Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
As the vibrations died away we all stared at each other with astonishment
and worry. What on earth had happened? My fi rst thought was that a high-
pressure fi tting on one of our air tanks had ruptured. But this would have
released a blast of air bubbles into the water. There were no telltale bursts of
bubbles, either from me or from my fellow divers. We glanced at our dive
computers, all of which gave perfectly normal readings.
Then I looked up and saw a huge cloud of mud and debris fl owing in slow
motion towards us down the slope of the channel.
It was now clear what had happened. We had been caught in a power-
ful earthquake that had triggered an underwater landslide. I signaled to the
others to alert them to the oncoming debris, and we rose above the mud
cloud and headed towards the surface.
We had not been very deep for very long, so we did not need to pause for
decompression. But we did need to do a safety stop at three meters for three
minutes, a period that after our experience seemed to stretch even longer
than it usually did.
When we did break the surface everything seemed quite normal. But
Eddie the skif operator waved and shouted: “Hey! You guys tried to play
tricks on me!” “What tricks?” we asked. He laughed and said, “You banged on
the bottom of the boat!”
We assured Eddie that it was Mother Nature, not us, who had banged on
the bottom of the boat.
Mike and Diane dove down again to inspect the damage to the reef. I had
been through quite enough excitement for one day, and stayed on the sur-
they had found a chunk of coral three meters in diameter that had broken of
the reef near the surface and rolled down close to where we had been diving.
And they saw mantas, which had calmly returned to the cleaning station as if
nothing had happened. We realized that we now had direct proof that mantas
show no obvious behavioral changes before an earthquake, unlike dogs and
domestic animals who have often been reported to behave strangely. Either
the mantas had not anticipated the earthquake, or they simply didn't care.
After these dramatic underwater events we headed back to Yap's largest
town, Colonia, to fi nd out how the people above water had fared.
