Diving Bikini by Cathy and Johno

After hitting a rather large birthday milestone we decided it was time to go on an equally large dive trip, so off to Bikini we went (eventually after a cancellation but that’s another story).
Bikini is one of the remotest places you can dive, our 3 day journey took us to Hawaii via San Francisco, then on to the American military base at Kwajelan where we were escorted to the Ferry to Ebye. On Ebye we boarded Truk Master, our home for the next 10 days. The voyage to Bikini took 30 hours, during that time all we saw was sea and sky, no land, ships, planes or airplane trails.
We were here to dive the ships wrecked by the Americans nuclear bomb testing in the 1940’s and 50’s.
The shake down dive was the USS Saratoga, a 268m aircraft carrier, not bad as shakedown dives go! There is just one word to describe the Saratoga, BIG (or maybe HUGE) We did 6 dives on the Saratoga, and we still only just scratched the surface. Armed with the plans of the ship we went exploring and discovered the emergency radio room and the airplane catapult mechanism, oh and an old brass divers helmet.

Another of the big wrecks was the Japanese battleship the HIJMS Nagato, the Japanese flagship during the attack on Pearl Harbour. Like all battleship wrecks she is upside down, so if you want to see the big guns you have to go under the ship, but they are well worth it, at 16 inches the biggest guns I have ever seen. The stern is pretty impressive too with 2 rudders and 4 propellers, my challenge was to get it all in 1 photo (you can see the results for yourselves).

The USS Lamson was one of my favourites, totally intact down one side, on the other the damage caused by the explosion was obvious with ripples in the hull. On the deck we saw both torpedoes in their launcher and a white tip reef shark asleep on the deck (he wasn’t impressed at being disturbed!).

Despite Johns dislike of diving submarines, he didn’t object to diving the USS Apogon, she is again upright and intact, and we were able to sit on the seabed under the props and peer out through the masses of tiny glass fish that were everywhere on all the wrecks (there were so many it was really hard at times to take photos!) on the top of the sub is a gun, some shells and also rather randomly, a jug!!
Another battleship (and again upside down with huuuuge guns) is the USS Arkansas. Sitting under the immense bow looking up to the surface is really impressive, less impressive was the little school of pilot fish that insisted on following John on the deco stop.

The USS Anderson is a destroyer lying on her side with more guns, torpedo launchers and depth charges. The bow was beautiful, and much narrower than expected, there was also a telegraph just lying on the deck, something you would NEVER see on a British wreck!
The final wreck is the USS Carlisle, not a warship but an armed merchantman and she suffered a lot more damage than the other wrecks, especially on the side closest to the bomb blast. The ships wheel looks like someone had tried to fold it up.

The wrecks are all covered in long whip corals and masses of tiny glass fish. We didn’t see many of the larger reef fish which was surprising as there is a healthy population of White tip, Grey reef, Black tip and young Tiger sharks, including Scratchy who put in an appearance on most of the dives. We also saw Manta rays and Turtles.

There are only 7 people living on Bikini, they are caretakers and are swapped every few months, it’s safe to visit but just not safe to live here permanently and eat food grown on the island, although we did risk a coconut! Midway through the trip we had a tour (including one of the bunkers) and BBQ on the island. Despite the general decay of the buildings and vehicles the only really sad sight was the amount of plastic litter washed up on the beautiful beaches, fishing buoys and plastic containers, this is not from the locals but has been washed up from the Pacific ocean. One of the most remote places on Earth and there is plastic waste, heartbreaking.

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