Diving in Micronesia *LONG*
Glen Story
The following is a journal I kept on a dive trip through Micronesia
last autumn:
Tuesday, October 16: Yesterday we returned from Okinawa to Tokyo.
Today we left Japan. It's hard to believe that after two years,
we have finally left it behind. We are now on our way to Truk,
with intermediate stops in Saipan and Guam. Our travels in Japan
were for sight-seeing. Our travels in Truk and Pohnipei (our next
stop) are mostly for lie-on-the-beach vacation, or in my case for
scuba diving.
Evening: We have now arrived in Truk. The airport, and the
island in general are more primitive than I imagined. For
example they just backed a pickup truck to a long low table and
unloaded baggage--no revolving conveyers. The terminal building
is so small I had trouble spotting it when we got off the plane.
Mind you, I'm not complaining: I find it fascinating to visit
places like this.
Anyway, the hotel is fairly nice: we have an air-conditioned
room and the restaurant seems decent. [After staying at the
Village in Pohnipei, the hotel and restaurant in Truk won't seem
so great.]
It would appear that almost everyone here is here to dive. But
there is no obvious way to set up diving trips. So I asked
at the front desk and he called someone on the phone, and after
talking with him for a few minutes in the local language, he
passed the phone to me. I set up for his "boy" (probably the
owner's son) to meet me at the hotel tomorrow at "8 or 8:30"--
time doesn't seem terribly important here.
It is so dark here that I cannot tell any details of what
surrounds our hotel. All I an make out are some palm trees
around us. (We saw coconut palms and banana trees on the road
from the airport.)
Wednesday, October 16: Today I went diving. I ended up going
with a group of Americans from Guam. I found out when I got to
the dock that they don't supply lunch, as I had thought, so I
ended up with no lunch.
In the morning we dived down to the wreck of the Shinkoku Maru, a
Japanese tanker sunk by an American air raid in 1944.
Truk used to be the largest Japanese naval base in the Pacific,
protected from both the weather and sea attack by the 40-mile
diameter coral atoll that surrounds it. But the atoll is no
defense against air attack, and the Americans, in a wave of air
raids, turned the Japanese naval base into an undersea junkyard,
with some 60 ships on the bottom. For the marine life here,
these ships have been a real boon. Coral, and many other kinds
of marine life cannot grow in sand such as what is found on the
floor of lagoons like Truk. Now, the sunk ships and airplanes
form a substrate upon which coral and other marine life can grow.
Thus, diving here among these wrecks presents two equally fasci-
nating subjects for divers to observe and photograph: the
remains of the sunken ships and the amazingly abundant life that
is now growing on them.
In the afternoon we dove on the Heien Maru. This ship is lying
on its side. The side of the hull which now faces up is free of
coral but there are a few strange growths here and there. How-
ever it is clear enough that I could easily see the name of the
ship on the bow, written in both Roman characters and kanji.
When I swam down the now nearly-vertical top deck, I saw a
profusion of life: hard and soft corals, tube sponges, and
myriads of fish feeding on the coral. At one point I spotted a
shark about five feet long swimming around thirty feet away. A
more pervasive, although minor, danger are jellyfish. I saw
hundreds of them while snorkeling between dives. They are a
lovely shade of pink, and so graceful as they undulate through
the water, but they sting when their tendrils touch you. (Our
guide got stung on one of the dives: he wasn't wearing any
covering on his arms, and brushed up against one while we were on
the surface preparing to descend; he cursed, rubbed his arm and
went back to work--so the sting isn't too bad.
Another danger I'm told is here, although I haven't seen any, are
poisonous lion fish.
We came back early from our second dive in order to be ready for
a night dive. But the wind came up and the sea became rough, so
the boat operator doesn't want to go out. There are some shallow
places which could be treacherous to boats on rough seas at
night.
Friday, October 18: Yesterday we made two more wreck dives, to
the Rippo Maru in the morning and the Fujikawa Maru in the
afternoon. There were just three of us: myself, one other
American, and the native guide. I liked this much more than
going with the group--I could follow the guide around and he
showed us lots of interesting things on the sunken ships: old
sake bottles, a Japanese-style bathroom, and even some human
bones.
This morning I made one more dive with the guy I dived with
yesterday. (I found out he lives only a few miles from where I
live in California, so we exchanged addresses. He has an
underwater camera, and took several pictures of me, which he said
he would give me--I can hardly wait to see them!)
After the one dive we went back to the hotel to let the other guy
off, and pick up two new people. It was too soon for me to make
a second dive, so I stayed on the boat while the other two made a
dive. We then went to the island of Deblon (one of the islands
in the Truk lagoon). Deblon seemed more primitive than the
island we're staying on (which is called Moen). We saw only dirt
roads, and no electricity. Children run around naked under the
coconut trees, and every family seems to own a few chickens, a
pig, and a dog. (We asked our diving guide if he owned a pig,
and he said "of course" as if to add, "doesn't everyone?")
After lunch we went to the Hencho Maru.
Saturday, October 19: We are now sitting in what passes for the
Truk airport. It consists of one check-in counter, which is in a
small shed. The "waiting room" is outside with a few concrete
benches and a wooden roof. The roof keeps the sun off and the
lack of walls lets the sea breeze through. It looks strange to
our "civilized" eyes--but it makes sense in this hot tropical
climate.
In about an hour the plane will be here to take us to Pohnipei.
Someone is playing the local radio station--a Christian station.
The schools on the island are also run by various churches. I
saw Seventh Day Adventists and Jehovah's Witnesses. Thus, the
missionaries are still here in Micronesia. (So far as I know,
none of them has been eaten lately.) :-)
Evening: We are now in the Village Hotel in Pohnipei. Truk was
your typical pacific island, with coconut palms and banana trees.
Pohnipei, is your typical jungle, with dense undergrowth, vines
on most trees, plants with huge leaves, etc. I understand it
rains 400 inches a year on some parts of Pohnipei, which
certainly qualifies it as a rain forest.
The airport is similar to that in Truk: small, primitive, mostly
outdoors. We were met by someone from the hotel and began the
drive on a good asphalt road. The buildings along the way looked
less primitive than those in Truk. The gas station, for example,
actually has pumps. (The gas station in Truk, in contrast, was a
tin-roofed shack, indistinguishable from the other shacks around
it, except for a hand-lettered sign: "Gas Sta. -- No Smoking".)
After a while we left the paved road and continued up a poor dirt
road. Then we reached a narrow one-lane dirt road marked with a
sign, "Village Hotel". After a short climb we arrived. It looks
for all the world like its namesake: what we saw was a series of
grass huts. We are now staying in one of those huts. Outside,
the walls are made of wood and the windows have no glass, only
screens. Inside, there is a comfortable rattan couch and chair,
a modern bathroom with hot and cold running water, and two double
beds--*water*beds no less!
The main building is reached by walking down a path through the
jungle. That building is longer than ours of course, and also
more open. There one finds the check-in desk, a bar and restau-
rant. These are covered by a wooden roof, but are open to the
breezes. One can eat dinner while being cooled by the tropical
winds and while enjoying a breathtaking view looking down onto
the sea some distance below; beyond that, other islands, and
beyond that, the sun setting through the towering cumulous clouds
one finds around Pacific islands. The food was superb. I had
sashimi made from locally caught fish, and sweet and sour
chicken. Delicious!
Now we're back in our room. It has started raining very hard;
the sound is so loud on our grass roof that I can't hear the
conversation a few feet away between my wife and daughter.
Tomorrow, I am told, there will be no diving--it's Sunday. So I
plan to explore the many paths leading in various directions.
Monday, October 21: Yesterday we explored around the hotel, and
otherwise did nothing. It was great.
Today I went diving--in the rain. We went out to the reef. The
coral was spectacular and there were lots of colorful fish.
Between dives, we went to one of the small outlying islands. We
found a World War II Japanese seaplane base. The hanger had been
hit by two U.S. bombs, and all that remains today is the twisted
wreckage of the frame. It is almost completely hidden by the
growth of vegetation.
After lunch we made another reef dive, this time on a channel
opening in the reef. The boat went to the outside of the opening
and let us off. We then floated on the current caused by the
incoming tide. It was like riding on one of those moving
sidewalks they have at airports, only three dimensional. When
the current stopped we looked up, and there was our boat,
anchored and waiting for us at the inner end of the channel.
If we weren't wet already, the pouring rain would have drenched
us coming in.
The rain really doesn't spoil the diving--out on the reef there
is no mud to run off and lower visibility. The cloudiness cuts
down on the colors (although that's hard to believe, considering
how colorful the marine life was today)! But it also keeps us
from being "cooked" by the sun while in the boat.
If the weather is poor again tomorrow, I plan to go diving again.
However, if it's sunny, I plan to go on a tour of the island.
Tuesday, October 22: We did indeed take the boat tour today.
First we went to a small islet in the lagoon. I went snorkeling
and my daughter swam around with me. Then we anchored our boat
on the main island and hiked inland to a spectacular waterfall
where we swam and ate lunch. Then back to the boat which took us
to the ruins of Nan Madol, an ancient city of unknown origin,
constructed of immense stones and containing a number of canals.
Between poking around the ruins and hiking through the jungle to
the waterfall we felt like real explorers.
Thursday, October 24: We are now on our way from Pohnipei to
Honolulu. Since we will only spend on a day there (to break up
the flight), our trip is now all but over.
Yesterday at breakfast we were told that the Pohnipein Cultural
Center would be putting on one of their irregularly scheduled
shows. So I ended up going to that instead of diving. The show
consisted of native singing and dancing (yes! naked native danc-
ing girls!) and sampling the local recreational drug, called
sakao: it looks like mucus and tastes like mud; it makes your
lips tingle. They also demonstrated how they can make fire
without matches. Originally they wanted to charge me $100 to
video tape the show, since the only video equipment they had seen
before was professional equipment from Japanese television sta-
tions. The guy from the hotel argued first in English and then
in Japanese and talked them out of it. I never figured out why
"It's home video" didn't convince them, but "Home video desu"
did. Anyway, they finally said "daijobu". (Japanese fluency is
very common here, since this island was under Japanese control
for several years from World War I through the end of World War
II.)
Since I missed going diving in the daytime. I arranged to go
night diving. It was spectacular. And it was amazing how the
guide could navigate through shallow water of the lagoon at
night, using only a diving light for illumination.
Today I couldn't go diving because I'm flying tonight. So my
daughter and I went out snorkeling. In the morning we joined a
couple from Hong Kong who were taking the same tour we had taken
two days ago. The hotel loaned my daughter a child's swim mask
and she and I swam around the boat looking down at all the fish
and coral. She was thrilled. In the afternoon they dropped us
on a small island and took the other couple off to the rest of
the tour. Meanwhile we waded out into a small sandy bay. The
water was even warmer than usual--downright hot. At first we
didn't see much life underwater, except an incredible number of
sea slugs. When we got out to deeper water (about 10 feet) I saw
several large manta rays. There was one who appeared to be
asleep on the bottom that was about 8 feet long.
So now we're enroute to Honolulu--the end of one of the most
exciting trips I have ever made.