Palau - Visiting Helen Reef Conservation Area

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• published: 07 Feb 2015
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Helen Reef is an atoll located about 330 mi south of its mother country, Palau in the western Pacific, and about 220 mi north of Sorong, Indonesia. It consists of a ringing reef with lagoon, a major deep-water pass, and on the north side, one tiny island of sand and a few trees. All of Helen Reef is a protected conservation area rich in marine life, in and out of the water. We were lucky to have a chance to visit this isolated area while on route to Palau from Indonesia. Some technical issues, and a forecast for bad weather coming prompted us to stop here. The friendly rangers greeted us after we were safely tied to the conservation area’s mooring. We visited the rustic ranger station on the tiny sand spit of an island. We found them pretty self-sufficient, and resourceful. The island is a bird sanctuary and a nesting ground for hundreds and hundreds of birds squawking day and nite. The rangers tape off the area at the beginning of laying, but later, visitors can walk the length of the island and marvel in the sheer numbers and the beauty of their graceful flight. During our visit, the Rangers, Louis, Jamos and Matthew, showed us a number of their duties for the Conservation area, and they took us to a number of important sites on the reef. Every day they check-in with the main office in Palau, and file a report. They patrol Illegal fishing activity on the reef, greet visitors, monitor the bird nesting, turtle egg laying, and the Giant Clam farm. They maintain the navigation and mooring buoys as well. We were able to scuba dive at 3 sites, and record some of the rich marine life of the reef. At the old Japanese cargo shipwreck, only anchors and a few shards of pottery are left, but the reef is pretty with several white-tip lagoon sharks cruising the dramatic drop-off. One dive in the inner lagoon on one of the branches of the pass had the most gigantic lettuce leaf coral formation we’d ever seen. The dive in the Pass was action-packed; we were spinning our necks in every direction, not knowing what to look at next! All the sharks, schools of jacks, rainbow runners, barracudas, the giant grouper, turtle, and the rare and beautiful manta ray, were all seen during one dive! Visiting the Giant Clam farm was inspiring, we’ve visited other Giant Clam farms, but they are usually instituted after the population has been depleted; at Helen Reef, they are everywhere in every size and every incredible color, and we saw them all over the reef system, not just in the farm area. We were happy to see this easily exploited mollusk protected and allowed to grow to its normal gigantic size. We thank Jamos and his wife, Samdrina, Louis, and Matthew, the staff who manned the Helen Reef Ranger Station while we were there, for their wonderful hospitality, and for taking us around the reef, and for the fun filming sessions. Filmed in November 2014.