If there is one thing I’ve learned in the past few years it’s that if you feel that you may regret not doing something, (in the words of Shia LaBeouf) just do it. No matter how tired, afraid, nervous or defeated you may feel, that accomplished feeling outweighs any thing else. Today was a great example of that and it turned out to be an amazing day. I woke up feeling a little crappy still but after some pancakes and bacon, I was feeling better.
I originally had planned to only dive to 140ft (max limit to my training) to see the top of the San Francisco. The deck starts at 160ft so my plan was just to observe from above and explore the bridge deck, which started at 120ft. I got talking with our dive guide and he said that I wouldn’t see much. He said he would go down with me as his dive buddy and guide me through the wreck as everyone else was diving complex mixes of gas to get long bottom times. I’m glad he convinced me to go as it is the “must-see” wreck in Chuuk.
This was my deepest dive. I hit a depth of 182ft! It was so amazing. There were three Type-95 tanks located at 165ft, which were manned by a 3-man crew. Each tank weighed 7.5 tons, carried one 37mm main gun and two 7mm machine guns. Two of the tanks were stacked on top of each other and it was by far the coolest experience. We swam onward into the cargo hold where we passed military trucks and swam into a hold where the depth charges, air bombs and land mines were stored. There used to be over 6000 bombs on board but the local dynamite fisherman have been pillaging it and using them to create home made explosives. Many lives have been lost because it’s clearly not a smart thing to do. The guide took me outside to the main deck and took me to the main bow gun. This gun was massive; I could not believe how intact this shipwreck was. What’s even more interesting is when you take into consideration the cargo the ship was carrying, its amazing that when it was bombed, it didn’t blow up like fireworks. My total run time was about 50mins, 40minutes of that was spent doing decompression so it was a very short but memorable dive. As the rest of the dive group came aboard, Grace lost a fin and Brandon (Crazy American) lost his stage bottle; both went plummeting to the bottom of the San Francisco at about 205ft. The group decided that they would come back later in the afternoon for a recovery mission.
After a delicious lunch, we headed out to the Sankisan Maru. It was built in 1942 as a passenger transport. The Japanese took control of her in October 1943 and converted the ship into a military transport for the use of moving special cargo. The cargo contained aircraft engines, medical supplies and several trucks. The aft section of the ship is completely gone and it’s thought that a bomb in the ammunition hold led to her sinking. We descended down to the impact spot where the ship had been blown in two. We searched for spots to enter but a lot of them had collapsed on themselves. We swam along the wreck until we reached the first cargo hold. The bottom of the cargo hold was filled with empty medical vials. They were everywhere; you couldn’t even see the floor that’s how many there were. As we made our way through the cargo hold we came across multiple military transport trucks. A lot of them had been eroded or destroyed but still identifiable. We swam through into another cargo hold. The bottom of the second hold was filled with bullets. At first I thought I had came across rubble, I soon realized that it was a mound of bullets. I couldn’t believe how many bullet casings were in this hold. We continued on the dive exploring more of the wreck, there wasn’t much else to see other than corals and a little bit of marine life. We ended the dive after about 40mins because we ran out of things to look at.
Upon returning to the SS Thorfinn, the recovery dive group had returned. They managed to find and retrieve both the fin and stage bottle. Everything went well and they are ready to dive tomorrow morning.
After a quick nap it was time for dinner. I skipped out on the night dive as I am still recovering from the other day. We all just chilled out after a very intense day of diving.
Thanks for reading!
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Justin Steele
The Green Ranger