At Coral Gardens, a juvenile Mantaray followed us for almost the whole dive. She had a big remora attached, so she was probably just trying to persuade it to detach from her and latch onto us instead.
Here she is with the Assistant Attorney General of Palau for scale! Our best dive of the week (which also goes on our list of all-time top dives) was Ulong Channel. It’s an incredible drift dive, done on an incoming tide which sweeps you 500m down a sandy channel past soft corals, sea fans and giant clams until you reach a mountain of lettuce coral on the right hand side. 
You arrive in a sandy lagoon, where the predators usually wait for meals that have also been swept in by the tide. Sure enough, a huge bait ball was being lazily pursued by several groupers, grey reef sharks and whitetips. The fish kept swirling around us so we just hovered and watched the action – making our safety-stop about 20 mins before we reluctantly returned to the boat.
