P-MAN XVI Update #07 - Flip's finally in country. Here's his first report.

21 March 2014

We needed to see some government officials, but a former Palauan Speaker of the House died and all government offices and a lot of businesses closed for the state funeral.

We met in the lobby at 1200 and headed to Neco Marine. Today was our warm-up-dive day. We took along with us Nate from GoPro. He was out on the boat that Scripps and the University of Delaware were using for their operations. We picked him up and dove the Jake, a Japanese floatplane and popular dive spot, as our get-wet dive.

Back on the water in Palau

Pat happy to be back on the water.

Casey telling me I better be happy being back on the water. He's still a Marine, you know.

Derek doesn't have to point. He retired from the Marine Corps earlier this month. Can't tell a bit, can you?

Big ocean. Little boat.

The team visits the Japanese "Jake" float plane.

Fish and airplanes get along fine.

Nate from GoPro, GoPro-ing.

Everyone did fine. Then we chased down Eric Terrill and Mark Moline who were making their first dives off Aimeliik looking for a TBM Avenger. We jumped in and helped with the search.

Debriefed at Neco Marine, got cleaned up, out to a Thai dinner and then a long briefing with Scripps/UDel, looking at potential dive targets.

Andy from Scripps working hard in the lab.

My sleep program finally caught up with me and I missed a good portion of the brief as I was nodding off quite a bit. But this I know: 0800 breakfast and brief and then out on the water to see what's on the bottom. That's what we're going to do tomorrow.

- Flip Colmer

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