Diving in Yap, Micronesia

We've recently come back from a holiday on the tiny island of Yap in the Federated States of Micronesia. It was a three hour flight from Tokyo to Guam, we then had to pass through US Customs and Immigration to make the transfer to the next flight which was only an hour in duration.

This is the traditional Men's House


This Hermit crab found the perfect house


This is another land crab.


The island is famous for Stone Money, infact they have this as their motto on their car numberplates. These huge stones became highly prized objects around the 1800s and were originally transported to Yap over 300 miles by canoe from the island of Palau.



The Island is also famous for Manta Rays. We stayed at a small diving centre on the island called Yap Rize Diving and thanks to the patience and skill of the dive master, Daisuke, we both passed our PADI open water diving certificate. This picture was taken by him and shows two of the many enormous mantas that congregrate at one particular channel just off the coast for cleaning by small fish. During two of our dives we were lucky enough to get close to many of these creatures some over 2m from tip to tip.


To finish, here is a photo of the sunset from the island.