Coming up!
Jonathan visits a mysterious cave with an air chamber, and witnesses a rare parrotfish
spawning event!
Welcome to Jonathan Bird’s Blue World!
The Republic of Palau is an island nation consisting of more than 500 beautiful, unspoiled
islands in the Pacific.
This blue water paradise is a top destination for scuba divers from around the world.
There is something for everyone here in Palau, including massive coral caverns, beautiful
reefs, ship and plane wrecks from World War II, high energy reef hook dives in strong
current, sharks, and even swarms of harmless jellyfish!
And among all the fish frequently seen here, the Bumphead parrotfish, growing to more than
a meter in length, is one of the biggest!
This magnificent fish survives by chewing the algae from the reef with its massive front
teeth.
Because of its size, the Bumphead parrotfish has been overfished throughout the Pacific.
But in Palau, protection since 2006 has created one of the largest and most healthy Bumphead
populations in the world.
Located 500 miles east of the Philippines in the middle of the Pacific Ocean—Palau
is well off the beaten path, a remote oasis in the sea.
Julia and I have come here to dive for a week with the Rock Islands Aggressor, a luxury
dive yacht based in Palau.
We will live, eat, sleep and dive from this beautiful boat!
Today we are heading out to do a dive at a famous site called Chandelier cave.
A short boat ride later, we reach a spot with a spooky hole in the sea floor.
As we head in to the cave, I immediately start to wonder about doing a cave dive without
proper cave diving gear.
But this cave has something making it different from most of my cave dives.
The chambers are only three-quarters full of water.
So we are in a true cave with no ambient sunlight, but we can surface to breathe.
That’s why they can bring open water divers in here without cave training or serious cave
diving gear.
In an emergency, you can always surface to breathe.
Inside there are beautiful flowstone formations, still forming from dripping water above the
surface.
As we explore further, I can see a change in color on the formations indicating the
boundary layer called the halocline.
The white rock above the line indicates the fresh water layer.
The darker rock below the line has marine growth, from the seawater layer.
Of course during the last ice age when so much water was locked up in glaciers, the
oceans were a hundred meters lower.
This cave would have been bone dry.
I’m swimming across the ceiling of a huge room.
15,000 years ago, I would have to walk on the floor, 50 feet below!
I follow our guide into the next room.
There is a place where we can climb up out of the water a little.
This allows me some leverage to lift my heavy camera out of the water for a shot of the
room.
As we continue back out of the cave, the walls below the halocline show patterns created
by thousands of years of being eroded and dissolved by seawater.
The softer parts have dissolved away, but the harder parts, probably marine creatures
encapsulated within the ancient reef limestone, are still there, defiantly sticking out.
Soon we can see the light of the entrance and we make our way back to the sun.
After the dive, we head back to the Aggressor.
Later we enjoy an amazing Palau sunset.
Early, and I mean early the next morning we get up for a special dive briefing.
Each month on the New Moon, the Bumphead Parrotfish spawn.
It happens really early in the morning.
We need to be in the water by 7 AM.
You can tell…I’m not really awake yet.
But I need to get my game face on because this is an important shoot for our upcoming
IMAX film Secrets of the Sea.
I’m really nervous because this is the whole reason we came this week—to see this spawning
event.
And there’s like ten boats out there so the place is going to be full of people.
We don’t know if they’re going to spawn, and if they do, we don’t know if I’ll
even be able to get a shot through all the divers!
Fingers crossed!
We suit up with anticipation that the fish will spawn and we will be able to get good
shots of it for our IMAX film.
When we reach the spot where the fish spawn, I can already count 6 other boats.
Our captain jockeys for a good position.
One two three!
I hit the water and quickly look around.
I’m not even sure what I am supposed to be looking for, I’ve never seen this spawning
event before.
Then I notice deep below: fish gathering.
But all around me…divers everywhere.
I slowly sink down into the midst of the fish.
It’s deeper than I expected.
They don’t seem to be doing anything, but you know they are up to something because
you don’t normally see this many Bumphead parrotfish together.
There’s hundreds, maybe thousands of them!
But then, something changes.
The fish all start swimming in the same direction.
As the females get ready to release their eggs, they swim, in order to release them
over a larger area, so they can’t be eaten by predators as easily.
The males follow, waiting for their chance to spawn.
Meanwhile I’m swimming as hard as I can to keep up.
With this much exertion at 90 feet, I’m going through my air quickly.
I won’t have long to get the shots.
Then it starts, the females rise up in the water column to release their eggs with a
dozen males following.
When the female releases the eggs, the males rush in to be the first to fertilize them.
The entire school of Bumpheads breaks up into smaller groups that are spawning.
They leave behind thick clouds of eggs—the next generation of Bumpheads.
I must keep swimming to stay with the fish and ahead of the other divers.
But I slow down as much as I can to keep my shots steady.
And I’m getting lucky!
I’m right in the middle of the action!
Julia, who is filming me, is staying back just a little so she won’t get in my shots,
since we need them for the IMAX film.
Soon it seems like the action is winding down.
I mean how long can they keep at it?
I’m kind of hoping its over because I’m getting low on air.
But then another spawning run, right in front of my camera!
Perfect!
However, now we really have got to go.
Julia and I are both low on air.
So we rise up to 20 feet for a safety stop.
And Julia does a victory dance!
I can’t believe our luck!
I have the shots in the can.
Even though we are done, the fish aren’t.
Deep down below us, the spawning is still happening!
It’s killing me that I can’t go back down there, but I just don’t have enough air
for that.
Or energy.
Jonathan: I don’t remember much of that dive.
I was hyperventilating the whole time.
Swimming as hard as I could to not only keep up with the fish but to stay in front of the
hundreds of other divers so I could get a clean shot.
But I think I did it!
I think I did it!
And that is a lot of fish spawning ! Holy moly!
Unbelieveable.
It’s like a show, like fireworks going off all around you everywhere!
Keeping up was a challenge.
Palau is one of the most amazing dive destinations on Earth.
Chandelier cave gives open water certified divers a chance to get a feel for what cave
diving is like, and Palau’s spectacular marine life means there is always something
to see.
Bumphead parrotfish, highly endangered in other places, thrive here because of Palau’s
commitment to the protection of the marine environment.
It gives us the chance to see true spectacles of the Blue World.
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