Truk Lagoon Nov-Dec 2007 trip

[Warren_L]

The internet was pretty bad there, so this is a repost of some stuff, mostly during the trip. It will be a while until I have the rest of the photos done, since I am off again shortly to California.


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Hello all, a quick hello and update from Truk Lagoon. We were aboard the Truk Odyssey for the last week without any internet (oh the horror!) but as of today we are at Truk Stop resort. The connection here is wireless (I did not expect this) so things are returning to their natural order.

The heat and humidity is pretty high, being only 7 degrees off the equator. However, the diving this week has been fantastic. The visibility however, is really only moderate, but there is a ton to see. I don't have time much for more right now, as we are over the international date line (we are 15 hours ahead - it is Sunday morning right now. Getting ready for a dive briefing shortly.

I will leave you with a few images from the first week. When I have time I will post a more detailed report.

http://www.warrenlophotography.com/uw/web2007/truk-2007-01.jpg

http://www.warrenlophotography.com/uw/web2007/truk-2007-02.jpg

http://www.warrenlophotography.com/uw/web2007/truk-2007-03.jpg

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[Warren_L]

The diving these past couple of weeks has been nothing short of spectacular. If anyone is considering a trip here, I would highly recommend it. There is tons of marine life in addition to the history behind the dozens of wrecks that are scattered about the lagoon. Some are yet to be discovered still. However, with the warm salt water and the multitude of divers that visit the area each year, the wreck has been deteriorating significantly, even in the past few years.

There is diving for both technical and recreational divers on most of the wrecks. Most wrecks start in the 60-70 ft range and bottom out just at the limit of recreation range. However, due to the size of the wrecks, technical decompression dives are your best bet to see much of what the wrecks have to offer. There are other wrecks which are technical range only as well. We did a 200 ft dive on the Aikoku Maru this morning on trimix. This seems to be the exception, though, as most of the wrecks we have dove have plenty to see in the recreational range. Many of the ships are designated "Maru", which is a merchant ship carrying supplies. Because these are not meant to be in battle, they were only outfitted with basic weapons and were ill equipped to defend themselves under attack.

Here are a few more pics from this week.

This is called the "wine cellar", which is in a cargo hold of a merchant ship. The bottles are cases of Sake, which are also littered around other areas of this wreck.

http://www.warrenlophotography.com/uw/web2007/truk-2007-05.jpg

This is a deck gun of the Aikoku Maru, which sits at around 160 ft. The wreck was sunk in full battle as you can see the deck gun pointed upwards.

http://www.warrenlophotography.com/uw/web2007/truk-2007-06.jpg

Orange cup anemone, super macro at 2x

http://www.warrenlophotography.com/uw/web2007/truk-2007-07.jpg

Unexploded 14" diameter bombs. It was a little unnerving diving around unexploded munitions. Some wrecks had chordite everywhere.

http://www.warrenlophotography.com/uw/web2007/truk-2007-08.jpg

[Warren_L]

My favourite anemone fish so far.

http://www.warrenlophotography.com/uw/web2007/truk-2007-09.jpg

The diving around here really lends itself primarily to wide angle photography. Most of the warm water trips I have done I have pretty well balanced out the shooting between macro and wide angle, but with all the wrecks and the history behind them, I've been shooting primarily wide angle on the majority of the dives. At the time of the battle which resulted in many of the sinkings (operation Hailstone) the configuration of many of these merchant ships (maru) were very similar. As we dive the wrecks from day to day, many of them seem very similar, but each wreck seems to hold something unique and different, despite their apparent similarities.

The visibility on the wrecks varies. The shallower stuff (to about 100 ft) had viz that varies, but has been mostly around 40-50 ft. Pretty good by our standards, but apparently not the best by Truk standards, The deeper stuff (150ft+) has been considerably better with about 80-100 ft. This makes for better photography and video, but as we all know, with the deeper stuff, there's going to be less time.

We've been mostly doing only 2 dives a day, starting with a deep dive (down to around the 200 ft level) with runtimes in the 2 to 3 hour range depending on your bottom times, then taking 3 hour surface intervals, then doing a shallower dive in the 100-120 ft range max. And by the time we are done, it's late afternoon and while we can do night dives, it is less convenient from the resort. I did night dives every night from the liveaboard last week as it was easy to do.

The state of Chuuk (the name "Truk" is likely a mispronounciation that somehow stuck along the way) is pretty impoverished. People have very little here and the resort itself is almost like an island of luxury compared to the rest of Chuuk. Families are living in small concrete homes with no electricity and running water. Sometimes 15 to a small house smaller than a typical condo. Alcoholism is running rampant and the education system is next to non-existent, were it not for the charity of various groups like the Jesuits who have taken over an old Japanese communications base and converted it into a private school. The government is totally corrupt. There was an attempt to clean things up a while back, which resulted in several high ranking government officials including a superior court magistrate being convicted of various crimes including murder. If you can believe how corrupt it is, the convicted magistrate appealed his sentence to allow for him to be free in the mornings to try cases at court and go back to jail for the rest of the day, Stuff we could not even imagine would happen at home.

Given all this, I am surprised that the internet connection here works as well as it does. It has been spotty, but I've been managing to get through periodically.

Anyhow, here are a few more pictures from our dives.

The next three pictures are from the wreck of the San Francisco Maru. This is a wreck that sits about 210 ft to the silt. Here we have one of the cargo holds showing a wall of undetonated land mines. The cargo holds go down to 200+ ft. These sit roughly about 180 ft at this point.

http://www.warrenlophotography.com/uw/web2007/truk-2007-10.jpg

Here is an old fire engine being transported in an adjacent cargo hold to the mines.

http://www.warrenlophotography.com/uw/web2007/truk-2007-13.jpg

Down the wreck a bit in another cargo hold is a whole load of ammunition, I'm no expert on what type of ammo this is, but you can see boxes and boxes of the stuff, with loose rounds lying everywhere. There must be in the the order of millions of rounds sitting in the hold.

http://www.warrenlophotography.com/uw/web2007/truk-2007-14.jpg

[Warren_L]

Here is a portable deck gun we saw on another wreck. The divemaster said it might be a howitzer, but I'm not sure about that.

http://www.warrenlophotography.com/uw/web2007/truk-2007-16.jpg

We dove a bomber of some sort (B1??) this afternoon. Here is a top down view of the plane.

http://www.warrenlophotography.com/uw/web2007/truk-2007-11.jpg

And inside the fuselage. Inside a lot of these wreck and cargo holds are all sorts of baitfish just hiding out. So much you can't even scare them off to get a clear picture most times.

http://www.warrenlophotography.com/uw/web2007/truk-2007-12.jpg

[Warren_L]

And of course some requisite fish pictures. Pacific marine life is new to me so I don't know all the names. The las one, of course is another clown fish.

http://www.warrenlophotography.com/uw/web2007/truk-2007-15.jpg

http://www.warrenlophotography.com/uw/web2007/truk-2007-17.jpg

That's it for now. Time for bed. Another dive day will be upon us shortly

[Warren_L]

Ok, one last post before we make the 27 hour trek home. The internet has been off and on for the past couple of days, as has the power, but things seem to be ok right now.


Here are a few more shots from the San Fransisco. The first is of some old cars that were being transported. The hold area here was pretty tight so the fisheye lens was really the only lens that could have taken this shot.


http://www.warrenlophotography.com/uw/web2007/truk-2007-19.jpg


Here is a level of a cargo hold with bombs scattered all over the place. You can see square ends of the bombs with the four fins. Kind of scary swimming around in the holds with these things beneath. There wasn't a lot of room from the ceiling of the hold to the bombs.


http://www.warrenlophotography.com/uw/web2007/truk-2007-20.jpg


The next photo shows some longish crates of something. Not sure what might be in them, but there are some depth charges in the pile. The round objects just beneath the square crates.


http://www.warrenlophotography.com/uw/web2007/truk-2007-21.jpg


This shot is on the deck of the San Fransisco (approx 165 ft), showing one of the tanks. It is a similar shot to the cover of Dan Bailey's book. Same tank, similar angle.


http://www.warrenlophotography.com/uw/web2007/truk-2007-22.jpg

[Warren_L]

And of course some pretty reef fish, all in the shallows.


Don't know who this guy is.

http://www.warrenlophotography.com/uw/web2007/truk-2007-23.jpg



Don't know this guy either.

http://www.warrenlophotography.com/uw/web2007/truk-2007-24.jpg


These are domino damsel fish. They are everywhere living in these coral formations. They hide inside the coral when they get scared and slowly come back out.


http://www.warrenlophotography.com/uw/web2007/truk-2007-25.jpg

[sorvju-f]

Its stange when internet gives us possibility to nearly online reporting from other side of world!

Absolutely great report whith super pics!

I dont know why I always love these anemon fish pics, even I have seen miljons of them!

It seems to be lot of stuff inside these wrecks!

Do you know the history why the wrecks are there?

I just kindly ask to keep on your reporting ( how you got there, was it expensive, negative/positive and recommendations + more those beutiful pics ).

Jukka

[Ken Hawk]

Great pictures and a fantastic report.
Truk is on my wish list too.
Were you diving on balloon gas?
Thanks Ken

[solisti]

way cool wreck pics! Must have been really 'interesting' being diving among all those explosives! :eek:

[Kelly]

Do you know the history why the wrecks are there?


It was a surprise attack on Japanese Merchant & warships in Truk Lagoon in 1944. It's on our list to dive too, but we still can't wait for the slideshow, Warren...eh hem.:D - anytime you're finished trapsing around the globe and want to come home.... no rush.... we're still here.... :-)

Here's some more info on the ships.

http://www.pacificwrecks.com/provinces/truk_lagoon.html

[sorvju-f]

It was a surprise attack on Japanese Merchant & warships in Truk Lagoon in 1944. It's on our list to dive too, but we still can't wait for the slideshow, Warren...eh hem.:D - anytime you're finished trapsing around the globe and want to come home.... no rush.... we're still here.... :-)

Here's some more info on the ships.

http://www.pacificwrecks.com/provinces/truk_lagoon.html

Thanks, Kelly!

Jukka

[Jonathan Bird]

Warren,
FANTASTIC images! Well done, and thanks for sharing with us. Looks like a wonderful trip. I loved Truk as well, but didn't expect to. I'm not usually much of a wreck guy, but there is so much neat stuff and history there, as well as marine life, that you can't help but love it.

I wonder how many of the explosives are still really dangerous, or if the seawater as seeped in and killed them. As the wrecks collapse, I wonder if there will be explosions. I tell you, if you want to see the wrecks at Truk, don't wait too much longer...they are getting older and more collapsed daily.

Jonathan

[Warren_L]

Its stange when internet gives us possibility to nearly online reporting from other side of world!

Absolutely great report whith super pics!

I dont know why I always love these anemon fish pics, even I have seen miljons of them!

It seems to be lot of stuff inside these wrecks!

Do you know the history why the wrecks are there?

I just kindly ask to keep on your reporting ( how you got there, was it expensive, negative/positive and recommendations + more those beutiful pics ).

Jukka

Thanks Jukka. The area is well renowned for Japanese WWII wrecks. Tons of stuff to see and lots of history behind them.

I am from Toronto, Canada, so getting there required 4 flights. We flew from Toronto to Newark, to Honolulu, to Guam, and then to Truk. All told, it was 21 hours of fly time, which did not include stop overs and waiting around at the airports, etc. It was a long way to go.

The country itself is pretty poor and there aren't a lot of amenities you may be used to. However, being on the liveaboard was great - I would say that that is the way to go. www.trukodyssey.com (http://www.trukodyssey.com).

The wrecks are pretty deep, so decompression diving is probably the best way to go. Helium, unfortunately, is super expensive there, so doing this trip on RB (which is what we did) makes more sense from this standpoint.

[Warren_L]

Great pictures and a fantastic report.
Truk is on my wish list too.
Were you diving on balloon gas?
Thanks Ken

We did two weeks in Truk. The first week was on the Odyssey liveaboard and the second was at the resort, Truk Stop. There was no helium available on the liveaboard, so we limited our depths. The second week we were able to get helium so we did the more complex and challenging dives then.

[Warren_L]

way cool wreck pics! Must have been really 'interesting' being diving among all those explosives! :eek:

Yah, that's for sure. Some of that stuff is still live. I have no idea how to tell. The locals sometimes bring up the chordite and use it to dynamite fish. Some of them have even blown themselves up with some of this stuff. Makes you really appreciate good buoyancy!

[Warren_L]

It was a surprise attack on Japanese Merchant & warships in Truk Lagoon in 1944. It's on our list to dive too, but we still can't wait for the slideshow, Warren...eh hem.:D - anytime you're finished trapsing around the globe and want to come home.... no rush.... we're still here.... :-)

Here's some more info on the ships.

http://www.pacificwrecks.com/provinces/truk_lagoon.html


I'm still in California, just finished some diving in Monterey. I'll try to post some more when I get home in the new year.