I just finished a trip to Palau. I had booked four days diving with MAML Divers in Peleliu, as well as three days diving with Sam's in Koror.
There are three dive operations based on Peleliu: Day Dream, Peleliu Divers, and MAML. Day Dream caters to an exclusively Japanese clientele and is not an option for divers who can't understand dive briefings made in Japanese. Peleliu Divers is run by the same owners of Dolphin Bay Resort, the upper end accommodation on the island, which caters to English speakers. MAML (the Palauan word for Napoleon Wrasse) seems to be the poor cousin to the two others, and appears to attract an assortment of other nationalities, though Korean and Japanese divers seem to make up the bulk of the high season.
MAML has a main Koror-based operation as well, but their Peleliu operation is based out of Peleliu North Dock and the dive operation is integrated with Yellow Wall Restaurant, whose cook also provides the boxed lunches for divers. Most people diving with MAML seem to stay at the $67 per night per room Ocean View Hotel next door, though there are several $35 'no aircon, no hot water' places in the village that some divers stay at. MAML and Peleliu Divers have the same rates for diving and I suppose that there's no reason one couldn't stay somewhere besides Dolphin Bay Resort and dive with Peleliu Divers, but I don't know of anyone who actually did that. Most of the days the boat was stationed at Peleliu's South Dock, from which you can get to most of the dives on the south and west wall in about 10 minutes.
MAML in Peleliu does not provide Nitrox, so all dives are made with air. The rental department is rudimentary at best and I'm not certain includes enough gear to get one diver into the water. Their gear is sized for their normal Asian clientele, and those with larger physiques will likely have to be driven to Peleliu Divers to rent from them. For some reason, they only have two pound weights, so divers who need a large amount of weight will get a densely packed weight belt while those wanting an odd number of pounds are out of luck. I showed up with all my gear expecting nothing more than air, which seems to be typical of their customers, and so had no problems at all.
The boat we used was rust-stained, with at least two poles for the roof completely rusted through and held down with rope, but certainly served the purpose of getting divers into the water at dive sites. I had arrived in the off season and, for five of my 12 dives I was the only diver, so in effect had a charter with my own boat captain and dive guide. I never had more than three other divers on the boat. I was told that in high season, MAML has four dive guides based out of Peleliu, but when I was there the entire operation consisted of the guy who filled the tanks and ran errands, the cook at Yellow Wall, and the crew for one boat. Bernard, the dive guide, had been working on Peleliu for the past five years, while the boat captain, Henry, was a Peleliu local. Both were extremely competent and experienced and I felt completely comfortable diving with MAML. The one time I felt that a briefing was really lacking when I was not informed of the downcurrents coming off of Peleliu Corner. (To be fair, I had told the dive guide that I was feeling seasick in the big swells and needed to get in the water right away.)
All in all, I was pleased with my experience with MAML. I showed up expecting a bare bones operations catering to experienced divers who would be carrying their own gear and whose major expectation was to be provided a tank of air and be put into the water on top of a dive site with a knowledgeable guide, and that is exactly what I got. There was no evasion or misinformation about what MAML could provide, and Bernard was perfectly happy to take clients to Peleliu Divers if they needed something their own shop couldn't provide. Many divers will obviously find that diving off Peleliu with MAML isn't to their taste, but they're good at the service they provide.
When I got back to Koror, one of the divers at Sam's said she had heard rumors that MAML was "a kamikaze dive operation", which I think is entirely unfair. Peleliu Corner, which includes Peleliu Express, Peleliu Cut and Yellow Wall depending on currents, is an advanced dive with currents that were twice as strong as those I experienced at the popular Blue Corner. Similarly many of their Korean and Japanese clients only have three or four days in Palau and do 4 dives a day on air, pushing their no deco limits. The difficulty level of the dives and the decisions of some of their customers doesn't affect my impression of the MAML staff in Peleliu as being very experienced and highly skilled and the gear as being adequate. The operation simply juggled my decision to do three dives with another diver doing two dives and two Korean divers doing four all in the same day on the same boat out of South Dock without comment. It should note that one of the divers with Sam's who did Peleliu Express while I was there was sucked down to 110' after leaving the 60' corner, so it's by no means a MAML issue.
I had heard so many good things about Sam's that I truly expected my comment on their operation to be "As expected." However, I found their utter lack of organization to be rivaled only by the appalling ineptitude of some of their clients. The first day's lunch, they provided me with a main portion I had specifically said I could not eat when I made my reservation, and subsequently reminded them about. Since the only non-3 tank day I had with Sam's was to include Jellyfish Lake, I had assumed from the fact that the boat only had two tanks per person that this was what was going on. However, Sam's had apparently just lost my itinerary and put me on a plain two-tank dive, which I had not requested at all. (I could have caught this mistake myself if a member of staff had bothered to explain the scheduling board in the main area of Sam's, rather than simply telling me to get on a boat and wait.) In any case, I ended up losing a dive in Palau because of the scheduling snafu. The next day, the third "dive" was Chandelier Cave, which was worth doing once but strikes me a bit of a toy dive (35 minutes with a max depth of ~30' with much of time being a description of the cave in the surface pockets) that would be more appropriately used for a fourth dive following a more challenging real dive. However, because all the boats return to Sam's dock after the second dive, a third dive has to be close by, rather than putting all the divers wanting three dives in one boat and having them stay out at the 'real' dive sites before heading in. In any case, I found that my schedule was still utterly twisted when I returned to the dock the second day and I had to fix it again. I thought it couldn't prove to be any less organized, when Sam's outright forgot to pick up me and two other divers at our hotel on the third morning, so we had to call them after 15 minutes. This wouldn't have been so bad if the two other divers weren't new on island so had to fill out paperwork and rent gear, which delayed the dive boat departure at least 25-30 minutes.
While some of the people I dove with at Sam's were lovely people and experienced divers, there were also some of the most appalling displays of idiot diving I've ever seen. Of the six 'real' dives I did with Sam's (not including Chandelier Cave), three ended with divers running out their air and needing to use the guide's spare. Let me repeat that: In FIFTY PERCENT of my dives at Sam's, divers got into in OOA situations and had to rely on the dive guide to nanny them back to the surface. The last day was truly epic in that in both dives, the backup guide had to accompany divers who had chugged through their air early AND the dives ended with the main guide, who did truly heroic work, literally dragging buoyant divers who were out of air for ten minutes underwater. I won't even discuss the amount of damage I saw this group do to the coral on the walls. It was literally impossible to enjoy the dives since I kept wondering if I would need to rescue someone else since there was literally nothing the remaining guide could do if another of the incompetents had an actual emergency, rather than being the first to run to the guide's spare reg like an overgrown and spoiled breastfeeding child.
In between the inept scheduling and incompetent divers, I will certainly not be returning to Sam's and look forward to trying out either Fish and Fins, Neco or maybe a smaller operation on my next trip to Palau. On the other hand, I see no reason not to use MAML Divers again, other than curiosity about what Peleliu Divers might provide.
There are three dive operations based on Peleliu: Day Dream, Peleliu Divers, and MAML. Day Dream caters to an exclusively Japanese clientele and is not an option for divers who can't understand dive briefings made in Japanese. Peleliu Divers is run by the same owners of Dolphin Bay Resort, the upper end accommodation on the island, which caters to English speakers. MAML (the Palauan word for Napoleon Wrasse) seems to be the poor cousin to the two others, and appears to attract an assortment of other nationalities, though Korean and Japanese divers seem to make up the bulk of the high season.
MAML has a main Koror-based operation as well, but their Peleliu operation is based out of Peleliu North Dock and the dive operation is integrated with Yellow Wall Restaurant, whose cook also provides the boxed lunches for divers. Most people diving with MAML seem to stay at the $67 per night per room Ocean View Hotel next door, though there are several $35 'no aircon, no hot water' places in the village that some divers stay at. MAML and Peleliu Divers have the same rates for diving and I suppose that there's no reason one couldn't stay somewhere besides Dolphin Bay Resort and dive with Peleliu Divers, but I don't know of anyone who actually did that. Most of the days the boat was stationed at Peleliu's South Dock, from which you can get to most of the dives on the south and west wall in about 10 minutes.
MAML in Peleliu does not provide Nitrox, so all dives are made with air. The rental department is rudimentary at best and I'm not certain includes enough gear to get one diver into the water. Their gear is sized for their normal Asian clientele, and those with larger physiques will likely have to be driven to Peleliu Divers to rent from them. For some reason, they only have two pound weights, so divers who need a large amount of weight will get a densely packed weight belt while those wanting an odd number of pounds are out of luck. I showed up with all my gear expecting nothing more than air, which seems to be typical of their customers, and so had no problems at all.
The boat we used was rust-stained, with at least two poles for the roof completely rusted through and held down with rope, but certainly served the purpose of getting divers into the water at dive sites. I had arrived in the off season and, for five of my 12 dives I was the only diver, so in effect had a charter with my own boat captain and dive guide. I never had more than three other divers on the boat. I was told that in high season, MAML has four dive guides based out of Peleliu, but when I was there the entire operation consisted of the guy who filled the tanks and ran errands, the cook at Yellow Wall, and the crew for one boat. Bernard, the dive guide, had been working on Peleliu for the past five years, while the boat captain, Henry, was a Peleliu local. Both were extremely competent and experienced and I felt completely comfortable diving with MAML. The one time I felt that a briefing was really lacking when I was not informed of the downcurrents coming off of Peleliu Corner. (To be fair, I had told the dive guide that I was feeling seasick in the big swells and needed to get in the water right away.)
All in all, I was pleased with my experience with MAML. I showed up expecting a bare bones operations catering to experienced divers who would be carrying their own gear and whose major expectation was to be provided a tank of air and be put into the water on top of a dive site with a knowledgeable guide, and that is exactly what I got. There was no evasion or misinformation about what MAML could provide, and Bernard was perfectly happy to take clients to Peleliu Divers if they needed something their own shop couldn't provide. Many divers will obviously find that diving off Peleliu with MAML isn't to their taste, but they're good at the service they provide.
When I got back to Koror, one of the divers at Sam's said she had heard rumors that MAML was "a kamikaze dive operation", which I think is entirely unfair. Peleliu Corner, which includes Peleliu Express, Peleliu Cut and Yellow Wall depending on currents, is an advanced dive with currents that were twice as strong as those I experienced at the popular Blue Corner. Similarly many of their Korean and Japanese clients only have three or four days in Palau and do 4 dives a day on air, pushing their no deco limits. The difficulty level of the dives and the decisions of some of their customers doesn't affect my impression of the MAML staff in Peleliu as being very experienced and highly skilled and the gear as being adequate. The operation simply juggled my decision to do three dives with another diver doing two dives and two Korean divers doing four all in the same day on the same boat out of South Dock without comment. It should note that one of the divers with Sam's who did Peleliu Express while I was there was sucked down to 110' after leaving the 60' corner, so it's by no means a MAML issue.
I had heard so many good things about Sam's that I truly expected my comment on their operation to be "As expected." However, I found their utter lack of organization to be rivaled only by the appalling ineptitude of some of their clients. The first day's lunch, they provided me with a main portion I had specifically said I could not eat when I made my reservation, and subsequently reminded them about. Since the only non-3 tank day I had with Sam's was to include Jellyfish Lake, I had assumed from the fact that the boat only had two tanks per person that this was what was going on. However, Sam's had apparently just lost my itinerary and put me on a plain two-tank dive, which I had not requested at all. (I could have caught this mistake myself if a member of staff had bothered to explain the scheduling board in the main area of Sam's, rather than simply telling me to get on a boat and wait.) In any case, I ended up losing a dive in Palau because of the scheduling snafu. The next day, the third "dive" was Chandelier Cave, which was worth doing once but strikes me a bit of a toy dive (35 minutes with a max depth of ~30' with much of time being a description of the cave in the surface pockets) that would be more appropriately used for a fourth dive following a more challenging real dive. However, because all the boats return to Sam's dock after the second dive, a third dive has to be close by, rather than putting all the divers wanting three dives in one boat and having them stay out at the 'real' dive sites before heading in. In any case, I found that my schedule was still utterly twisted when I returned to the dock the second day and I had to fix it again. I thought it couldn't prove to be any less organized, when Sam's outright forgot to pick up me and two other divers at our hotel on the third morning, so we had to call them after 15 minutes. This wouldn't have been so bad if the two other divers weren't new on island so had to fill out paperwork and rent gear, which delayed the dive boat departure at least 25-30 minutes.
While some of the people I dove with at Sam's were lovely people and experienced divers, there were also some of the most appalling displays of idiot diving I've ever seen. Of the six 'real' dives I did with Sam's (not including Chandelier Cave), three ended with divers running out their air and needing to use the guide's spare. Let me repeat that: In FIFTY PERCENT of my dives at Sam's, divers got into in OOA situations and had to rely on the dive guide to nanny them back to the surface. The last day was truly epic in that in both dives, the backup guide had to accompany divers who had chugged through their air early AND the dives ended with the main guide, who did truly heroic work, literally dragging buoyant divers who were out of air for ten minutes underwater. I won't even discuss the amount of damage I saw this group do to the coral on the walls. It was literally impossible to enjoy the dives since I kept wondering if I would need to rescue someone else since there was literally nothing the remaining guide could do if another of the incompetents had an actual emergency, rather than being the first to run to the guide's spare reg like an overgrown and spoiled breastfeeding child.
In between the inept scheduling and incompetent divers, I will certainly not be returning to Sam's and look forward to trying out either Fish and Fins, Neco or maybe a smaller operation on my next trip to Palau. On the other hand, I see no reason not to use MAML Divers again, other than curiosity about what Peleliu Divers might provide.
Thanks for writing this up.
