white-tip reef sharks, and the whole suite of tropical fish on every reef dive. We typically reached a max depth of 75 – 80 feet on reef dives which allowed us to have 60 – 70 minute bottom times.
There were two great dive sites inside the reef near the hotel as well. The first, known as the “macro site”, was ideal for looking for small creatures. On this site I saw cuttlefish, lionfish, octopus, pipefish, nudibranchs, and anemone fish hanging out in anemones. Perhaps, my favorite dive was at O’Keefe Reef. We went to the site at about sundown (5 minute boat trip from the hotel). We got in the water and waited for it to get dark. Our goal was to observe Mandarin Fish, a small fluorescently-colored (orange, green, blue, and purple) fish that could be argued to be the most beautiful fish in the world. I spent most of the dive (almost 75 minutes) hanging at 8 feet beside a single head of finger coral watching the mandarin fish dart in and out of the coral. I found watching the mandarin fish to be nearly as exciting as watching the mantas.
I stayed at the Manta Ray Bay Hotel (http://www.mantaray.com) and dove with Yap Divers while I was there. The hotel and dive operation are owned by Bill Aker (a UT grad, I tried not to hold it against him). My room was comfortable and roomy (each room had a fish theme- I stayed in the clown fish room). The hotel’s restaurant was located in a restored sailing ship (the Mnuw) that was docked off of the motel. The food was delicious and reasonably priced. I thought that Bill and his staff were great and they made my stay very enjoyable. If you ever visit, then you should be able to see my Best Little Dive Shop in Texas t-shirt hanging on the wall. Bill thought that it was hilarious that there was a dive shop in Lubbock and asked me to donate the shirt.
It would be a shame to visit Yap without taking advantage of the other sight-seeing opportunities as well as diving. On my final day (when I was unable to dive because of flying) I spent the morning kayaking through the mangroves. That afternoon, we took a tour of a traditional Yapese village. We walked to the village along stone paths that have been kept up through the jungle for hundreds of years. Yap is famous for its stone money (some over six feet across) that was dug and carved in Palau (over 500 miles away) and then returned to Yap via canoes. We heard the stories of that village’s stone money, saw traditional native dancing, observed the children weaving baskets out of palm fronds, tasted local tropical fruit, and got to try chewing beetle-nut. Everyone in Yap chews beetle nuts (from a type of palm). They crack open the nut, cover it in lime (from ground up coral), wrap it in some type of leaf and then chew on it (it did have a pretty good kick to it). The beetle-nut juice turns red so the mouths of all Yapese people are stained red.
I just learned that Yap was hit by a severe typhoon on Good Friday which did a great deal of damage to the island and to the hotel. You can check out the damage at their website.
We are interested in your dive experiences. If you would like to share information about places you've been, please email us at texas@scubafied.com
