Palau Diving Season: Best Time to Dive by Month, Mantas and Sharks

Palau water temperature, rain and wind by month

Palau is a year-round destination, and the sea barely changes: every monthly average in the table sits between 27.7°C and 29.8°C. The wind direction, the rain and the number of mantas and sharks change more. To compare other regions, see our month-by-month destination list.

Each month has two sea temperatures. The lower one is the monthly mean from NOAA Coral Reef Watch's Palau station, a satellite average for a box of sea off Babeldaob's west coast, built from 1985-2012 data and set to a late-1980s baseline. The higher one is seatemperature.info's 10-year Koror average, 0.5-1.0°C warmer in every month. Air and rain are NOAA's 1991-2020 normals for Koror, and rain days are days with at least 2.5 mm (0.1 in). Wind is our average of about 30,000 daytime reports (08:00-16:00) from Palau's airport between January 2016 and August 2025, from NOAA's Integrated Surface Database. An airport reads lighter than open sea, so use that column for direction and month-to-month change.

The suit column applies our wetsuit thickness chart to one dive of ordinary length: a 3mm full suit or a shorty at 28°C and above, a 3mm at 24-27°C. Go one step warmer if you make several dives a day.

Wet season, wind and typhoons: what the records show

Palau has no dry month. NOAA's normals give Koror about 3,670 mm (144 in) of rain a year: 205 mm in March, the driest month, and 410-420 mm in June and July, with 2.5 mm or more on 18-19 days in each. Operators call roughly November to April the dry season, and Dive The World says July to September may bring heavier rain, stronger wind and visibility down to 15-20 m.

For divers the bigger change is the wind direction. From December to April, 69-85% of daytime readings at the airport came from between north and east, averaging 7.5-9.0 knots. From July to October, 56-67% came from between south and west-northwest, mostly west, at 6.4-7.3 knots. June is the light, variable changeover. Strong wind is rare at the airport: 17 knots or more turned up in 2% of daytime reports in September, the highest month, and in under 1.5% in every other month.

Direction matters because Blue Corner, German Channel, Ulong and Siaes sit on the southwest barrier reef, which the shark researchers working there call the leeward side. That holds while the trade wind blows from the northeast. In the westerly months the same reefs face the wind, and Liveaboard.com warns that wet-season wind and swell may limit access to the outer reefs.

Typhoons are uncommon, not absent. The Palau Visitors Authority says they are rare because Palau lies outside the typhoon zone. A 2014 review by the Coral Reef Research Foundation, using Joint Typhoon Warning Center tracks, counted 68 tropical depressions, storms and typhoons within 200 nautical miles (370 km) of Palau between 1945 and 2013. Twenty were at typhoon strength (64 knots or more) at their closest point, about one every three years, and eight of those passed within 35 nautical miles. November and December had the most significant storms; July had three weak ones and August none.

So the highest storm risk falls early in the calm season. Typhoon Bopha passed 25 nautical miles south of Angaur on 2-3 December 2012 and scoured many east-facing reefs to bare rock deeper than 40 m, and Haiyan's eye crossed Kayangel on 6-7 November 2013. Dive The World says February to April has no typhoon risk, yet the same storm table lists typhoon-strength storms within 200 nautical miles in all three months. On a November or December trip, read your boat's cancellation terms before you pay.

Best month to dive Palau for your goal

No month is bad, and the sources differ at the edges: PADI's blog puts peak conditions between October and May, Fish 'n Fins names November to April and Dive The World November to May. By goal:

• Calm water on the southwest outer walls (Blue Corner, Siaes, Ulong): December to April, when the wind is mostly northeast and those reefs are on the leeward side. December, though, is one of the two busiest typhoon months.
• Manta rays at German Channel: December to March, the peak named by both PADI's blog and Fish 'n Fins.
• The most grey reef sharks: February to June, when five years of dive guide counts peaked, at 12.4 per dive in March and April.
• Shark mating behaviour at Blue Corner: December to April, when mature females with fresh mating scars were seen on 80% of dives there, according to the IUCN shark group's factsheet for the area.
• Wrecks: any month. Liveaboard.com says the inner-lagoon wrecks stay diveable when wind and swell keep boats off the outer reefs.
• Fewer boats: July to September. Divernet's low-season feature says Blue Corner, Ulong Channel and German Channel are often far less crowded then.
• Lowest typhoon risk: July and August, the months with the fewest storms in the 1945-2013 record.

Where to see manta rays and reef sharks in October and November

Both are there, though neither is at its peak. For reef sharks, dive the outer reef promontories: Blue Corner, New Drop-off, Ulong Channel and Siaes Corner. In a 2014 study by Vianna and colleagues, dive guides logging trips from October 2007 to November 2012 saw grey reef sharks on 86% of dives at the monitored sites. October and November had the lowest monthly averages, 8.1 per dive against 12.4 in March and April. Current mattered more than the month: strong-current dives had three times as many sharks.

October and November have an event of their own. Blackstreak surgeonfish gather to spawn at Blue Corner from the first quarter to the full moon in those months, and grey reef sharks chase the spawning schools, according to the IUCN shark group's Ngemelis factsheet, which cites Etpison and Colin (2018). Closer to town, the factsheet for Uchelbeluu Reef, home of the Short Drop Off site about 20 minutes east of Koror by speedboat, says young-of-the-year grey reef sharks 60-80 cm long make up most of the aggregations from September to November.

For mantas, start with German Channel. Fish 'n Fins says sightings are possible year-round, with more encounters from December to March, and Divernet's low-season feature says mantas keep visiting the cleaning stations, with the longest encounters in calm conditions. Fish 'n Fins also dives Devil Fish City in the Ngardmau Channel, 55-65 minutes north, only at slack high tide, and reports up to 20 mantas there at a time. In November the wind swings back toward the northeast (55% of daytime airport readings), so late November suits both animals and calmer outer reefs.

Palau's main dive sites

The famous drift dives are on the southwest barrier reef, about an hour from Koror; the cave and most wrecks are close to town. Most wrecks date from Operation Desecrate One on 30-31 March 1944, when US carrier aircraft sank or damaged 36 Japanese ships at Palau. The table gives the depths each source publishes.

Jellyfish Lake is a snorkel, not a dive: Koror State lists it as the only marine lake open to visitors and does not allow scuba there. Divernet reported in 2019 that its golden jellyfish peaked at about 30 million in 2005, nearly vanished in 2016 and had recovered to about 630,000 in a December 2018 Coral Reef Research Foundation survey. In August 2025 Palau Dive Adventures put the count below 5,600, and in March 2026 the Palau Aggressor said numbers were thriving again. Ask for the latest count before you pay for the lake permit.

Currents and reef hooks on Palau's outer reefs

Expect current on most outer-reef dives. Fish 'n Fins says the current at Blue Corner can shift direction within seconds and is strongest around full and new moon, when the tidal range reaches about 2 m (7 ft). The incoming tide brings clear ocean water with 30 m or more of visibility; on the outgoing tide it drops to 15-20 m. In Ulong Channel the current can reverse mid-dive, and the operator's rule is to turn and drift the other way, never to swim against it.

Reef hooks are standard kit. At Blue Corner divers hook into dead reef at the plateau edge, add a little air to the BC and hang in the flow. Dive The World says every diver in Palau should have a reef hook and that not every liveaboard rents them, so bring your own. Our drift diving guide covers hook technique and gas planning in current. A drift dive ends wherever the current leaves you, so carry a surface marker and practise deploying an SMB before the trip.

Liveaboard or land-based?

The trade is boat time against flexibility. Fish 'n Fins gives 50-70 minutes by speedboat from Koror to Blue Corner, 35-45 minutes to Siaes Tunnel and 55-65 minutes to Devil Fish City. Dive The World says a liveaboard is the best way to see all of Palau because day trips mean long, repeated boat rides.

A Koror base suits a trip that mixes the outer reefs with sites near town: Chandelier Cave is under 1.6 km from most dive shops, the Jake seaplane wreck five minutes by boat and Short Drop Off 20 minutes. Day boats usually run two dives; the low-season package in Divernet's feature includes two tank dives a day and charges extra for a third. A liveaboard fits more dives into each day, so plan nitrogen loading and suit warmth for that schedule. Our first liveaboard guide covers the routine.

Palau Pledge, environmental fee and Rock Islands permits

Three national rules apply to every visitor, and Koror State adds permits. Fees are as the official pages state them and can change, so confirm with your operator.

• Palau Pledge: every visitor signs it on arrival, and it is stamped into the passport, according to the Palau Visitors Authority.
• Pristine Paradise Environmental Fee: $100, included in every international airline ticket to Palau since 1 January 2018.
• Sunscreen: since 1 January 2020 Palau has banned reef-toxic sunscreen. Only mineral sunscreens with zinc oxide or titanium dioxide as the active ingredients, and no parabens, triclosan, triclocarban or phenoxyethanol, are allowed.
• Rock Islands permits: ocean activities in the Rock Islands Southern Lagoon need a Koror State permit, and Fish 'n Fins places the Blue Corner area inside it. The Rock Island permit costs $50; the Jellyfish Lake permit costs $100 and includes Rock Island access. The Palau Visitors Authority says both are valid for 5 days, while Koror State's fact sheet (revised 2012) says 10 days and applies them to visitors aged 6 and over. Koror State rangers and authorised tour operators sell them.
• Sharks: Koror State law makes it illegal to feed sharks in its waters.