Blog: Angelfish

Wreck diving in The Solomon Islands

The Solomon Islands and the battle for Guadalcanal were a turning point for the war in the Pacific.   The Japanese were pretty well entrenched in Guadalcanal when the allies (largely N.American and Australian troops) were in the thick of stopping their advance.

Though the islands are a fascinating destination for travel and diving, for the troops they must have been horrific.  The heat and humidity are extreme, insects, especially mosquitos are voracious and it is easy to imagine a miserable, damp, existence in those conditions.

We dived on two Japanese wrecks and one "dump" left by American forces.  The wrecks, the Hirokawa Maru and the Kinagawa Maru are both in good condition, although having been torpedoed the wreckage does spread out over quite a signficant site.  The stern of the Hirokawa is quite deep at over 30m and the poor weather made this end of the boat quite dark.  It is possible to penetrate this wreck and swim through the hold (although I didn't) - torch is required to see anything of the interior.   Both wrecks are now fabulously covered in corals - both hard and soft - and provide nooks and crannies for all sorts of tiny creatures - such as Sweet Lips as well as some quite large giant clams - about 3 feet across - and this wasn't the biggest one we saw.

Of course these wrecks don't compare with those at Truk Lagoon (now known as Chuuk) but nevertheless they were interesting dives.

The "dump" was at a site called "White Beach".   Once the battle for Guadalcanal was won, the Americans were leaving behind a lot of kit which they wanted to be sure could not be recovered by any returning enemy soldiers, so they pushed the whole lot off the beach and into the water.   So on the bottom were trucks and guns, oil drums, ammunition and boxes of "stuff" tha was no longer recognisable.  The deepest part of the site, where the trucks were lodged was at 30m and the site was covered with "rubble".   At first glance this looked rather boring but in fact is just thesort of place that Mantis Shrimps and Octopus hang out and in fact we wound some.  They were a little shy and kept popping back into their holes whenever we swam over - unfortunately therefore the photographs are particularly unimpressive.

by angelfish on 15:44 on 19th April 2008