Micronesia Scuba Diving
Including Palau, Truk (Chuuk), Yap, Bikini Atoll & Marshall Islands and Kosrae

An Undercurrent Insider Report on Micronesia Diving
The Consumer Newsletter for Serious Divers Since 1975

Overview of Micronesia

Most divers head to Palau, where big fi sh abound. The Blue Corner is among the world's best high voltage sites. Visibility can exceed 200 feet, while currents range from nil to dangerously strong so use a reef hook and bring your safety sausage. Long day-boat rides to the best diving weave through calm water and past magnifi cent rock islands, but there's the potential for rough seas on the outer edges. Most divers prefer live-aboards. Marine biodiversity is among the greatest in the world, but coral bleaching and commercial fi shing is taking its toll. Wreck diving mavens head to Chuuk and the world's most diverse wreck diving on a Japanese fl eet sunk by Americans during WWII. Most wreck dives, other than on the superstructures, exceed 80 feet, but they're great even without penetration. The wrecks are starting to suffer and many artifacts that should have been left alone have been purloined, but the ships are festooned with coral, and most all the unique reef fi sh of the Pacifi c have made them home. Expect calm water, occasional poor visibility, and hot weather. Both destinations are such a long haul that divers usually stop at a second island to amortize their trip costs. Yap has been the traditional stopover, but Kosrae and Pohnpei may be better choices.

Micronesia Seasonal Dive Planner

Air temperatures uniformly remain in the 80s year-round. For land travel, there's little difference between the wet and dry season, although January through March is considered the most comfortable season because of lower humidity and slightly cooler temperatures. Although visibility is slightly reduced by run-off during the July through October monsoons, the wind is also milder during this season, producing flatter seas. Water temperatures remain in the mid 80s year-round. Typhoons are most frequent between August and December but are rare in Palau.

Micronesia Feature Articles and Reader Reports

Editor's Book Picks for Micronesia
Including Palau, Truk (Chuuk), Yap, Bikini Atoll & Marshall Islands and Kosrae

The books below are my favorites about diving in this part of the world All books are available at a significant discount from Amazon.com; just follow the links. -- BD

Reef Fish Identification: Tropical Pacific: by Gerald Allen, Rodger Steene, Paul Humann, & Ned DeLoach. At last, here's a comprehensive fish ID guide covering the reefs of the Pacific and Indian Oceans. The generous 500-page text, displaying 2,500 underwater photographs of 2,000 species, identifies the myriad fishes that inhabit the warm tropical seas between Thailand and Tahiti. The concise text accompanying each species portrait includes the fish's common, scientific and family names, size, description, visually distinctive features, preferred habitat, typical behavior, depth range, and geographical distribution. This is an essential book for every diver traveling westward. 6x9 inches. Order through us, get Amazon.com's best price and a good hunk of the profit will be donated to the Coral Reef Alliance.

Coral Reef Animals of the Indo-Pacific
by Terrence M. Gosliner, David W. Behrens, Gary C. Williams.

At last -- a just-published, complete guide to help you identify the uncountable variety of weird critters you'll see on any Indo-Pacific dive, complete with full-color photo of 1,100 species. About Coral Reef Animals of the Indo-Pacific, Chris Newbert says, "This invaluable new book makes identification easy and enjoyable." There are scores of flatworms, nudibranchs galore, bumblebee shrimp, painted crayfish, pompom crabs, side-gilled sea slugs, and endless corals. Marine biologists Terry Gosliner, David Behrens, and Gary Williams cover the reefs from the Solomons to Sipadan, from the Maldives to Maui, from Palau to Papua New Guinea. They provide good notes to help you find and identify each critter. Indispensable for any Indo-Pacific trip. Paperback, 8x110, 314 pages, $45.00.

Indo-Pacific Coral Reef Field Guide by Gerald R. Allen, Roger Steene. I was trying to pack light for a change. Surely the Solomon Sea would have good identification books aboard. Not so; the only book on the boat belonged to a fellow passenger. It was one that I had not seen before, the Indo-Pacific Coral Reef Field Guide, by two of the best fish guys around, Gerry Allen and Roger Steene. The problem was this fellow passenger kept it in a plastic baggie most of the trip and I had to beg to see it. Great book, good traveling size, and it covers everything from fish, shells, marine plants, mammals, corals, and invertebrates to sea birds and more. Now I've got my own, and it won't do you any good to beg me to borrow it. This is one of two books that I will not travel to the Pacific without. Good for travel to the Red Sea, East Africa, Seychelles, Mauritius, Maldives, Andaman Sea, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Australia, Micronesia, Polynesia, and Hawaii, it has 1,800 color illustrations in a 6x8 1/2 paperback format with 378 pages. $39.95.

If you're headed south out of San Diego, Fishes of the Tropical Eastern Pacific by Gerald R. Allen, D. Ross Robertson, is the fish guide you need. With 324 photo-packed pages covering 680 species of sharks and sailfish, wrasses and razorfish, pipefish and pearlfish, this is the ultimate ID book for the Baja, Costa Rica, the Galapagos, and the Sea of Cortez. Sponsored by the Smithsonian Institute Drs. Gerald Allen and Ross Robertson took years to produce this definitive volume that describes and comments on the remarkable behavior of these critters. Hardbound, $85.

Coral Seas by Roger Steene. It's not just the frightening photos of a nine-foot Bobbit worm that emerges from Philippine rubble like a giant Phoenix (with jaws worthy of its name, it's even known to attack divers) that makes the book a blockbuster. It's every one of the 340 photos that show hundreds of unique critters in circumstances -- like an octopus using a coconut shell for a carapace, or pearlfish emerging from the anus of a sea cucumber, its host -- that only an exceptional photographer could capture. Each year one new coffee table book stands above the rest and I have no doubt that Coral Seas by Roger Steene is the book for 1999 -- and most likely the new millennium as well. Steene's remarkable and beautiful photographs break new ground; indeed 25 of the critters featured are new to science, some appearing here for the first time. Take the newly discovered mimic octopus, photographed disguising itself as a jellyfish, a feather star, a stingray, and even a jawfish. Nudibranchs with shrimp on their backs, cigar jellyfish in the dark of the night, rare weedy scorpionfish -- and even a white whale, shades of Moby Dick. What a fine book to own! Hardbound coffee table book, 272 pages, hardbound, $35.

You might find some other books of interest in our Editor's Book Picks section.