Truk Lagoon -- Not for the Meek

Dear Fellow Diver,

Truk Lagoon diving is for serious wreck divers only. Many wrecks have portions well beyond 130 feet, and dives are not to be regarded lightly. "The Wreck Diving Capital of the World" is not worth a visit by a casual wreck diver or the inexperienced or pampered diver. Nondivers will find nothing to do -- or safely do -- beyond scuba diving. Truk is a wreck, a virtual wreck, on land and beneath the sea. Regardless, my two-week trip was still great!

With spectacular wrecks in warm (81°F to 85°F), clear, calm water, it was my bucket-list/dream-come-true dive trip. I've wanted to dive the San Francisco Maru since I got certified in the 1970s. So I dived it twice, the first a serious near-miss disaster. My second trip was my best wreck dive ever. That said, I would not consider paying to return to Truk Lagoon. Later, you will see why.

I made 28 dives over 12 days, including a reef dive and a night dive on the Heian Maru, a 510-foot-long submarine tender, covered with beautiful coral heads; lying on its side at 135-feet to the seabed, its name still visible. I dived six wrecks twice. The third dive of the day was usually a shallow plane wreck; once, at one diver's request, we made a reef dive with several large coral heads. It was a request I regret endorsing. Stay with the wrecks!

For me, I'm not sure there's any great benefit to diving from the two liveaboards there, the Thorfinn (a ratty anchored vessel with a dubious captain) or the Odyssey (I'm just talking about diving; the food and accommodations are surely better than anywhere on land). My longest commute to a dive site was 20 minutes. During one week, the Thorfinn had just one guest aboard, and the Odyssey, a sizable moving vessel, floating hotel, restaurant, and dive operation, had only five guests. (Sustainability may be an issue for the Truk liveaboards.) I stayed at the gnarly Blue Lagoon Resort, which hosted fewer than 20 divers each of the weeks of Christmas and New Year's. I once passed through the other hotel, the Truk Stop, and I saw no signs of life other than at the gift shop, which was doing a brisk business, while I was there.

The rundown Blue Lagoon Dive Shop was founded in 1973. It is among the worst dive shops I've encountered worldwide; it seems to survive on T-shirt and hat sales and $10/bored diver visits to its lame museum dedicated to the founder, Kimiuo Aisek. His grandson runs the complex, with the entire staff seemingly relatives. Many of their aluminum 80 and 100 cu. ft. tanks leaked at the valves and stems; fills were usually below 2,900 psi; they ran out of nitrox the second week. Their filthy dive gear storage room was further fouled with the remnants of a staff's whole fish lunch, which they cleaned up only after I complained that the rotting stench had clung to my gear for three days. The entire operation had a junkyard vibe. A dozen or so dive boat corpses languished in the sun along the waterfront. Outboard motors in various stages of disassembly gathered cobwebs in aging racks. Scores of out-of-service tanks cluttered the fill room. I had to be careful not to slip on the green slime thriving on the floor near the rinse tanks. I used water from the bathroom sink to flush the toilet.

Their long and narrow dive boats sport twin 60HP outboards and have bench seats along both rails. Tanks and gear baskets were stowed beneath the benches, but at times the tanks rolled free, so I watched my toes. They carried no first aid kits, life jackets, emergency O2, radios, or running lights, but they had a throwable life-ring and fishing poles, and a sturdy ladder, which the boatman helped us up. For our night dive, they hung lights from the shade canopy, as recently they had experienced "boat accidents on night dives." Locals commute between islands at all hours by boats that lack lights. One dive day, we carried seven divers, two guides, and a boatman, a very tight fit.

Our 70-year-old dive guide located the sites by looking at a couple of islands and waving some faint directional hand gestures. I suppose he was using triangulation, but I was amazed how he and his team found the sites' sub-surface marker buoys; it was as though the wreck locations were embedded within them after decades of diving.

Their dive briefings offered little information beyond the wreck's name, its orientation on the bottom, where we were to enter it, and the route to take. No whiteboard, no detailed information, historical or otherwise, and no checkout dive; our first dive was a deep wreck.

Blue Lagoon Resort was built by Continental Airlines. BLDS purchased it at a bankruptcy auction in the 1990s and moved the dive operation onto the property, and built the museum. The resort, museum, and dive shop are collapsing under their own weight and age. After four attempts by the front desk, my buddy and I finally landed in a room, but it had plumbing and electrical issues, some of which I could correct, but we never got a hot shower. The air-conditioning worked fine, thankfully, the mattress was comfortable, and the room had a balcony with a fantastic beach and coconut grove view. The hotel's stairs were hazardous, the corridor flooring was rotted in many areas, the sanitary piping below the first-floor rooms leaked, and for two days, an open cesspool was being serviced. Packs of feral dogs and cats overrun the property, dragging around food and trash. The 4:00 a.m. catfights, incessant dog barking, and crowing roosters made a good night's sleep elusive. Local teens honing their bomb-making skills (due to the recent New Year's Eve fireworks ban) made it sound like Operation Hailstone continues. It did not help, nor did the 2:00 a.m. maximum volume karaoke rendition of "Feliz Navidad" in an adjacent room on Christmas Eve.

The resort's restaurant, best in the country, was filthy and staffed by incompetents. Three meals a day for two weeks was torturous. The fresh tuna, parrotfish, and grouper dishes, from sashimi to fish & chips, were excellent, but not the rest. The service was terrible. The bar opened from 4:00 to 9:00 p.m. daily, had scant beer choices, and fruit juice mixers disappeared after a couple of days. Table chairs were tied together with ropes after they failed structurally. The duct-taped barstools were unsafe, with one that was merely a concrete-filled steel post with two threaded metal rods protruding painfully.

COVID canceled four years of diving, and diving tourism may never recover. I read that 5,000 divers visit annually -- that would be roughly 100 per week -- implausible, I think. During the peak of high season, I was nowhere near being in the company of 99 other divers. The WWII Japanese Navy shipwrecks, after 81 years, are dissolving and disintegrating. While the water was very clear, some dive sites had poor visibility due to what seemed to be a rust cloud. The 40-130 feet deep Rio de Janeiro Maru began leaking oil last fall. The government paused diving on it; the status is unknown. And, keep in mind, it's an expensive 2-day trip from the U.S., a very long haul.

That said, it's the planet's best wreck diving destination, and the wreck diving was superb and made my long-awaited underwater visit great.

After I pestered the Old Gent (I'll call him OG) dive guide for a week, he acquiesced and took us to the San Francisco Maru, a serious wreck dive, on our last scheduled dive day. Under heavy clouds, the commute was bumpier than usual, and finding the wreck's sub-surface buoy took longer than usual. The crew seemed detached or uncomfortable, the serious mood dampening my anticipation. After a short and barely informative briefing, the descent down the line was fine. Small portions of the SFM wreck are within or slightly deeper than what the PADI Deep certification allows. It's a TEC dive, but I did not venture here to NOT dive the San Francisco Maru, my lifelong dream! But without warning, the OG guide, after inexplicably straying from the mooring line, started a not-quite rapid ascent, and the guide-with-wrong-name, and a German stunt diver, who had joined the dive, made a left off the line and finned into the deep and dark.

I was torn, but decided to stay with OG per the dive plan, but I was not happy. Then, OG switched to his nitrox pony bottle and headed up. I didn't think he was doing well, and I didn't feel right. After his spy-hop, OG came back down, and my buddy, shallower, was looking on at things going sideways with wide and wild eyes. I looked down and saw an anchor chain on the bottom, but no shipwreck. I really don't feel well. My computer starts going from green to orange. I think I remember that the bottom is over 200 feet down, and I realize that seeing the anchor chain may prove to be averse to a continued healthy lifestyle. OG gives me the forehead-slap dive hand signal while shaking his head. He is really not doing OK. I look up to check on my buddy. Not good. This dive is really not going well. I've seen that look before.

My buddy got narced badly on the Spiegel Grove shipwreck in Key Largo once upon a time. My buddy's hand signal confirmed the dive had officially gone to shit. With little lucidity remaining, I cursed, decided to end the dive, notified all, and started my ascent with my buddy remoralike attached to my arm. After three levels of safety stops, I returned to the boat in a foul mood but no worse for wear. The OG was very apologetic for failing to locate the wreck. It turned out that the other guide and the stuntman team found the SFM and reported a great dive -- that made the extended surface interval unpleasant. The afternoon dive to the Kiyosumi Maru, yet another torpedohole wreck entry and requisite engine room tour, was done under heavy thoughts and frustration, having failed in my lifelong wreck dive quest.

New Year's Eve 2025 was not a day to be remembered fondly: after a near-miss disaster of a failed dive, the resort did not even have a bottle of sparkling wine for sale on New Year's Eve; the local sappers were in full force, demonstrating their talents all night, and yet another hotel-room all-night soiree was again booked in an adjoining room.

New Year's Day 2026 started with perfect weather. The hotel, restaurant, and dive shop were ghost towns, and the campus and beyond were eerily quiet. It seemed that the entire island was sleeping it off. I was diving the San Francisco Maru today, my last opportunity. Well past our typical first dive departure time, OG arrived alone in a small boat. I was crushed! "Holiday. Nobody comes to work." Dejected, I confirmed my desire to dive the San Francisco Maru and put my gear on the boat and set it up, same as every day of the past two weeks. The OG response was a disheartening "nobody comes to work." After a bit, the dive operation began to awaken with some activity.

Eventually, the OG informed me he had newly arrived divers and was off to dive the Nippo Maru, lying at 125-feet. I declined to join and bid him a fond adieu after reinforcing my insistence on being taken to SFM. My mood turned gloomy despite bright, clear, and calm weather. Around 11:00 am, OG's grandson magically appeared, looking a bit rough and sucking on a cigarette like a regulator. Neither he nor the boatman, a Moai doppelgänger who might have come with the property, seemed very happy to be working the holiday. With a curt "we're ready to go," we were off. It was a short commute on the dead-calm lagoon, and after only a couple of minutes of searching while conducting an animated and gesticulating conversation in Chuukese, they spotted the subsurface mooring, a different mooring ball than yesterday. I led the way for my long-awaited dive on the SFM, descend the mooring line directly onto the wreck, and had a spectacular, relaxed, and perfect dive, aside from the GoPro quitting mid-dive. Worth the price of admission. A life-long dream come true.

I declined the afternoon dive and started prepping for the trip home. The no-dives day prior to departure day was a bore. The resort lacks a pool or sundeck or easy access/exit to the lagoon. The stairs to the sea were submerged at high tide and difficult at low tide without a railing. It was slippery and dangerous -- I witnessed two people fall, without serious injury. The resort does have a section of sandy beach, exposed only at low tide, but it is close to the hotel cesspool, which may only be an imaginary concern. Instead of a swim, I availed myself of one of the dilapidated paddle boards and a hand-carved traditional design wooden paddle for a bit.

For the second time in two weeks, I left the resort, this time in a resort van. I informed the driver of my desire to purchase a souvenir shot glass. The Holy Grail would have been an easier find. After more than a half dozen stops, success was found in the gift shop of the Truk Stop Hotel. The shopkeeper brought out their entire stock of shot glasses while explaining that they were damaged but would be available at a discount. The shoddy paint job flaked off; it was a piece of crap and a metaphor for the entire country. I purchased three shot glasses, half of the entire stock on Weno Island.

But I must conclude by saying the wreck dives were spectacular, with the San Francisco Maru the gem. It's 100-feet to the shallowest part, 160-feet to the tanks on the deck, and 175-feet to the Japanese staff car in the hold.

On other wrecks, I dived inside engine rooms and bridges with telegraphs, and inside a machine shop, a galley, an electrical lighting supply room, and a surgical suite. I swam through cargo holds containing construction equipment and materials, Zero fighter planes and aircraft parts (Fujikawa Maru at 90-feet), trucks, ammunition, mines, torpedoes, periscopes, petrol barrels, and sake bottles. I cruised above ship decks covered with tanks, trucks, and artillery pieces, and deck guns, torpedo launchers, and depth charge throwers. I entered wrecks through torpedo holes, bomb holes, and open cargo holds. I explored airplane and seaplane wrecks from fighters to bombers, and swam through one plane wreck. I dived a tugboat, a destroyer, freighters, tankers, and a submarine. And every one has become covered majestically with coral, especially the Shinkoko Maru at 100-feet.

In the surrounding waters, predators picked at bait balls, with vast schools of fish scattering in feeding frenzies, along with shadow-creating schools of jacks and a jellyfish storm. As I descended and skirted the outside of wrecks, I saw sharks, turtles, and eagle rays, giant clams and blue sea stars, orange-striped, clown, and Picasso triggerfish, emperor and regal angelfish, blackfin and great barracuda, scribbled and longnose filefish, zebra pipefish, humphead parrotfish and humphead bannerfish, to name just a few of the beautiful Indo-Pacific species.

If you've ever wanted to dive the wrecks of Operation Hailstone, do not delay. Go now and do not harbor expectations beyond the barest minimum of service and amenities, and do not leave the resort. In fact, come to think of it, the comfort of a cabin on the Odyssey, decent meals, and a few other divers to chat with might be a better way to go after all.

- R.A.M.

Our undercover diver's bio: I was exposed to diving at a young age by my father and Jacques Cousteau on TV, and got certified just before university. While drysuit certified at Silfra, I avoid cold-water diving, preferring the Caribbean, Yucatan, and Western Pacific, always accompanied by my lovely wife-buddy, a PADI Master Diver. Thanks for the diving thing, Dad. I miss you. I finally made it to Truk Lagoon! Wish we made it together.

DIVER'S COMPASS: United Airlines from Newark -- coach $3,400, business $7,800. Blue Lagoon Resort -- transfers, 14 nights, 11 days @ three dives per day $3,200 per person. Bar and restaurant -- $1,500 for two people . . . Chuuk Diving Fee $50 and Departure Fee $30. Rental equipment seemed fine but used/worn . . . A tourist had a regulator problem -- Shop mechanic not readily available . . . Chuuk's recompression chamber is unavailable due to the lack of qualified staff, I was told. I shuddered at the thought of suffering a DCS hit requiring an emergency flight to Guam. The larger shipwrecks were generally deeper, with the potential to push no-decompression dive limits. On many dives, my computer displayed red warning numbers. www.trukbluelagoonresort.com