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	October 2006 It's Palolo time!   Every year in October, a week after the full moon, all the locals get ready for the Palolo rise. This year, we joined in, taking our 'Dive Savaii' boat out. Having invited some of our local friends on board, we had a full boat when we headed out to the reef at 4am on Friday morning, 13th October. The best spots in this area for Palolo would be the reef by Wreck Juno and Safuto Reef.   We caught our Palolo at Wreck Juno reef. The method of catching Palolo is quite simple: Take a stick, make it into a loop. Take some mosquito netting, sew that around the stick loop & you have yourself a catching net.   In every direction one looked, you could see people in their traditional canoes (pow-pow), walking/swimming on the reef & in other floatation devices. Once caught, you can either eat it raw or cook it, which ever way suits your palette. Yum-Yum !   What is PALOLO?   Write up from: Field Guide to the Samoan Archipelago: Fish, Wildlife & Protected Areas   In the Samoan Archipelago, one type of polychaete worm, the PALOLO, is an important delicacy & cultural symbol. The worm lives in branching burrows in the limestone base of shallow tropical reefs. Although typically 'active' at night, the worms apparently never leave their burrows. The eggs & sperm of palolo concentrate in the tail segment of mature adults. Seven days after Full moon in Oct. or Nov., when evening falls, the gamete-filled tail segments detach from the body of the worm and float to the ocean surface to reproduce. In some areas, millions of spaghetti-like palolo form a wriggling mass, permeating the water. Eventually the wriggling stops, & the tail segments dissolve into a slick of eggs & sperm. This annual event is eagerly awaited by the Samoan people. Those palolo that are not swallowed on the spot by hungry fishermen are gathered for subsequent feasts. Ulas (flower necklaces) made from the flowers of the mo'oso'io tree, which blooms at the same time of year that palolo spawn, are often worn by fisherman at this time of year out of reverence for the event. Interestingly, the actual time of emergence of palolo worms differs between the islands, earliest in the east of the archipelago, & later as one goes west. They usually appear about 10pm in Manu'a, about 1am on Tutuila, & not until about 4am in the western islands of Samoa. Although swarms occur in many other areas of the South Pacific, in Hawaii, the Palolo worm, though present, does not exhibit this mass spawning.
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