It was 2005. I was watching Survivor, my favourite reality TV show. The season was filmed in Palau and I will never forget seeing the contestants swimming with jellyfish on a reward challenge.
I knew I had to jump into that same lake someday.
Years went by and my dream of swimming with jellyfish in Palau grew stronger and stronger.
As I found out that Palau is also one of the best places in the world to dive, I had to first be a certified diver. So off we went on a cruise to the Caribbean and got off in Barbados to get our divers licence.
When I later found out that most dives in Palau were deep dives, I realised I had to then be a certified Advanced Open Water diver. So off we went to Oman to get that done.
Finally in April 2014, I reached Palau, the ends of the earth.
I remember distinctly the thing to do there was to ask your fellow divers where they were from and how they got there. Our dive instructor on the first day was from Texas. She had to fly from Texas to California, then to Hawaiii, Guam, and finally Palau.
Our flights from Zurich to Palau was via Doha and Seoul. Booking it a year in advance, it cost us 2000USD per person. (We tried the previous year to buy them six months in advance and they were 4000CHF per person!)
Swimming with Jellyfish in Palau
It was a short hike from where the boat dropped us off to the lake. It reminded me a lot of Tasik Dayang Bunting in Langkawi, Malaysia.
When we first jumped into the lake, we couldn’t see anything.
But as we slowly approached the middle of the lake, they started to appear.
We were told that there were more than 10 million jellyfish in this lake.
They were beautiful. Some were small. Some were quite big.
It was funny seeing them clash and bump into each other.
We were warned to stay horizontal all the time as any vertical movements with our fins would easily kill them. Yes, we unfortunately saw the death of many jellyfish due to some snorkelers’ fins.
Won’t the jellyfish sting you, I hear you ask?
The reason these golden jellyfish in this lake have minimal stings is because they have no natural predators that would eat them. As there is nothing else for them to consume, they derive part of their nutrition from the symbiotic algae that live in their tissues. This means that when the sun is out, the jellyfish will rise to the surface of the lake and they would go deeper at night.
Unfortunately I lost our camera and my iphone later on in the trip in Macau. All I have left of this amazing experience was a video I took from the camera of myself touching one of the jellyfish.
[wpvideo D7687IUF]Palau was a highly special place due to its underwater life. The first shark sanctuary in the world, we saw sharks on every dive, even while in the boat and on the beach!
Apart from swimming with jellyfish, diving in Palau was another dream come true. A highlight was at the famous spot called the Blue Corner where we were hooked to the reef and stared out to the deep blue. We were diving at depths more than 40 meters at times.
Have you been to Palau? Would you add swimming with jellyfish there to your bucket list? I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.
