5 Dollars Hyriopsis cumingii

Palau has operated one of the more commercially aggressive bullion and commemorative programs in the Pacific, leveraging its 1994 Compact of Free Association with the United States to issue legal tender coinage without maintaining a domestic currency of its own. This particular piece belongs to a marine life series that drew on Palau's reputation as a world-class dive destination — the pearl mussel Hyriopsis cumingii is not a Pacific native but a freshwater species farmed extensively across China and Japan, which makes its appearance in a Palauan series more a reflection of the global pearl trade than any local ecology.

The KM#722.1 designation suggests a variant within a paired issue.