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There is a place-earth, where the sea has a treasure of livings.
A secret corner of the ocean where ancient species still thrive,
in dazzling abundance, wildness and wonder.
The place is in Eden, Palau.
Far to the east of India in the Middle East, Palau sits alone at the vast Pacific, sheltered
from time and the outside.
As life is seductive as any paradise or a man, Palau is not one emerald island, but an archipelago
of more than 200, nearly all uninhabited.
It's a world of novelties concocted by nature, strange forms of land and life, but the dreamlike
allure of Palau originates not on land, but in the sea.
Along the submerged shoulders of Palau flourish some of the richest coral reefs remaining
on earth.
Before fish such as these even existed, there were corals.
They look like rocks or plants, but corals are masses of tiny animals.
Each encases itself in limestone and clusters with its kind into elaborate formations.
No other wild animal builds such extensive structures, nor is landlord to so many other
creatures.
The story of this coral Eden begins in the dark of night.
In the reef's shadows, life seeks shelter from the perils of open water.
This is a place where all is not what it seems.
Where flower-like predators snatch macroscopic pay blown by in the currents, here, petals
are tentacles.
Apparent calm prevails most of the year, but in the hours to come, the reef will be swept
by a sudden explosion of life.
The mating dance of the sea cucumbers provides a prologue.
This night, compelled by a circumstance of moon and tide, these sluggish bottom-dwellers
spew eggs and sperm into the currents, but one of Earth's greatest spectacles of fertility
awaits.
After full moon glow on summer nights, the coral animals, known as polyps, swell with
spawn.
Polyps can divide amoeba-like to expand the reef, but to spread colonies elsewhere and
to ensure a future, they must send out tiny voyaging packets of new life.
The release of spawn begins slowly, but as the hours pass, the rising mass of sperm and
eggs will drift like a storm over the reef, transforming the waters of Palau into a vast
display of sexual exuberance.
This night, compelled by a circumstance of moon and tide, these sluggish bottom-dwellers
spew eggs and sperm into the currents, but one of Earth's greatest spectacles of fertility
awaits.
The release of spawn begins slowly, but as the hours pass, the rising mass of sperm and
eggs will drift like a storm over the reef, transforming the waters of Palau into a vast
display of sexual exuberance.
The release of spawn begins slowly, but as the hours pass, the rising mass of sperm and
eggs will drift like a storm over the reef, transforming the waters of Palau into a vast
display of sexual exuberance.
The reef casts its fate to the liquid winds.
Sperm and eggs produce larvae, which will ride the currents along the ocean's ceiling,
away from the parent reef, then settle as pioneers to divide and re-divide into flourishing
new colonies.
Each species of coral will be reborn if only a single tiny voyager succeeds.
The islands of Palau are the visible tips of Himalayan-sized volcanoes.
For eons, corals accumulated on peaks that were subsiding.
Then in a tectonic upheaval, parts of the volcanic ridge rose up, exposing the ancient
limestone reefs that today form Palau.
Then geology turned eccentric.
For almost millions of years, the corrosive effects of wind and water sculpted blocks
of limestone into giant mushrooms.
Waves eat away the brittle and porous rock at water level.
Rainwater and plant acids leach down through it, leaving the soft face of the islands a
storyboard, chronicling all that is washed, or settled, or burrowed here.
Near water, too, swirling currents have excavated, in the chalky stone, a chamber long hidden,
until ancient storms tore skylights in the roof of coral.
Only yards from these blue holes, the reef is a precipice.
Towering above some of the ocean's deepest trenches, the walls of Palau deflect rich
currents upward from far below.
Plankton blooms, life gathers to feed.
The calm is deceptive, while smaller fish grays, opportunists like the barracuda, bide
their time, awaiting the right moment to strike.
The herds of game also attract the land of the ocean, the reef shark.
Waves pass and stalemate between two tactics of survival, the safety in numbers, and the
safety in numbers.
The richness of Palau draws fish called morish idols here in profusion once each year, increasing
their likelihood of finding a mate.
In turn, increasing the potential prey of the reef shark.
It is a measure of Palau's abundance that reef sharks are sustained here not merely
as loners, but in legions.
Occasionally, a moment of sudden opportunity arises, followed again by uneasy calm.
The nearly invisible secret of life here is the living haze called plankton.
The tiny animals and plants drifting by provide the first wave of nourishment that supports
everything larger.
Some creatures graze on plankton directly, using diverse techniques.
Tiny garden eels rise from burrows to snatch passing morsels.
The manta ray sweeps through the plankton fog, scoop shovelmouth catching a meal sufficient
for a body 15 feet across.
Hunger is constant, but so is their life-giving broth.
Swords crisscross the fluid pastures, eating the sea they swim through.
It is the ocean's feral
Though existence here differs from that on land, it runs on the same fuel.
This Eden and its myriad life forms are powered by solar energy streaming down from above.
Sunlight not only fuels the vital plants of plankton, but miniature gardens kept by coral animals.
Within the tissue of each coral polyp dwell microscopic algae.
The tiny plants live on coral wastes and in turn produce food for the coral, a relationship
beneficial to both.
Together of vast reefs, coral is also a farmer and predator.
Each polyp is a living tube ringed by stinging tentacles hiding the mouth of a carnivore.
With a countless microscopic plankton drifting by, awaiting mouths are a wall of death.
As corals grow, each takes on a form unique to its species, making the architecture of
the reef a wonderland of distinctive shapes.
From flat as a table, to branch like a centerpiece, or rounded like the mushroom islands above.
There are more than 300 coral species in Palau.
For other creatures, the maze of coral structures serves as a kind of undersea city.
There are meals readily available, places to watch life pass.
It is a crowded world where residents become highly specialized at making a living, where
the skitties can disappear in a hurry, a place of alleyways and hideaways that sprawls across
miles.
For some it's also a nursery, camouflaged to resemble coral.
The cuttlefish is a cousin of the octopus and squid.
Judding water for propulsion, steering with its rubbery fins, it wanders the reef hunting
crabs and shrimp.
Sometimes three feet long, it's a deadly predator, armed with a strong jaw and venom.
But this day, a female looks for seclusion, not food.
Into dark recesses she deposits her eggs for safekeeping during five weeks of development.
It is the extent of her maternal care.
She may never see her offspring again.
This is an Eden created by living magic.
From just sun and seawater, corals construct one of the richest and most complex living
systems in the entire world.
The receding tide of Palau temporarily exposes life at the ocean's edge.
For fiddler crabs, it prompts an endless chore.
They rush to dig out their burrows and feed in the sun, only to seal themselves back in
the bottom when the sea returns.
Nibbling algae with their front pincers, they simultaneously brandish their large claws
in hopes of impressing a female while the tide allows.
In a world governed by the sea, time is measured by the pulse of the tides.
It is true not only for marine creatures, but for the people of Palau, encompassed by
the ocean, still dependent on its bounty.
Elsewhere a youth might know the television schedule.
Here he knows the daily tides.
He knows as well which edible creatures can be gathered at which water level.
The sea cucumber, however, is not food, but a source of protective armor.
Observers of the sea for millennia, Palauan natives know the trick of the sea cucumber,
which squirts out sticky threads to entangle its enemies.
When finished, he will return these living tools to the bottom, stressed but unharmed.
Their gooey discharge forms makeshift shoes to shield them from the sharp surfaces of
the coral.
In Palau, as in few remaining places, human life is not dominant over nature but still
a part of it.
In Palau, one can pass from the living world of coral into another world of reefs long
dead.
When Ice Age seas were lower, seeping rainwater carved great caverns and tunnels in the limestone
islands.
Flooded by rising seas, they now seem like eerie burial chambers.
Here, the staggering volume of coral construction is revealed.
Great blocks, sometimes hundreds of feet thick, accumulated one thin layer of polyps at a
time and compressed across millions of years.
The air-filled caves of the past, hung with stalactites of dissolved minerals, are now
a haunting, watery cellar entered from the sea.
A lone diver can seem like a humble pilgrim before a limestone shrine, surrounded by the
unbroken quiet of the ages and a great cathedral of time.
This may be Palau's strangest feature.
Water from the adjoining sea penetrates underground tunnels and cracks to feed some 70 landlocked
saltwater lakes.
Only voked a field of primordial swamps, controlled by the only saltwater crocodiles in Micronesia.
Among the few trees on earth that can survive in saltwater, mangroves line the lakes, propping
themselves up for the jungle roots.
For small creatures here, they are reefs of wood, lavish with hiding places.
Though extensions of the ocean, Palau's saltwater lakes have each evolved a chemistry and biology
unlike any other part of the sea.
The strangest is a secluded lake filled with more than a million jellyfish that migrate
endlessly like a great African herd.
Perhaps trapped here by a tectonic upheaval, or swept in through subterranean corridors,
the jellyfish long ago adapted to survive in this island's stockade.
Stinging tentacles withered away in a world without prey.
Now they are sustained solely by internal algae, similar to that within corals.
To nurture their life-giving algae, they cross the lake each day following the sunlight.
But their existence is not without danger.
For animals waiting in ambush, a wayward jellyfish is easy game.
Although sedentary but deadly, the anemone waits too.
Snared in its stinging tentacles, the jellyfish is doomed, slowly digested by the anemone,
and helpless to escape other hungry marauders.
At night, a flotilla of jellyfish gardeners will descend to fertilize their algae in nitrogen-rich
bottom waters, then rise to absorb sun all day, rotating to cultivate their algae evenly.
Neither these special jellyfish, nor such a lake, are known to exist anywhere else.
At day's end, most island life winds down, but for many in the sea, night is the time
of opportunity, a chance to feed under cover of darkness.
The sunlit reef of day now seems a dreamlike theater of colorful characters.
Wildlife bustles in the city of coral.
Both wary in daylight emerge to roam the reef like a parade of curiosities.
Curtains of glitter swirl above, as tiny silverfish dash after flakes of nourishment in the plankton,
while the open-water predators of day are resting.
Creatures, as motionless as rocks all day, begin to walk in search of food, an abalone,
an urchin, a crab masquerading as algae.
Things of beauty prove fierce.
Snails without shells, like nudibranchs and sea slugs, look delicate, but can sting their
enemies, and most are carnivores on the hunt.
One unusual starfish eats the very corals that provide its home.
The crown of thorns secretes poisonous digestive juices from its underside that kill polyps,
which it then devours.
Creeping on tubed feet, tipped with suction cups, it leaves behind patches of bleached,
lifeless coral.
Some cone snails hunt at night with a venom powerful enough to kill humans, yet hide meekly
in the sand all day.
It's not a worm, but a five-foot-long sea cucumber, stuffing itself with the help of
feathery tentacles.
Yet, like a worm, it makes its living eating the ground and filtering out the remains of
plants and animals.
An urchin, pretty as a flower, deadly as a venomous snake.
Periscope eyes never alert, the conch snail probes the bottom all night with a finger-like
foot looking for anything edible.
A decorator crab wearing anemone camouflage struts as if part of a floor show.
The largest of the nudibranchs is called a Spanish dancer, for its distinctive means
of propulsion.
Perhaps startled by an approaching crab, a Spanish dancer rises like a final curtain
on the nighttime extravaganza of the reef.
New creatures of the night are more peculiar than lionfish, costumed by adaptation in fins
and spines that look like feathers.
But to smaller reef fish, the plumage masks a ferocious predator.
The poison-tipped spines on its back are defensive weapons, but the entire array of quills is
used in the hunt.
Spotting prey, the lionfish hurts the potential victim with fins and spines outstretched until
the small fish's corner.
The strike is too quick to see without slowing the image.
Some are swift enough to escape, and some are spared by a lucky intervention.
Reacting to the invasion of their territory, tiny pufferfish try to drive the bigger fish
away by nipping the flesh of its spines.
The giant will not give in, but neither will its Lilliputian attackers.
Trying to eliminate the pests by eating them proves to be a mistake.
Spiky pufferfish can mean a mouthful of pain.
For even a ferocious hunter, night is the time of surprise on the reefs of Palau.
There is, in this Eden, an animal both tree climber and undersea swimmer, both beautiful
and lethal.
The banded sea snake injects prey with a venom as toxic as a cobra's.
Once only terrestrial, it adapted to exploit the ocean's abundance, laying its eggs on
land, but hunting in the sea.
Its searches are helped by a lung stretching nearly the entire length of its body.
Prowling for small fish and its favorite prey, more ray eels, it can hold its breath for
an hour.
Each year, with the arrival of the monsoons, a different mood sweeps over Palau.
For a time, the tropical sun gives way to cloudbursts that cleanse and refresh life.
Across the sandy bottom of a lagoon, a cloud of life passes.
Like a single organism, young sea catfish scour a seemingly barren sand flat for hidden
prey, back row constantly leapfrogging ahead in a conveyor belt movement, both efficient
and confusing to their enemies.
Where cover is sparse, some have developed extraordinary disguises.
The peacock flounder, like other flatfish, spends nearly all of its life lying on one
side, pretending to be part of the bottom.
So complete is its adaptation, both eyes grow on the side of its head, facing up.
A male and female court danger when they draw attention to themselves by leaving the bottom
to mate.
At first, they're too wary to complete the act.
But finally, briefly, the compulsion to spawn overwhelms the obsession to hide.
As so many species mingle, unusual relationships have developed.
The remora has found a way to hitchhike by clamping onto passing sharks and rays using
a suction disc on its head, giving it unlimited free rides and leftover scraps.
But the most bizarre relationships occur in special gathering places, where creatures
both gentle and threatening temporarily seem to set aside all natural conflict.
This spot would seem just a common outcrop of coral, but mantis, perhaps plagued by parasites,
know that small fish waiting here will ease their discomfort by removing the pests.
The attendants at these cleaning stations are wrasses, with heads and mouths small enough
for the task.
Assuming a passive posture is a signal, a larger fish allows the cleaner's free reign
to enter gills and mouth, and eat away parasites and fungus.
It is one thing to clean a peaceful manta, but quite another to venture into the most
infamous jaws on Earth.
In this special zone, the lords of the reef come out not to hunt small creatures, but
to seek their help.
In return, offering a brief truce and an endless supply of parasites for food.
For a time, even the planet's most feared predator seems as passive as a house pet.
The patrons depart more comfortable and fit, and will return often to this equivalent of
a health clique in the city of Coral.
Elsewhere on the reef there is no respite from the harsh laws imposed by hunger, from the
need to remain on guard.
The search for food is relentless.
The response, when an opportunity arises, merciless.
Amid the heavy traffic, a female titan triggerfish tends to her egg nest, blowing steadily to
wash away silt and bathe them in oxygenated water.
She also remains pleased to ward off watching predators.
The egg nest is a threat to a nearby male triggerfish.
They're not his offspring.
If they survived, they would compete with his own progeny.
Training attack, he lures the mother away, then blocks her return, leaving the eggs unguarded.
The ploy succeeds, the mother returns to find her eggs detached and beyond saving.
Another mother, a different strategy.
Preferring to scatter her treasures in many hiding places rather than a single egg nest,
a female cuttlefish continues to deposit eggs about the reef, as many as a thousand in the
last month.
They will develop in relative safety, while hunters of all kinds warm the reef daily.
Twilight, calm above, obscures the countless small dramas unfolding below.
After more than a month, most of the cuttlefish eggs spread out about the reef have survived.
This night, the moment of hatching approaches.
Though an adult hovers nearby, the young are now on their own.
For most reef creatures, the demands of survival leave little time and energy to care for the
young.
But hatchlings are born well prepared.
They emerge as miniature versions of adult cuttlefish.
Instinctively, they know that safety lies in the sheltering recesses of the corals.
The reef itself acts as a protective parent.
While baby cuttlefish begin their first day of life, some reef animals are retiring to
sleep and taking precautions.
As a nighttime shield, a parrotfish envelops itself in a mucus cocoon, sealing off its
telltale odor from predators in the dark.
Others hover in coral compartments to rest safely until dawn.
Coral, the builder, gardener, predator, and protective parent also serves as a dormitory.
In the dreamlike world of Palau, we can see the infinite powers of life, to create whatever
means of survival are needed for its creatures to endure, freshened by water, fueled by sun.
It is the essential magic of life, but it is an earthly miracle we might forget, if
not reminded by an Eden, like Palau.