Palau · Palau · Pelagic & blue water · Night · Drift
Palau Blackwater Dive
A lit hang-bar at 16 m, GPS-marked over a trench more than 7,000 metres deep
Area photo: 陳德範（Chen, De-Fan） · CC BY 4.0
A night dive run over open ocean off Palau's barrier reef, in water more than 7,600 metres deep, with no reef or bottom anywhere in reach. Unique Dive Expeditions, who pioneered the dive in Palau, lower a lit hang-bar to 16 metres and mark the spot by GPS, since there is no landmark to navigate by. Divers hold station near the light while larval fish, jellyfish and other drifting life rise past out of the dark.
Where it is and how deep
No published position for this site — the map shows Palau and its other sites; operators know the mooring.
The dive
Unique Dive Expeditions, the specialty-diving arm of Sam's Tours, pioneered black-water diving in Palau. The boat leaves Koror after sunset and runs out to a spot over the ocean-facing trench beyond the barrier reef, where the water is more than 7,600 metres deep. There is no landmark to hold a position by, so the crew marks the spot on GPS rather than anchoring or working from a fixed reef feature.
A lit hang-bar is lowered to about 16 metres, and that light is the entire dive: there is no reef, wall or sand to look at, only whatever drifts up out of the dark to investigate it. Most of what turns up is no bigger than a few centimetres — larval fish and a parade of jellyfish in a range of colours, the same vertically migrating planktonic life that draws every blackwater site, seen here over a trench rather than a coastal shelf.
The bar for joining is higher than an ordinary night dive. Operators in Palau generally ask for at least 50 logged dives — Advanced Open Water plus night-diving experience is the common baseline — since there is nothing beneath you and current can carry an unclipped diver away from the light quickly. It is usually sold as an add-on on specific itineraries rather than offered as a standing nightly product, and Sam's Tours does not run it at all on nights it has set aside for its own Full Moon and New Moon expeditions.
Marine life and season
- Macro critters
| Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Prime | Prime | Prime | Prime | Good | Fair | Fair | Fair | Fair | Fair | Good | Prime |
Season follows Palau: Boats run every month; November to April has the best conditions, and June to December is typhoon season.
Know before you go
- There is no reef, wall or bottom in sight at any point, only a lit hang-bar over open water marked by GPS, so losing visual contact with the light means losing your only reference.
- The water below is cited at over 7620 m (25,000 ft) deep; nobody dives toward it, but drifting off the light in the current is a real risk with nothing to swim back to.
Questions divers ask
How deep is the Palau blackwater dive?+
The lit hang-bar operators use sits at about 16 metres, and that is roughly where the dive happens. The water underneath is more than 7,600 metres deep, but that is background, not somewhere anyone descends toward.
What experience do you need for blackwater diving in Palau?+
Unique Dive Expeditions, which pioneered the dive in Palau, generally asks for 50 or more logged dives, comfort swimming in current, and the ability to deploy your own surface marker buoy. Advanced Open Water plus prior night-diving experience is the common baseline.
Is blackwater diving offered every night in Palau?+
No. It tends to be sold as an add-on on particular itineraries rather than run nightly, and Sam's Tours specifically does not offer it on nights it has reserved for its own Full Moon and New Moon expeditions.
Sources
- Blackwater Diving — PADI
- Sam's Tours Palau Diving — Bluewater Dive Travel
- Specialty Diving — Sam's Tours
- Dive Palau — Sea to Sky Experiences
- List of diving environments by type — Wikipedia
In The Logbook
- Blackwater diving: what it is and where to goNight diving · 13 min read
- Bioluminescence: why the sea glows at nightNight diving · 7 min read
- Night diving: the best night dives in the worldNight diving · 12 min read
More dive sites in Palau
Wall
Large schools of grey reef sharks off the corner on the incoming tide
A swim-through in a vertical wall, open at both ends
Schools of jacks and barracuda along a drift through the barrier reef
Wall
Two reef-hook stops, 10 to 30 m, in often the strongest current in Palau
Grey reef, whitetip and leopard sharks patrolling a wall into the deep
Hook into the plateau lip and let the sharks stack up off the edge
Cave & cavern
Four holes in the reef top that open into a single large cavern
A manta cleaning station at the mouth of a channel cut in 1908
Similar dives elsewhere
Tethered in open ocean at night as deep-water animals rise to the surface
Oceanic whitetips in open water, no reef and no cage
A coral peninsula at 30 m with predators working the current line
Grey reef sharks at the mouth, then a drift into the lagoon