“We can do it,” he replied
enthusiastically. “Finding your
anemonefish will not be a problem. Plus,
we have plenty of WW2 wrecks to dive
and, in my opinion, the best visibility in
the world outside the lagoons.”
He explained that as commercial fishing
was not allowed in the nation
I would see lots of sharks on the outer
reefs. “We have the largest shark sanctuary
in the world,” he told me –
the 770,000sq mile area was designated by
the government in 2011.
He had me, of course, with his
anemonefish guarantee.
With the prospects of unlimited
visibility, plunging walls, narrow passes,
sanctuary sharks, endemic anemonefish
and WW2 wrecks galore, it wasn’t difficult
to find nine diving buddies to split the
cost of chartering Daly’s Indies Surveyor.
The Marshall Islands lie 2400 miles
south-west of Hawaii, and despite
covering such a large area their landmass
is a mere 70sq miles. Yet having been the
focal point for major historical events
makes them a draw for serious divers.
In the period 60-80 years ago the WW2
military occupation of Kwajalein by the
Japanese and the USA’s post-war nuclear
testing on Bikini Atoll have left an
abundance of war relics and a half-century
of isolation on some of the atolls, because
of nuclear contamination.
Fast forward to today, and the brutal
scars of history present opportunities for
our diving team. Bikini Atoll has been
opened to technical diving for more than a
decade and Rongelap Atoll is now
sufficiently safe to support a nascent
population of Marshallese, and allow our
boat safe passage to dive-sites that have
perhaps never been visited before.Kwajalein Atoll
Our adventure began with three days’
diving in the lagoon of Kwajalein, one of
the largest atolls in the world.
Strategically important to the Japanese
during WW2, at least initially, after losing43 divErPACIFIC DIVER
Left: Diver and seafan on
one of the unnamed walls in
Rongelap Atoll.Right: Upright Douglas
Dauntless in the aircraft
graveyard at Kwajalein.Below: Divers on the reef
with incredible visibility at
Rongelap.the Solomon Islands and New Guinea to
the Allies, the Japanese command elected
to muster depleting war assets closer to
home, and declared the Marshall Islands
“expendable”.
Even so, the Japanese war council
wanted to exact a toll on any invading
US forces, and defended Kwajalein with
28,000 troops.
With no aircraft or naval warships (only
freighters and small gunboats in the
lagoon) for support, they were no match
for the US Navy and Marines during the
two months of Operation Flintlock to
retake the Marshall Islands.
By 4 February, 1944, Kwajalein had
been secured by the Americans.
Seventy-five years later, the lagoon is
peppered with dozens of well-catalogued
WW2 shipwrecks and hundreds of US
planes that were scuttled after the war,
offering divers the rare opportunity to
visit a turbulent time in world history.
We kicked off our expedition with a
check-out dive on one of the lagoon’s most
notable war relics, the Prinz Eugen,
a German war prize captured by the Allies
in Europe and towed to Bikini after the
war to be used as a nuclear weapons-I
N MY QUEST TO PHOTOGRAPHevery species of anemonefish
for a coffee-table book I hope to someday publish, I had seven
Indo-Pacific destinations still to visit.
So two years ago, I began planning a trip to the Republic of the
Marshall Islands in the west-central Pacific, exclusive home to the
three-band anemonefish.
I figured my best opportunity to find it (and the better
investment) would be from a liveaboard rather than through day-
trips from a dive-shop, but my initial Google search revealed no
sport-diving liveaboard operations in the Marshall Islands.
What I did find was Martin Daly’s website, which advertised
surfing charters and deep-wreck technical diving at Bikini Atoll. So
I contacted Daly and asked if he would be interested in running an
exploratory 10-day sport-diving charter in the islands.
☛