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Friday, December 25, 2015

The Surreal Ongeim'l Tketau...

In Palauan, they call it the Ongeim'l Tketau, or the Fifth Lake, but it is more commonly known as the Jellyfish Lake...
The Ongeim'l Tketau was our next stop after a wonder wonderful natural spa treatment at the Milky Way. After a short boat ride from Ngeruktabel island, we reached Mecherchar island or the Eil Malk, an oddly shaped island, with multiple lakes, one of which is the Jellyfish Lake...


While we had got an aerial view of this mysterious place yesterday, today it was time to get up, close and personal with the millions of unique jellyfish that live in this lake...


The Jellyfish Lake is a unique water body. It is a marine lake that is connected to the ocean through tiny fissures and tunnels in the limestone of the Mecherchar island. This isolation from the ocean led to a unique phenomena here - the jellyfish evolved in a unique fashion within this lake, the lack of predators in the lake meant that their stinging cells were not required anymore. Over the ages, they evolved and lost their stinging cells...


As we got off our boat, we came across this board that described an interesting local legend on the formation of the Rock Islands:
"Soon after the creation of the world, there was only one island - Angaur. On this island, there lived a child named Uab, who had a huge appetite.
An average meal consisted of 50 large baskets of food, plus dozens of basins of spring water and coconut juice. He ate so much and grew into such as enormous giant that the people of Angaur became threatened with famine.
One night while he slept, they tied him up and set him ablaze. Uab roared and kicked and Angaur shook. The struggle was so fierce that Uab kicked himself into many pieces, large and small, which settled upon the ocean and formed the islands of Palau"

Entry into the island isn't cheap - it is priced at USD 100 per person possibly to prevent hordes of tourists coming in and to fund the preservation of the habitat here...

A steep hike from the jetty followed by a descent to the shore of the lake ensued, all through a thick equatorial jungle. 
And then the magical lake appeared...
The lake is home to millions golden jellyfish, or the papua etpisoni, that spend much of their lives performing a daily migration that follows the sun’s movement across the sky. Before sunrise, the jellies cluster along the lake’s western shore, but swim eastwards as the sun dawns. These creatures need sunlight to survive - the rays of the sun nourish essential, algae-like organisms (zooxanthellae) that have a symbiotic relationship with the jellyfish - they live within their tissues and provide them with energy that comes from photosynthesis. To move around, tracking the sun, the jellyfish pump water through their bodies, a kind of jet propulsion. 
The daily migration of these magnificent creatures mixes its waters and churns its nutrients and small organisms that form the base of the food chain in this isolated ecosystem.


(Video courtesy: mikeyk730's YouTube channel)

While it is perfectly safe to snorkel in the lake, diving is prohibited as the lake has high concentrations of toxic hydrogen sulphide in its lower layers.
And it seems the wonders of Nature never cease to amaze...

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