Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 35
A meeting house on Yap, with stone money disks. The larger the disk, and the
more lives that were lost bringing it to Yap, the greater its worth.
Nature's jackhammer
Water conditions were still not good in the afternoon, because an outgoing
tide was carrying silt from the island out to sea. Nobody else on the island
was diving. Nonetheless, divemaster Mike Kuiper, his dive buddy Diane Cor-
bière, and Barney our Yapese dive guide were kind enough to head out with
me to the Miil channel where the rays habitually cruise through a gap in the
reef. We dropped to the sandy bottom, in about twenty meters of still dis-
tressingly murky water, and swam to some coral outcrops at the base of the
channel's steep slope. There we waited for the mantas to appear.
Nothing much happened for the fi rst half hour. Then a manta swam by,
followed by another, and a third. Each was about three meters from wingtip
to wingtip, and they ignored us as we kept close to the bottom and snapped
