Diving in Truk Lagoon

We have just been on an amazing dive trip to Chuuk Lagoon (formerly known as Truk lagoon) in the Federate states of Micronesia. I can highly recommend this for anyone interesting in diving!!

During the second world war the lagoon was one of the mane anchorage base for the Japanese imperial fleet. In 1944 the Americans attacked the Japanese fleet in what was called the Operation Hailstone, and sunk a considerate amount of war and merchant ships and over 200 planes. These wrecks are what we went diving on.

This will be a picture galore, so huddle up with a cup of coffee or tea, and enjoy! All pictures taken by my husband, me or our travel and diving buddies John Cairns and Kim Sow.

First sight of the Chuuk Islands from the plane window.

Look at the water, so clear that you saw the sea bottom and corals even from the plane! And I have not enhanced the colors in any way digitally, the beautiful turquoise color is absolutely real.

SS Thorfinn, an old whale hunting boat from Norway was our home during the diving. We had the opportunity to make 5 dives a day if we wanted to, so there were not much else we did except dive, eat, dive and sleep for 7 days… 

Me and my hubby Sam. 

Memory plaque on the Fujikawa Maru, one of the first wrecks we dived on. It lay quite shallow, so it is slowly becoming more of a coral reef than a wreck. Absolutely stunning dive! 

On almost every wreck we dived on you had the opportunity to go inside to the cargo holds, bridge and engine rooms if you wanted to, or stay outside and just enjoy the corals and fishes. We made two diving teams: the boys went in wherever they could, and we girls enjoyed the outside sea world.

The bow of one of the smaller wrecks. 

One of the bigger wrecks resting on its side. The visibility was much better than you can make out on these photos.

Some human remains can still be found, but most have been gathered by the Japanese and taken up and buried with memory services during the years. 

My diving buddy Kim, and our diving guide Tomo.

My husbands says this is a lathe from one of the engine rooms.

Jellyfish. We saw quite a lot of them. Beautiful creatures!

Betty Bomber Plane.

Sam's diving buddy John by a small tanker on deck.

Welcome to 'sharkville', our last dive on the trip. They took us to a sandy reef where these black tipped reef sharks usually hangs around. We just sat on the sea floor for 40 minutes and watched them swim around us. Unbelievable how elegant they are!

This small one was the only one to come a little bit closer to me, it is my tip of the fin you can see at the bottom.

They were so fast that it was difficult to get any really good sharp photos of them without a professional camera. I rather like this one though, that I took of one swimming by above me.

And I give you Nemo with some of the real colors that we saw! This photo is taken by Lars Darling, one of the divers in the other diving group we shared the SS Thorfinn with. He had a more professional camera with mounted lights, and you can see that he was able to catch the 'real' colors of the corals. My pictures are all mostly bluish and greenish. I have a photo of the exact same anemone and fishes, but this photo is so much better that I got permission to post it!

After the diving we spent a few days on the shore to rest at Blue Lagoon on the Island Weno. Same island that also host the airport. We did absolutely nothing but some sunbathing, kaiaking, snorkeling etc. To quote the robot Marlin from a Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy: 'absolutely terrible, isn't it…'  *big smiley*