Marshall Islands/Bikini Atoll

After years of radiation monitoring and long months of negotiation, the historic shipwrecks of Bikini Atoll have finally been opened up to recreational divers. The monitoring was done, and is still being done, by the U.S. Department of Energy to ensure that radiation levels in the lagoon are low enough to permit safe diving. It's a wreck diver's paradise. Be prepared most of them are deep.

Dive Marshall Islands, September 1996, Cottrell Fox, St. Louis, MO. "Most professional dive operation t I have experienced. Because of the nature of the diving, two deep wreck dives per day, this trip is for advanced divers only. vis: 50­100 ft. I learned more about diving from divemaster Fabio and his colleagues in one week than I had in the previous twenty years of diving. The Saratoga, Nagato and Arkansas have to be seen to believed! Just getting to Bikini is an adventure in itself, with stops in Honolulu, Johnston Island, Majuro and Kwajelein."

Marshall Island Dive Adv., June 1997, Neil L. Watson, Waianae, HI. "Good: Best wreck diving in the world for experienced divers bar none. Rooms simple, but clean and comfortable w/a.c. and hot water showers. Food plain, but plentiful and well prepared served cafeteria style. Breathe 50% ox on last stop of deco bar. All dives deco w/min of 20 min deco­ follow your comp. Very carefully. vis: 75­140 ft. water: 82­85 degrees. Very expensive but worth the price if you can afford it. Bad: Airfare, continual air mike Haw­Majuro. Air Marshall Majuro - Bikini is $1100 Air Marshall is very unreliable. Have been to Bikini twice now and has not been on time one day. Eight hours late if at all."

Marshall Island Divers, July 1997, Mark A. Davis, Santa Ana, CA. "Incredible diving! Better than the wrecks in Truk. Dives are deep and all decompression dives. However, Marshall Islands Divers has the program down pat. Four of us diving and we had at least one if not two divemasters with us. vis: 80­200 ft. water: 84 degrees. No dive restrictions enforced. Professional operation concerned about our satisfaction. For example, my wife was not interested in diving to 180 ft., no problem. The dive was set up so a divemaster went with her and showed her parts of the wrecks that weren't so deep. The divemasters: Fabio, Edward and Ruben were great and safety was priority #1. Only bummer is wrecks are so deep that with only 2 dives a day, a week is too short."

Marshall Dive Adventures/Hotel Robert Reimers, May 1997, Manuel Perry, Castro Valley, CA. "The farther away from town, the better the diving gets. Majuro has a trash problem. There is no place to put it. Litter and rusted scrap metal are everywhere in town. Dive sites close to the city have a lot of aluminum cans and other trash strewn about. The diving gets better as you get to the areas up in the northern and western part of the atoll, such as Rong Rong, Calalin Island, and Irioj Channel. Saw sharks on every dive. Also saw eagle rays, barracuda and napoleon wrasse. The highlight of the visit was crossing the ten miles over to Arno Atoll. (And there was only two of us that day!) It was a beautiful place with pristine beaches and the best reef dive of the trip. There, huge schools of Jacks, fire coral, anemones and clownfish big as my fist were abundant. vis: 60­80 ft. water: 82­83 degrees. Computer diving ok. Marshal's Dive Adventures was a very good operation, running a roomy jet powered Pro 42 dive boat. Fabio Amaral was very knowledgeable and very professional divemaster with a good sense of humor. The size of groups going out varied in size from two or three divers, to ten or more on the weekends. Many "local" expatriates dive there as well. Hotel Robert Reimers was good. The outside rooms with lanais are the best units. They tried to put me in one of the pro­fab trailers until I showed them my voucher showing that I had paid for a lanai room. The food at the tide table restaurant at the hotel is very good as well."

Kwajalein Atoll Dive Resort/Anrohasa Hotel, May 1997, Manuel Perry, Castro Valley, CA. "Many WW2 wrecks, the main one being the Prinz Eugen, former German escort ship to the Bismark. It rests upside down and slopes stern up. The propeller and rudder protrude from the water. They didn't seem to mind when we swam to the structure during a surface interval and climbed up onto the hub and propeller assembly (makes great photos). Its a large wreck, and a fun dive. We dove it on three occasions. Other wrecks were the Asakaze Maru, which has an interesting bow gun, and the Tateyama Maru, with many artillery shells and even still has some human remains on board. Divemaster Steve let us choose the sites and dive our computers, and preferred to stay out of our way, and just watched us to ensure our safety. Not a lot of coral or big fish on the wrecks, but did see a shark or two on the Prinz Eugen. vis: 60­80 ft. water: 82­84 degrees. Computer diving OK. Dive club on Kwajalein has pretty much stripped the wrecks of their artifacts. Kwajalein is a US Army base. Unless you are in the military and stationed there, or a civilian contract worker, you will be required to stay on the nearby island Ebeye. The poverty on this little island is not too pretty. Overpopulation is a problem. After diving, there really isn't any thing to see or do. The Anrohasa Hotel was adequate with its new addition, but the restaurant downstairs didn't really have anything. Only decent restaurant on the island, a block away, was only open during meal hours. Sometimes after diving we had to wait till 6pm to eat. There were water hours that didn't adhere to any consistent schedule, and power outages as well. I only recommend this for the most avid wreck diver. Bring lots of reading material. While there I was told that there are plans for a new resort on another nearby island, but is currently on hold awaiting financing."

Palau

Long day-boat rides to best diving weave through calm water, past magnificent rock islands; potential rough seas on outer edges of islands. . . . Serious divers prefer live-aboards due to length of daily commute from Koror and desire for more dives. . . . Visibility can exceed 200' and currents range from nil to dangerously strong (four Japanese divers were carried away in 1994). . . . Marine bio-diversity is among the greatest in the world. . . . Water temperatures in the low- to mid-80s. . . . Favorite dives: Great Wall at Ngemelis, Blue Corner, and any of the walls around the tip of Peleliu. . . . Capital city Koror is well along the way to being Caymanized by massive tourism. . . . Excellent ethnic restaurants. . . . Try the Arirang over the tennis courts in the middle of town for Korean guk bab breakfasts, or the Furusato for Japanese dinners. . . . Check out the DW Motel for a low-priced lodging option. . . . Best handicrafts are carved wood story boards for sale by prisoners at the jail in town; hand-pressed coconut oil from street vendors is a good gift for your personal massage practitioner. . . . College of Micronesia's book store offers printed signs that are useful back home ("No Chewing Betelnut" and "No Smoking Drinks"). . . . See Gen. Douglas MacArthur's old yacht, gradually sinking into the water at the dock in Peleliu. . . .

Fish'N'Fins/Palau Marina Hotel, February 1997, Luiz T. Salazar Queiroz, S.J. Campos-SP, Brazil. "$150/day for 2-tank boat dive, accommodations, breakfast, lunch, ($35 3rd tank surcharge). Hotel Marina is clean, spacious room with TV, refrigerator and air conditioning, close to Fish'N'Fins. Less than 10 minutes walk from Koror center, but close to a marine gas station and garbage dump. Due to Palau main bridge collapse, some blackouts and interruption of hot water supply. A few impolite employees, hotel balcony never cleaned. . . . They didn't book the 1st night, then when I arrived in Koror there was nobody to meet me at the airport and the hotel was full. Had to spend the 1st night in a small, no ac/TV/refrigerator room, very unpleasant time. . . . restaurant service is poor. To eat, you'd better go to downtown restaurants like Rock Island Cafe, Furusato or Ramen House, good food and prices, Koror is small but nice, there are several restaurants, two supermarkets and a small shopping center, people are friendly. Ferry service for transportation between Babeldaop island (where the airport is located) and Koror sometimes slow and uncomfortable. . . . All dives guided but they dive where you want too. They usually don't check C-cards, my 1st dive was in Blue Corner, a site with strong currents, and they didn't make any question about my previous experience. Small and fast boats, some with poor shaded area. Usually 5 divers, but last day there were 8. No head on board. Long rides to dive sites (1.5 hour to Peleliu Corner), sometimes very bumpy seas. Very helpful and polite guides. Lunch is sandwich or Japanese food, OK. I did 21 dives, vis not the acclaimed 100+ ft., averaged 50-80 ft. Diving out of this world: soft corals, sheer drop-offs, walls of fish, caves, wrecks and pelagics. Sites like Ulong Channel and Coral Gardens are for coral lovers. The Iro Maru, a Japanese shipwreck inside the lagoon (poor vis), is a great dive. Buoy Number 6 is also a good shipwreck, covered by soft corals in 40 ft. of water, in 3-4 knots currents (regulator shakes!) Siaes Tunnel is a beautiful deep cave and Big Drop-Off and New Drop-Off are great (the latter with strong currents but full of fish). During the whole week I saw a manta, leopard shark, huge eagle rays, several turtles, lobsters, lion fish, many angel fish, trevallys, jacks, butterflyfish, triggers, Moorish idols by the thousands, walls of barracudas, whitetips and gray reef sharks on almost every dive. Peleliu Corner a breathtaking drop-off, marine life abounds, few divers, ripping and sometimes unpredictable currents. Blue Corner, despite too many divers, worth the trip: 6 dives, all outstanding. Unbelievable fish action, an explosion of life, packs of barracudas, jacks and many others. Tunas, huge Napoleon Wrasses and groupers. . . . 10-20 sharks (most of them Gray Reefs) in sight. While grabbing on the dead parts of coral, sometimes in amazing currents (hooks highly recommended), you watch a live parade. Water 79 degrees, but below 70 ft is colder: 3 mm wetsuit is a good idea. Weather didn't spoil the diving, but it rained almost every day and it's difficult to me to remember Palauan sunlight. Raincoat necessary like diving gear, safety sausage and photo or video gear."

Fish'n'Fins/Palau Marina Hotel, May 1997, Edward Leibowitz, Jersey City, NJ. "Continental Micronesia offered a big discount for travel to Palau during Spring of 97". From Newark, New Jersey to Palau (round-trip) was $1271. Stayed at the Palau Marina Hotel next to Fish'n'Fins and a short walk to the center of town. For big fish and pelagics, I found it better than the Caribbean in recent years. Unfortunately, the visibility was very good when I arrived but worsened due to a typhoon off Manila. Blue Corner was fabulous. Saw a large 4­foot turtle, school of small barracuda and 4­5 silvertip sharks (size 5­7 foot) at the drop­off. Boat rides to dive sites averaged 1 to 1.5 hours. The scenery on the boat ride to Pellelleu wall on a sunny day is magnificent. Generally the dive boat leaves the resort between (8;30­9:00) AM for two dives. Lunch is served during the (2­2.5 hour) surface interval following the first dive. After completing the second dive the boat returns to the resort between (4:00­ 4:30) PM. Night diving required a minimum of two persons. I did one; due to the long boat rides most people opted not to night dive. Dove with Sixtu of Fish'n'Fins. An excellent divemaster and competent boat pilot. Palau is a tourist type town with somewhat pricey Oriental type restaurants. The Rock Island Cafe serves excellent pizza. The only thing negative was eighteen hours in flight (each way), excluding plane changes. On my return trip I had the unique experience of seeing night occur twice onboard the plane. Took me a week to recover from the trip."

Neco Marine/Palau Pacific, March 1996, Ned & Diane Elton, Ridgewood, NJ. "The best. Trip and tour Micronesia excellent in advice. vis: 100­150 ft. water: 80­85 degrees. No diving restrictions enforced."

Neco Marine, March 1997, Harry Soletsky, Brookfield, CT. "Water 80 degrees. Visibility down. Blue Corner tough - need hooks. Sharks great. Transfer a problem; bridge from the airport down and transfer was really dangerous. Rock islands great. Overall great, but not as great as expected."

Sam's Dive Tours, March 1997, Sharon and Curtis Bok, Santa Monica, CA. "Dive freedom on the dives. Excellent service: 2 tank boat trips (3 tanks possible); fast boats; max. 8 per boat; excellent sites. Reasonable prices. Friendly people, safe gear storage. Helpful in getting good, reasonable land accommodations (e.g. HK Motel). vis: 70­90 ft. water: 78­80 degrees. Restrictions enforced for diving were safety, watch computers, no decompression diving, but okay to stay 60­70 minutes"

Splash/Palau Pacific Resort, April 1996, Mary Seggerman, Berkeley, CA. "Disappointed in the Palau Pacific, especially after such glowing reports. Expensive, impersonal, the food was pretty bad. No beach to speak of and no real reason to spend the money staying there. . . . Dive operation, Splash, is too big and impersonal. Divemasters bored and a little careless. Would stay at a more personal resort next time, probably Caroline's. Went into town to eat every night. Dragon Tei is far better Japanese restaurant than any I have been to in the U.S. . . . Diving is everything it is cracked up to be. vis: 60 ft. water: 83 degrees. The old briefing joke, "Wall on your left, sharks on you right" is real here. They were on every single dive, and usually many of them. If all you did was gape at sharks, though, you'd miss all the great stuff on the walls. Including green morays with heads as big as mine and soft coral colonies more like ethereal pastel forests out of a Tolkein dream. Mantas on demand and great schools of pelagics. Five or ten times more stuff than I've ever seen in the Caribbean, even Little Cayman, maybe on all my dives there combined."

Splash/Palau Pacific Resort, June 1997, Dale and Karen Alberstone, Los Angeles, CA. "Water 82 degrees. Splash a very good operation at the hotel. They load and assemble your gear every day. Japanese divers outnumber Americans 3 to 1. Usually 2 divemasters per small boats; take 4-7 divers per trip but are fast and comfortable and the water surface is smooth as glass. Five to 10 sharks on every dive. Divemasters accommodate your requests for sites if you are insistent. Best: Blue Corner, Pelilui and Sies Tunnel. Buy a reef hook for Blue Corner. Bring a whistle; some dives you might surface 100 yards from the boat due strong currents. Pre-dive briefs not sufficient for some strong currents. If you get caught in a down current (Blue Corner), you must swim away from the wall to avoid being taken deep. Focus on large fish away from wall. Stay with the divemasters who are good in strong currents. Average boat trip 35-45 minutes. Splash is reluctant to do night dives. Jan and Bert at Photo Palau are outstanding. Ask them to video your dives."

Truk

The world's most diverse wreck diving on hundreds of Japanese ships that were sunk during a battle in WWII. . . . Lionfish on the bridge, giant clams on the deck, and bottles of ink and erasers for students of the vanished Japanese Empire still visible in the hold. . . . Mostly deeper diving on wrecks - other than on superstructure - in the 80'+ range. . . . Fine diving even without wreck penetration. . . . Expect calm water, occasionally poor visibility, little or no current, and temperatures that can hit the high 80s. . . . Scuzzy town and mediocre hotels; consider the Truk Aggressor or the Thorfinn. . . .

Blue Lagoon/Truk Continental, March 1996, Ned & Diane Elton, Ridgewood, NJ. "Excellent wrecks. Nice people at hotel. Equivalent to Holiday Inn. Vis: 50­100 ft. water: 80­85 degrees. No dive restrictions enforced."

Blue Lagoon/Truk Continental, March 1997, Harry Soletsky, Brookfield, CT. "Water 81. No restrictions. Truk was all I had heard. Boats adequate but divemasters helpful, friendly and did all we asked. We set the schedule. Hotel fine, food fine. Chuuk itself is rundown."

Blue Lagoon Dive Shop, April 1997, Thomas K. Lippert, Los Alomos, NM. "Best wreck diving!! All kind of wrecks, submarines, planes, destroyer, freighter, tanker, passenger liner. Many artifacts. No remove law. Could dive the computer. When guide knew air consumption and skills, we could go to deeper. Guide took additional tank with him. Surface intervals on island. Last three days only one other diver onboard. A lot of space and always different wreck. Guide open to suggestions. $70 two dives.

Yap

Very traditional island group. . . . Extraordinary sailors, having navigated the Pacific for thousands of years. . . . Bare-breasted women, men in loincloths (thu). . . . Huge wheels of stone money, quarried in Palau and hauled to Yap in open boats. . . . Inexpensive restaurants and hotels. . . . Guaranteed mantas with Yap Divers. . . . Reputedly the best betel nut in the South Pacific, useful for trading or gifts for locals on other islands. . . . Steep coral-covered walls and dropoffs, plenty of fish. . . . Expect clear water except in entrance of lagoon where mantas pass. . . . Water temperatures in low- to mid-80s. . . .

Manta Ray Bay Hotel, October 1996, Alexine M. Raineri, Winchester, NH. "In the morning we went out on a small boat behind the hotel, did two dives, had lunch at our hotel, and then had the rest of the day to ourselves. Even though only two dives a day were scheduled, some of us did purchase extra dives. One day we stayed on the boat and did a third dive for only $25 extra. We also did some night dives. Those were $40 extra. Reefs were not as plentiful as Palau and the areas were very sandy too. A lot of plankton in the water which was good because the manta rays would come. Their wing spans were approximately 12 feet, and they would swim directly over us, so close we could almost touch them, but we were told not to so that we don't scare them away. Often we would sit on the bottom waiting for the manta rays at 50­60 feet. Saw eagle rays and torpedo rays), sharks and turtles. For an extra charge, they gave us a couple of cultural tours through some of the villages. The Yapese consider it shameful if a woman shows her thighs. Therefore, we had to make sure that we were covered from the waist to almost the knees. That also means that they didn't have to wear anything from the waist up. Men only had to wear loincloths."

Yap Divers/Manta Ray Bay Hotel, March 1997, Harry Soletsky, Brookfield, CT. "Water 81 degrees. Wonderful. Manta dives great but the reefs are fine, sharks, lion fish, eagle rays, lots of critters. Hotel great. Food wonderful. With Truk a wonderful trip - Palau is fine but with problems."

Yap Divers, June 1997, John Taylor, Monrovia, CA. "Widely divergent dive sites. Magnificent hard corals. Wide range of creatures and fish (lionfish etc.) much more than mantas. vis: 70­80 ft. water: 81­83 degrees. Dive restrictions suggested: 45 min. on 80 ft. alum. tanks, most dives guided, total 10 dives. Excellent dive staff, especially guides. Respected advanced divers and computer users. Super combination hotel/dive packages. Highly recommend 5 night package for full variety of diving. Wonderful attentive hotel and restaurant staff. Essentially a dive hotel. Very limited extracurricular activities. Hotel food great, but pricey. Buy beer, soda and snacks at walking distance market. P.M. diving limited vis: because of tides. No head or showers on covered boats. Boat snacks limited but OK."

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