KOROR, PALAU >>
When I was a kid growing up in Wisconsin, the highlight of my life was the county fair. It had everything I liked: breathtaking rides, games with prizes and cotton candy. Decades later, my week in Palau’s Rock Islands has been giving me the same childhood feeling of all-day fun.
This time, my thrill rides are in a powerboat. Our captain zips around Palau’s lagoon at 25 miles per hour taking me and my 10 Oceanic Society guests past islands planted in a turquoise estate. I say “planted” because the islands look like flower pots, their limestone bases eroded uniformly by snails, currents and waves.
From the tops and sides of these roundish islands spring a riot of trees and plants that have taken root in the porous rock. The trees provide roosting and nesting places for white-tailed tropicbirds, terns, noddies, doves, fruit bats and others.
The scenery, flowers and birds are so amazing that I regret the moment we’ve reached one of our snorkeling destinations and the ride is over. But I don’t regret it for long, because that’s when the games begin.
Donning masks, snorkels, fins and cameras, we hit the water and try our hands at capturing in pictures the fish, coral and invertebrate animals that swirl around us like confetti. The prizes we win are photos. As a bonus, these digital keepsakes are shareable.
One day, I got my cotton candy in a place called Soft Coral Arch, a hole in one of the islands that goes clear through, connecting lagoons on each side. The muffin-top islands of the area keep the wind out and the water flat, but even so, the ocean is always moving, its water swishing slowly back and forth beneath the opening.
The constant, gentle flow carries a rich supply of plankton, apparently a feast for the soft corals that decorate the underwater sides and bottom of the arch.
Several kinds of soft corals exist, but the wavy corals in this famous place remind me of fairyland flowers.
The pink, orange, yellow, red and white blossoms, however, are animals with stems of water and petals that sting.
Rather than a hard skeleton, these soft coral types have inside their liquid stalks tiny calcium carbonate sticks and stones that help them stand up.
Depending on the species, the support structures are called spindles, clubs, dumbbells and others.
Since each species has its own kind of prop, scientists identify soft coral by these shapes.
Because fluffy types of soft corals don’t have algae in their tissues as hard corals do, the corals depend entirely on currents to deliver to them drifting food.
Flurries of reef fish love to swim beneath the arch. And so do I. Snorkeling through Soft Coral Arch gave me that giddy childhood feeling I had at the fair when I thought the world was full of fun, games and prizes.
Nice to know I was right.
Reach Susan Scott at susanscott.net.
