Month: July 2026

We are coming up to the end of the trip now and today was our last day in the water. We spent another day at the rock islands, this time with the Palau Community College crew. We first went to Metukruikull, a protected rock island. Here we listened to Chris Kitalong give a talk. We learned that this island used to be inhabited but now stands barren. The rock islands used to be a good place for villages since the people would have easy access to the water, and thus their food. Some villages even caught fish and put them in the marine lakes as a back up food source. Chris also talked about some of the conservation efforts at this and other islands. A lot of these efforts were brought on by foreigners without much consultation from the Palauan people. One example of this is the protection of sea turtles, which sounds like a good thing but cut a lot of the cultural ties that the Palauans had with hunting turtles for food and currency made from the turtles shells. The turtles that were hunted by the Palauans had ample numbers in Palau and the practices from the Palauans were not endangering them. After learning from Chris we snorkeled off of the island, some students saw lion fish, pajama cardinal fish, butterfly fish, and more!

After leaving Metukruikull we went to Ngarmeaus, which provided a stark contrast since Ngarmeaus is not a protected island, and is a common spot for tourists. The island was beautiful and cleaner than Metukruikull since it is actively managed. It did have much more area cleared, however, for building summer houses. We sat in one of the summer houses and ate lunch, then snorkeled Ngarmeau’s luscious shores. Here we saw lots of cool critters, including many blacktip sharks! One boat was chumming the waters which brought many small fish and sharks to the surface. Whether this is legal or not I am not sure but it did make for a spectacular view for us.

We ended our snorkeling by going to the cemetery reef. The reef has a fitting name as most of the coral here is dead and breaking off. This has happened mostly due to a mass bleaching event and continual use. This reef is known as a “sacrifice” reef. Many tourists are brought here which kills the reef but keeps foot traffic out of some of the healthier reefs of Palau. Here we saw many large Napoleon wrasse which stayed at the surface due to people feeding them. This has contrasted our experiences snorkeling previous days where the wildlife was protected and had less contact with humans.

Today we were back on land from being on the water the past three days, which was very needed for the sake of our motion/sea sickness. We ran around town, going from PCC, to the recycling plant, to Surangel’s, to the Etpison Museum. 

PCC Research & Development Station

We started off at the Palau Community College (PCC) Research & Development Station, learning about their taro tissue culture which can grow 200 to 1,000 taro from one stalk. They are the only botany research station in Palau and is a land grant organization. We are super fortunate to be able to see the inner workings of the plant tissue culture cultivation site, led by Chris Kitalong, who has been working with OSU since the Ridge to Reef class started!

The lab does amazing work in Palau to prevent mono-cropping through preserving the thousands of varieties of taro alive, in addition to attempting to make taro the superfood for the Pacific, which could help with reducing diabetes in Palau. 

Along with taro, PCC grows sweet potato, vanillas, orchids, pineapples, passion fruits, bananas, and many more!

After the tissues are grown (stage 1), they are moved to the small greenhouse (stage 2), then to the bigger greenhouse (stage 3), and finally it goes out to the community based on their needs. 

We were then given a tour of the animal husbandry areas for PCC students, where they learn to take care of animals. The animals are sometimes used for monumental traditional Palauan ceremonies. 

Surangel’s Super Center

We took a quick stop by the super store Surangel’s, where we got some gelato for an afternoon sweet treat!

Koror State Solid Waste Management Office & Belau Eco Glass

Our next adventure took us to the state’s recycling station, which receives Palau’s recycling and makes useful materials from them. They do amazing work keeping recyclable trash out of the landfills. These are some of the ways that the plastic are utilized: Sold to Taiwan, made into clothing, and made into oil (which powers the operations of the recycling plant). 

Glass recycling is also utilized, and are either crushed and given to construction companies to make into concrete, or made into fun jewelry/decorative eco-glass! As a small island, Palau has to look at resources differently and do what they can to make sure as little waste is produced as possible. Latest reports show about 25-30% of waste in Palau being recycled, along with a 88% redemption rate. 

Etpison Museum

Our last stop of the day is to the Etpison Museum, where we learned more about the historical traditions and stories of Palau. For example, we learned about how a long time ago, a pregnant woman ate the forbidden fruit KEAM nut and turned into a dugong! In the Etpison Museum, children left unattended will be towed away. 

Today’s blog was written by Angela and Lauren 🙂

Today we continued our time learning and experiencing local tourism and finally made our way to see the notorious Jellyfish Lake. This is a marine lake that can contain millions of jellyfish in a good bloom year. We learned that this is also not the only marine lake with jellyfish like this across the rock islands and actually is one of the sacrificial lakes they have made to provide tourists with a closer look at what the rock islands are like. These islands are heavily protected by the rangers here.

We took a short boat ride to get to the UNESCO world heritage site, Ongeim L’Tketau which is where the lake is. We learned that the jellyfish life cycle goes from a fertilized egg to a planula which will plant itself onto the surface to become a polyp. This polyp will grow into a budding polyp to become an ephyra and finally to an adult medusa which was what we saw today. Since these jellies don’t sting, people are able to swim in the lake and be surrounded by millions of jellies without any fear. There are two kinds of jellyfish in the lake the golden jelly and the moon jellyfish, both of which we saw today! We swam with and around them and also simultaneously got caught in a very heavy rainstorm!

We then took another boat ride with our group to a long sandbar pinpointed between a few of the rock islands. Some of us wandered off to look at shells and sand dollars and others of us did a little bit of yoga…

We then hopped back into the boat and found our way back into the water for some more snorkeling with our guide Mac! Our first snorkel site was located near New Dropoff where we swam along a steep drop and saw some amazing animals including gray reef sharks and hawksbill sea turtles who were swimming below us! There were lots of different fish and huge amounts of coral all along the reef drop. Mac even let one of our classmates, Raven, pick up a huge sea cucumber which made her very happy.

Our second site was within the false German Channel. This area is more popular for tourists, so when we arrived there were other groups with us as well. The experience gave us a good time to reflect more on ecotourism and how important and big it is for Palau as a main source of revenue, especially since the past few days we have been sheltered from that. The reef was still beautiful and there were so many kinds of cool fish to see, but you could tell that the coral was much more damaged than ones we have seen in other spots. The other group that was with us had screaming children and people who were kicking or standing on the coral. It was incredibly frustrating and demonstrated how important this type of education is for tourists since we have been hearing since we got here about not touching the reef and making sure to not disturb anything. What they were doing can be damaging to the corals as they’re a living creature and are very important for marine ecosystems, however Palau does have regulations in place to deal with these kinds of tourists like the sacrificial areas we mentioned before with Jelly Fish Lake. This reef is what you could call a “sacrifice reef”, as it is a spot specifically designated for tourists to go to, so they don’t have to worry about the damages they cause.

Our third site was the coral garden. The coral garden was incredibly beautiful with a diverse array of corals in all shapes and sizes. Some of the table top corals were larger than our tallest students! This was one of our shorter snorkels of the trip, so we quickly loaded back into the boat only to be met with a heavy rainstorm. It was a cold and wet ride back to the dock but luckily we made it back safely and to the car only to find it in about half a foot of water.

Only 4 more days of traveling left!

Written by Paige and Savannah!