Yap is probably best known among non-divers as the Land of Stone Money. Up to 12 feet in diameter these massive stone discs rates without competition as the largest coins in the world.

The US dollar is the common currency in Yap, but the stone money is still used to this day for major transactions like payment of dowry or purchase of land.

One of the amazing facts about the stone money, or Rai as they are called in Yapese, is that these gigantic stone discs were not quarried on the island. Instead, the Yapese traveled by outrigger canoe more than 300 miles to the neighboring island nation of Palau. There, in a quarry on northern Babelthaob, the Rai were hewn out of the rock with primitive tools and brought back to Yap on a perilous journey in the canoes.

The value of an individual Rai piece is not determined by its size alone. Its shape, the quality and texture of the stone, and most important: the difficulty of acquisition is equally important. The greater the effort involved in bringing it safely home, the storms encountered and all too often, the men lost in the process – contribute to increasing the value.

The Rai are not carried about, for obvious reasons. Individual pieces are found all over Yap, but most are kept in “Stone Money Banks” in the villages.

When Rai shift hands as the result of a land transaction, a wedding, or otherwise, the news spreads fast and it is soon common knowledge that a particular piece has a new owner. The Rai are seldom moved but remain where they stand.

In the mid 19th century the Irish-American trader and adventurer David Dean O’Keefe started a successful business using his ship to carry stone money from the Palau quarries to Yap in exchange for copra and beche-de-mer.

The Yapese liked the idea, and even if the “O’Keefe-money” was valued much lower than the Rai brought by canoe, they offered a welcome possibility for the less well-off to own money and thus increase their status in the village. O’Keefe was well-loved by the Yapese people who refused to trade with anyone else, and he maintained his monopoly for over 30 years.

• Depth: 30-100 ft | 9-30 m
• Visibility: 60-100+ ft | 18-30+ m
• Current: 0-2 mph | 0-5 km/h

Dominant Features

This site marks the northern boundary of regularly dived areas. A very gradual slope provides a large area of prime habitat for coral growth. The gradual dropoff provides hundreds of acres of habitat at 40 – 70 ft. (12 – 20 M) for hard corals to flourish on. Numerous large coral Pinnacles sprout up from the reef and are covered with a wide selection of marine life.

Corals

This site is hard coral heaven with an exceptional variety of hard corals in pristine condition. It is possible to see over three times the number of coral species that exist in the entire Caribbean on this one dive.

Fish Life

Count on finding a wide and plentiful range of reef fish, Turtles & Stingrays, and Sharks. Look for giant clams hiding in coral crevices.

As most of you are surely aware, living in the Tropics requires a bit of ingenuity from time to time.  Also, as most of you are aware it does rain, even in the Paradise which is Yap Island, but there is no need to worry about us as we have figured out a safe way to drink beer in all weather.

As you can see from the above picture, I am instructing Andrew Sweeney our former Resident Manager from Ireland, in the fine art of drinking beer in any conditions.  If you would like private lessons, from the Master, please contact your favorite dive travel specialist and request the Manta Ray Bay Resort & Yap Divers for your next holiday.  I promise that I will be available to teach you this valuable lesson.

If your favorite travel specialist can’t help you, contact me directly at bill@mantaray.com and I will help you with everything from flights down to your very own personalized Stone Money Brewing Company mug (note the instructions for product use on the label).

Hope to see you in Yap soon and share the secrets of drinking in the rain.

Yesterday, March 23, 2012, one of the best dive guides in Micronesia took his last boat ride. Accompanied by his daughter, brother, family members as well as members of the Manta Ray Bay staff, Chomed was moved from the Yap State Hospital to his home island of Rumung. He always drove and dived from the boat Seagull Express so it was only fitting that Seagull was used to transport him home. It was a very sad and poignant moment for all of us. Burial will be at 3 PM, Sunday the 25th.

Chomed and I have been together, in some capacity for nearly 30 years. We both began our working careers in Yap with the WA’AB Transportation Company and when my family and I started the Manta Ray Bay Hotel & Yap Divers, Chomed came with us. He never came to work without a smile on his face and he always took care of his boat and his guests. A very quiet man, but a very competent man in the water, he could find ANYTHING guests asked him to find. There are many, many Chomed stories but my favorite one goes like this.

Clay Wiseman, a noted marine biologist, photographer and writer was in Yap specifically to shoot certain macro critters that were known to inhabit a dive site known as Slow and Easy. When Clay came to my office to tell me what he wanted to see, I was busy doing something else and not really paying attention to him. I told him to just tell the dive guide what he wanted and they would happily point things out for him. About 2 hours later Clay is back in my office and furious. By then I was finished with whatever it was that I was doing so I took the time to ask Clay what was wrong. Basically the dive guide didn’t find any of the stuff that Clay had asked for so I asked Clay what it was he was telling the dive guide. Clay went into this long scientific description, with names, of what he was looking for and after about 30 seconds I had to tell him to stop as I had zero idea what he was talking about.

I suggested we get the Micronesian Reef Fishes book and have him point out to the guide exactly what he was looking for and after this was done, off they went. About 4 hours later, I met Clay again and timidly asked how his dive went. His story goes like this:

“We were getting ready and I was having trouble with some of my gear and camera equipment so after a bit, the dive guide rolled into the water and told me he would meet me on the bottom. When I rolled in and looked around, the guide was nowhere to be found and I thought – oh no, here we go again so I drifted with the current. Suddenly I came upon the guide floating vertically in the water and motioning with his nose at something in the reef. I looked and looked but could see nothing so the guide moved a bit closer and again pointed with his nose, as islanders the world over do. Still not seeing what he was pointing at, the guide moved closer and put his finger on one of the animals I had come to photograph. After shooting several shots I moved away and looked for the dive guide, who again was nowhere to be seen. I thought, here we go again so I simply drifted with the current and alas found the guide in the same position and pointing with his nose. To make a long story short, I had shown the guide images of 10 critters that I wanted to find and not only did he find all 10 of them for me in the space of several hundred yards of reef BUT he found them in the ORDER that I had shown them to him in the fish book!”

The guide was our own John Chomed.

There are certainly many more stories of examples of Chomed’s exploits under the water but I think it best that we give you, our guests and staff members, the chance to comment on this blog with your stories, or thoughts on the guy we all knew as Chomed – the King of Rumung. He hated that nickname, or at least acted like he did, but it stuck and everyone connected with the resort knew him simply as “the King”. He will be terribly missed and we all hope and pray that he is in a better place with great visibility, blue water and lots of fish. His body is currently at his home in Rumung surrounded by family, friends and co-workers. His daughter searched the island with other members of her family to find clothes to bury her father in and after visiting every store on the island, found nothing she felt suitable. Irritably her family asked her what she had in mind and she replied “those clothes are all nice but that’s not how I remember my Dad. He was always in his Yap Diver’s uniform so I think that’s what he should wear.

” So today, our Chomed is dressed in a pair of quick dry shorts, a new blue staff tee shirt with a blue “do rag” on his head and holding a Yap Diver’s cap. He is wearing a new name tag along with our 25th Anniversary pin and looks like he is ready to report to work. We would all give anything if that were the case. Good bye my friend and may God bless your soul. We miss you and every dive we do from here on out will include thoughts and memories of you!

Please read Tim Rock’s wonderful send-off for Chomed in this blog space and please feel free to comment on either post with your stories or wishes for Chomed and/or his family.

I’d say it’s all the cleaning station’s fault: Five days of constant manta encounters take their too, especially if they take place in between 12 and 30 ft  depth and allow bottom times of 80+ minutes. Only in the afternoons, when the rays tend to be less active, the boats went out to different spots approved by our guests.
And what would make more sense to switch from XL to XS. Guided by our veteran photogs Tim Rock, Marty Snyderman and Frank Schneider, the photographing guests explored the macro spot „Slow & Easy“ in the resort’s backyard. Snow-white mantis shrimps, gobies & shrimps living in symbiosis, pipe fishes, cleaner shrimps on duty in a fat moray’s mouth and an array of nudibranches kept still and were shot from all sides.

True critter delicacies were brought up by Tim Rock later that day after he went on a little discovery next to the bow of Manta Ray’s restaurant ship Mnuw: Not only mandarinfishes and cowries were sighted, but a photogenic while strange species of shrimp with furry legs. Later on, there was much discussion about the species’s identity during dinner aboard the restaurant ship, but only until Manta Ray Bay’s very own rite of passage was due… One or two fresh beers from the resort’s own micro-brewery might have helped, but nearly every repeater will underline that vacation in Yap is just not the same without that dive off the 30ft high top deck into the lagoon….

Some photographic treats can be seen on the individual facebook sites of Tim Rock and Frank Schneider. Further information: www.mantafest.com, www.mantaray.com

Story and Photo by TIM ROCK

Manta Fest in Yap is slated to begin this weekend. A few of us are here early including my free diver friend Ai Futaki. Here is Ai at 50 feet off Vertigo Wall with a gray reef shark (or six). We had sunny skies and clear, incoming tide waters to dive Miil Channel and then go outside the reef to Vertigo.

Mill produced a school of bumphead parrotfish, jacks and gray reef and whitetip sharks. We then headed to Vertigo. Henry gunned the engines a few times before anchoring and we were greeted by the hungry pack of gray reef sharks hoping for a feeding. They stayed around for the whole dive and Ai put on a show by easily going to 60 feet and shooting video.

Tomorrow we head back to Miil hoping for mantas this time.

Check out the action with daily blogs and posts on the MRBH website.

While my wife Patricia and I were driving to town this morning on our way to pick up our youngest granddaughter who is scheduled to spend the weekend with us, I suddenly realized something special.  The day is glorious, sun is shining, breeze is blowing, everything is green from the summer rains and then it dawned on me.  Exactly 17 years ago, to the day, I was making this same drive as the brand new owner of the Manta Ray Bay Hotel, Yap Divers and Wave Crest Travel Agency.  Sure, I started each of these businesses and ran them from the day they opened but August 1, 1973 was the first day that my family and I actually OWNED them.

What a time it was.  The oldest and youngest kids had turned 12 & 4 years old less than 30 days earlier while the middle two were 8 & 6 respectively.  Today, Numie the oldest one, has just turned 29 with a degree in Hotel Management from the University in Canberra, Australia is married and has a 14 month old daughter – Mary Patricia.  Numie is now the Human Resource Manager for the Resort after having spent her life working at just about every job we have here.  Next in line is Nathan a 24 year old Lance Corporal in the US Marine Corps who spent a year in Engineering School at the University of Auckland, New Zealand and 2 years at the University of Hawaii before finding his calling in the military.  Nathan also spent 2 years as our chef between the time he was in Hawaii and the time he joined the Corps.

Valerie is next in line and she is back home working as a dive guide for Yap Divers after spending two years in the Business program at Texas Christian University in Ft. Worth where she was double majoring in Accounting and Entrepreneurial Studies.  Val is now married and has an 19 month old son – Thaddaeus.  Last, but certainly not least, is Oliver Patrick “OP” Acker who has just celebrated his 21st birthday and is set to graduate from the College of Micronesia in Pohnpei with an AA degree in Computer Information Systems. OP is looking forward to enrolling in the University of Hawaii at Manoa in January (the same school I attended for Graduate School).

I have been married for more than 25 years to Patricia Mangthin, who is sitting beside me this morning as we head for town.  She is happy to finally be a grandmother and realizes how lucky we are that they are all living close to us in Yap.  Patricia has a wonderful family spread between Yap, Saipan and the United States, my family are all still in Texas and doing well.  The kids are healthy, there are two grandkids in Yap, the business is better than it’s ever been so, as Joe Walsh would sing . . . “Life’s Been Good to Me So Far.”

Here I am, at the Manta Ray Bay Resort on the island of Yap in the Pacific region known as Micronesia.  After a long journey from French Polynesia, my video equipment and I have arrived safely.  I had just enough time to set up my diving and video equipment, when Yap Divers announced  a Shark Dive. Yessss, I thought …that is the right way to start my new job as a photo/video pro at Manta Visions.  I was very excited to meet up with the local shark population for the first time and was wondering how many sharks we will see and how close I can get to them.  You know, …I have done more than a thousand shark dives before and honestly I thought it will be hard to impress me.

So how was it, you ask?

As a warm-up Bill Acker, owner/operator of the resort, brought down a basket of fish carcasses and placed it in a crevice in the coral at a depth of 10 meters (30+ feet).  The sharks, mostly grey reef sharks with a few blacktip reef sharks in the midst, smelled the bait but couldn’t get it.  They stayed really cool and the divers, …among them several photographers, had time to find a good place for taking their desired pictures.  The less experienced divers got time to get used to the presence of the sharks.  I started to love them from the first minute.  It was really easy to get close and they almost posed for us.  My camera was rolling and rolling, …didn’t dare switch it off so I would not miss a scene.  It was just beautiful,  the light was perfect and the water extremely clear.

After 10 minutes or so Bill, with the help of a couple of the Yap Diver’s dive guides, brought down a large ball of frozen chum attached to a line and float so that the “chumcicle” stayed in mid-water.  This time the sharks got a bit more excited as they could actually get to the food source.  Still, the entire feed was very controlled and the sharks were just interested in the chum and ignored the divers.  Ok, ok, …some sharks were a little more interested in cameras and strobes but isn’t that what we were looking for?  “Come a little closer baby …..c’mon gimme a smile …” and they did!

To get the feeling you have to be here of course, …even the best pictures cannot make up for the real thing.  So I hope to see you in Yap soon so I can introduce you to my new friends.

We were fortunate to have our good friend, Mr. Ken Kurtis from Hollywood, California back in Yap recently. This was Ken’s 6th visit and he brought several of his best customers with him. Here is an excerpt from his latest newsletter:

Bill,

We had a great week (ten days actually with all the travel time) diving in Yap. Warm water, great weather (the only rain we saw – except for the final day there when we weren’t diving – was always between midnight and 6AM), wonderful animal encounters, fantastic friends at Manta Ray Bay Hotel (still my favorite diving resort in the whole world), and a good time was had by all.

Here’s an easy way of thinking about how special Yap is by looking at these four images from our dives on Thursday:

Dive 1 – Valley of the Rays @ 10:11AM:

Dive 2 – Vertigo shark feed @ 11:46AM:

Dive 3 – Gilman Wall @ 2:18PM

Dive 4 – O’Keefe Island @ 7:50PM

This is a collection of animals that most divers would be happy to see over the course of an entire week. We saw them in a space of less than nine hours on a single day. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: You’ve got to go to Yap.

I’ll be working on the trip report and the pictures (and maybe a video too) and will send those to you separately, hopefully towards the end of the week. In the meantime, here are a dozen more images from our wonderful week in Yap: This Week (in pictures) at Reef Seekers.

The crew of Yap Divers spent this morning with several of our guests, including Ken Kurtis of Reef Seekers Dive Company in Hollywood, California, our webmaster Dustin Macdonald, the Captain of the Spanish owned sailing yacht – Never Say Never, currently moored off from the Manta Ray Bay Resort and several local residents of Yap. What were we doing you might well ask?

We were all watching the finals of the World Cup Football, soccer to us Yanks, between Spain and the Netherlands. We projected the game on to the big screen on the S/V Mnuw and sat around drinking fresh brewed coffee while the match was played out. The sun came up just as regulation time was ending so we moved downstairs into the Nautical Weaver lounge and showed the overtime period. I am not sure there is a better setting in the world for watching live sports than the Crow’s Nest as a full moon is rising or in our case, the sun was coming up.

Our group was evenly split between rooting for Spain and/or Holland. As a result of Spain’s 1 to 0 overtime win, Fredy, our Swiss brew meister is telling everyone that Switzerland is co-champion as a result of their opening game defeat of the Spanish.
Needless to say, it was a good morning and after breakfast, 4 dive boats departed for various locations around the island. The seas are very calm, the water is clear and the boat that I was on saw over 20 sharks including white tip, black tip, grey reef and a rare sighting of a zebra shark.

ab dem 1. Juli wird Profi-Filmer Peter Schneider die Leitung von Manta Visions, dem
Video- und Foto-Center des Manta Ray Bay Resorts, übernehmen.

Ambitionierten Filmern und Fotografen ist sein Name sicherlich ein Begriff: Nachdem
der gebürtige Berliner zwölf Jahre lang für das Deutsche Fernsehen gearbeitet hatte,
ging er für neun Jahre nach Rangiroa/Französisch-Polynesien und produzierte
spektakuläre Über- und Unterwassersequenzen, die von National Geogaphic TV,
Dicovery Channel und diversen anderen renommierten Sendern weltweit mit offenen
Armen angenommen wurden.
Einige Highlights seiner bisherigen Karriere bilden die Zusammenarbeit mit Christian
Petron (Haus-Filmer für den Kultregisseur Luc Besson, u.A. „Die Tiefe“, „Atlantis“), der
prämierte Film „Sharks of Rangiroa, from Legend to Reality“ – ein Manifest gegen die
Hai-Fischerei in der Südsee, das tatsächlich ein gesetzliches Fangverbot nach sich zog
– oder etwa eine Sequenz, die nicht nur die Mating-Tänze von Mantarochen, sondern
erstmals in freier Wildbahn auch die Paarung der „fliegenden Teppiche“ eingefangen
hat.

Gemessen an seiner Liebe zu Mantas und Haien – soviel lässt sich wohl schon vorab
sagen – hat sich Peter Schneider mit Yap sicher für die richtige Destination
entschieden.

Der Tauchlehrer und Video-Instructor wird im Rahmen seines neuen Engagements
nicht nur unseren fotografierenden und filmenden Gästen mit Rat und Tat beiseite
stehen und für alle anderen auf Wunsch Erinnerungsvideos produzieren.

Bill Acker, Jan Sledsens und Team freuen sich jetzt schon auf spannende
Unterwasserfilme, die spätestens ab unserem Foto- und Filmwettbewerb Manta Fest
(4.-14. September, mantafest.com) allabendlich über die Großleinwand unseres
Restaurantschiffs Mnuw flimmern werden.


Weitere Informationen:
www.mantaray.com
www.underwatercam.tv
mantavisions@mantaray.com
peter@underwatercam.tv