Best Places to Dive: The Ghost Fleet of Truk Lagoon, Federated States of Micronesia

July 20, 2023

Diving

“Growing up, we learn about history through books. We even get to take trips and see battlefields, buildings, and relics. Few of us ever get to see the evidence, examine it, lay eyes on the details and the human element,” begins Mike Gorek. Mike is Senior Maintenance Engineer at Greater Cleveland Aquarium, and we like to say that he’s been here since before we had water. He’s talking about a remarkable dive trip – a liveaboard at Chuuk Lagoon in Micronesia.

“It was a vacation. I got to live on a boat in the middle of nowhere in a country that few people know exists, and fewer could find on a map. Unfortunately for the people of Chuuk, the Imperial Japanese Navy were aware of their existence and went above and beyond to impose their will on the natives of these islands, all for strategic advantage for the Pacific,” says Gorek.

A little background about the island nations of the Western Pacific: Micronesia is a subregion in Oceania consisting of over 2,100 small islands and consists of four main island groups: the Mariana Islands (which includes Guam, the largest island in the region), the Marshall Islands (site of 24 nuclear tests at Bikini Atoll by the United States in the 1940s and 50s), the Gilbert Islands, and the Caroline Islands, which includes the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM). These island chains are no strangers to colonialism, and FSM was captured by Japan in World War I. During World War II, Chuuk Lagoon served as the Empire of Japan’s naval base in the South Pacific theater. It can be confusing, but Chuuk refers to the state and the land, Truk refers to the lagoon and dive sites. In February of 1944, just over two years after Pearl Harbor, the United States Navy launched Operation Hailstone to take out the Japanese fleet.

“In the wee hours of February 17th into the 18^th, American forces decimated the Japanese fleet. Over 250 aircraft and north of 50 ships were destroyed and/or sent to their resting place on the bottom of the ocean,” Mike says about Hailstone. A generation later, this site of incredible carnage lures wreck divers from around the world. I’ll let Mike tell it.

“For a week some 59 years (after the attack), I stepped aboard the Odyssey to dive the wrecks of Truk Lagoon. We landed on a short runway where, from the plane, there’s no visible land and your luggage is dumped through a hole in the wall with a front-end loader. There were 25 dives over six-and-a-half days, most surpassing 30 meters, culminating with the San Francisco Maru. (Its deck is 165 feet and, while passing through the cargo hold at 186 feet, we still hadn’t reached bottom.) Most of the ships we encountered were merchant ships converted to military use for the Imperial Japanese Navy.

The thing about war you never see is the human element, in this case, sake bottle after sake bottle, medical tools, gas masks, rubber boots, tile latrines and the head on the boats, tools, air compressors, and gauges stuck in their resting places. But beyond any of these relics were human remains themselves—femur bones on an operating table or even a human skull. All these things littered these wrecks through the mid-1980s, though less these days. Ships that stood proud and tall, are now reduced to fields of soft coral playing home to fish, crab, octopus and everything else you can possibly think of.

There were cargo holds filled with trucks, motorcycles, Japanese Zeros and an abundance of surplus parts . . . all just frozen in time. Periscopes on a submarine tender, bulldozers encrusted to steel, waiting for their opportunity. What was really astounding, the biggest take away, was the raw power of black powder. We crawled through two-inch think plated steel mangled from a torpedo blast.”

Initially explored in 1969 by legendary oceanographer Jacques Cousteau and often referred to as the “Ghost Fleet of Truk Lagoon”, Chuuk Lagoon is now known as the world’s greatest collection of diveable World War II Japanese shipwrecks.

The Ghost Fleet of Truk Lagoon is the tenth and final in our series of the Aquarium dive team’s favorite dive locations. Thank you for all the readers who’ve kept up and those who come back to the series. If your destination wasn’t on our list, suggest somewhere new we might want to explore.

Ray D.

Best Places to Dive: Fiji Islands

June 29, 2023

Diving

Written by Greater Cleveland Aquarium

Nicknamed the “Soft Coral Capital of the World” by none other than famous oceanographic explorer Jean-Michel Cousteau (son of Jacques), the islands of Fiji are a year-round diving destination filled to the brim with assorted sea life.

Greater Cleveland Aquarium diver Craig Zwegat has over 700 dives in his 14 years of diving, so he knows a thing or two about exotic dive locations. His visit to the Fiji Islands was memorable both for the wonders under the water as well as how he was embraced by the local Fijian culture. Read any dive guide of the area and they can’t help but insert a comment about how welcoming and friendly the locals are to their guests. A 2014 Gallup Poll even named Fiji the happiest country in the world.

The Republic of Fiji consists of approximately 320 islands in the South Pacific, of which about one hundred are inhabited. The indigenous name of the islands is Viti, an Austronesian word meaning “east” or “sunrise”, which makes sense as the closest continent, Australia, lies almost 3,000 miles west of Fiji, roughly a four-hour plane ride.

The islands are well-known for their soft corals that wave in the current like so many giant, techno-colored fans and fingers. Every kind of tiny prey fish imaginable hide within these corals, attracting larger and larger predators to the area for a diver’s viewing pleasure. At the top of the food chain, divers have enjoyed swimming with tiger sharks, bull sharks, and giant hammerheads.

Dive operations are largely run out of the two largest Fiji Islands, Viti Levu (“Great Fiji”) and Vanua Levu (“Great Land”), which then launch to many of the smaller islands known for certain specialty dives. Taveuni Island is known for the “Great White Wall,” an almost vertical wall blanketed in coral that starts at 80 feet and goes far beyond recreational limits. For those seeking sharks, Viti Levu has an 80-foot dive known for bull and tiger sharks as well as nurse, lemon and reef sharks. Kadavu Island, directly south of Viti Levu, is the place to find manta rays as well as giant ocean predators like tuna and marlin. Drift divers will enjoy spotting octopuses, crabs and eels as they zip along the underwater currents off Vanua Levu. And just a few kicks off each island are those famous soft corals.

“Ni sa bula Vinaka” means hello in Fijian, or “Wishing you happiness and good health.” It’s a long flight from the US, about 11 hours from LAX to Nadi Airport, but what diver worth their salt wouldn’t want to follow in Jean-Michel Cousteau and Craig Zwegat’s footsteps and visit this diving nirvana?

Kona, Hawaii is the eighth in our weekly series of the Aquarium dive team’s favorite dive locations. Stay tuned for the remaining two destinations and suggest somewhere new we might want to explore.

Best Places to Dive: Kona, Hawaii

June 22, 2023

Diving

Written by Greater Cleveland Aquarium

Kona, Hawaii is world-renowned for two things: Kona coffee and swimming with manta rays at night.

While the mineral-rich volcanic soil and mild climate of Kona has created one of the most expensive coffees in the world, a bit of Pavlovian conditioning has led to a reliably fantastic dive site. With wingspans of up to 23 feet, manta rays are gentle giants that have become drawn to the underwater light systems that both light up their viewing site and attract the plankton they feed on. This little spot on the western side of the Big Island may be known for its night dives with manta rays, but aquarist Mallory Haskell also reported terrific daytime diving as well.

“The water was crystal clear and we saw soooooo many of the colorful tropical fish you think of with reefs,” Mallory says. She also swam with spotted eagle rays and white tip reef sharks in Kona’s waters. Mallory worked at Greater Cleveland Aquarium from 2012 to 2014 and was certified to dive during this stint. She returned to the Aquarium in 2018.

As if Hawaii didn’t have enough going for it, the steep slopes of the volcanic mountains plummet prodigiously just off the coast of Kona. Three miles offshore, the water is 1000 fathoms deep. For those who haven’t read Moby Dick recently, a fathom is equivalent to six feet, meaning there’s a mile drop off and a bevy of large pelagic fish near shore – marlin, wahoo, sailfish and mahi mahi included.

Kona, Hawaii is the seventh in our weekly series of the Aquarium dive team’s favorite dive locations. Stay tuned for the remaining three destinations and suggest somewhere new we might want to explore.

Ray D.

Best Places to Dive: Ice Diving – Lake Charlevoix, Michigan

June 15, 2023

Diving

Written by Greater Cleveland Aquarium

Not every diver seeks tropical water and colorful fish. For some, the lure of historic shipwrecks or the challenge of cold-water diving draw them further north and inland to freshwater lakes. The Great Lakes is a wonderful location to find thousands of wrecks that, due to the lack of corrosive saltwater and stronger ocean currents, tend to be better preserved.

Robin Murray is one of the newest members of our dive team. Although she only joined Greater Cleveland Aquarium in January 2023, Robin has been diving since 2019 and has 185 dives under her weight belt. One of her most memorable dives is her ice dive at Lake Charlevoix (pronounced SHAR-le-voy) which can be found at the northern end of the southern peninsula of Michigan and connects to Lake Michigan via a narrow channel.

While not the preferred method of your average amateur diver, ice diving provides some wonderful advantages that weigh against its inherent challenges. Cold water tends to provide terrific visibility and, not surprisingly, fewer crowds than typically encountered at a tourist location. For those that live in colder climates, it can be the only opportunity to dive through the long winter months.

However, those diving under the ice must take extra precaution, as they are diving in an overhead environment which limits ability to go directly to the surface in an emergency. A scuba regulator can malfunction due to cold water. Regulators can freeze over and subsequently free-flow, resulting in all of the diver’s air rapidly being depleted. These malfunctions and hypothermia are the other main risks of cutting a hole through the ice and exploring below the surface.

For those like Robin who brave this environment, Lake Charlevoix offers a particularly notorious shipwreck to explore. The Keuka, a barge for hauling timber had plied the lakes since it was built in 1889. During Prohibition, its owners converted its hold to a roller rink and advertised outings as a party barge, but it was really a floating casino and speakeasy.

Local historians won’t confirm rumors that notorious gangster Al Capone had a hand in its operation, but there is no doubt that the Keuka offered entertainment that was decidedly “illicit” until it sank under suspicious circumstances in August of 1932, a year before the end of Prohibition.

The wreck is more than 200 feet long and lies 50 feet under water, but the top deck is only 15 feet under the surface due to the immense size of the vessel. The Keuka seems to be a stable vessel and is a favorite of divers and snorkelers alike due to its accessibility. In the bow of the wreck, a large bait ball of bass tends to congregate, delighting visitors to the ship’s interior.

So, whether you want to don your dry suit and cut a hole in the ice with a chainsaw or wait to go out on a summer charter, Lake Charlevoix and the surrounding waters provide a rich opportunity to explore history and adventure.

Lake Charlevoix is the sixth in our weekly series of the Aquarium dive team’s favorite dive locations. Stay tuned for the rest of our list or suggest somewhere new we might want to explore.

Ray D.

Best Places to Dive: Cave of Elephants – Crete, Greece

June 8, 2023

Diving

Written by Greater Cleveland Aquarium

In 1999, a daring spearfisherman in Greece named Manolis Efthymakis made a stunning discovery. While free-diving 30 feet down, he saw an opening in the cliff wall and did what most of us would not: he swam into it. What he found drew the interest of both the diving and the archaeological community.

Tens of thousands of years ago, the waters of the Mediterranean were low enough that animals walked into this cave, leaving behind fossils of a previously unknown species of elephant as well as a dwarf deer only 30 centimeters tall, or roughly three apples high. (A Smurf deer!) While many of the elephant bones, named Elephas chaniensis after the nearby city of Chania, were removed to museums, some things were left behind to attract divers to this cavern wonder.

The underwater entrance leads to a 100-foot-long tunnel large enough for divers to swim side by side until they reach a cavern filled with red-colored stalagmites and stalactites. Pitch black except for flashlights, divers then tread water to take in the views and pose for photographs while being careful not to kick one of the stalagmites growing beneath their fins. The swim back through the tunnel is notable for the eerie blue glow of the triangular opening back into the Mediterranean Sea.

I had the opportunity to explore this site in 2018 on a family trip to Greece. It followed what was initially a disappointing dive. The northwest corner of Crete, the largest of the Greek islands, is a rocky and arid environment. The town closest to the dive site, Kokkino Chorio to the south, was used in the filming of Zorba the Greek. Our first dive was totally devoid of any life except for a small silver fish we helped free from an old fishing net. The second dive into the cave was incredibly memorable and has been noted as one of the best cave dives in the world, although that is somewhat misleading as there are breathable air pockets within the cave, you’re always within site of the entrance, and there is no sediment to kick up on the bottom that might obscure vision underwater. It’s perhaps more accurate to call it a cavern dive.

Although we did not see any other signs of life on our dive, the waters around Crete and the Cave of Elephants itself is often a refuge for the Mediterranean Monk Seal (Monachus monachus) which is a critically endangered species of seal with fewer than 600 surviving members around the world.

Cave of Elephants is the fifth in our weekly series of the Aquarium dive team’s favorite dive locations. Stay tuned for the rest of our list or suggest somewhere new we might want to explore.

Ray D.

Best Places to Dive: Cenote Dos Ojos, Quintana Roo, Mexico

May 25, 2023

Diving

Written by Greater Cleveland Aquarium

A shade over 66 million years ago, a six-mile-wide meteor came screaming out of the heavens at 12 miles per second and a 60-degree angle to the surface of the Earth, which is kind of a worst-case scenario angle in terms of plunging chunks of space rock. It absolutely pulverized the impact zone with the force of a 100 million megaton bomb, creating tsunamis hundreds of feet high and flinging rocks half a continent away. For non-avian dinosaurs, the impact marked the end of an era. Literally. This is where the Mesozoic Era ended, and the Cenozoic began—the infamous K-T Extinction that eliminated roughly 80 percent of all species on the planet.

We know this hurtling chunk of death as the Chicxulub Meteor, named after the Mexican town at the center of its crater, which lies at the northern end of the Yucatan Peninsula along the Gulf of Mexico. The dinosaurs may have nothing to recommend the Chicxulub Meteor, but humans have reaped the benefits; the Cenozoic kicked off the “Age of Mammals” where Homo sapiens flourished.

The Yucatan Peninsula, that large thrust of land that sticks out northeast from Central America and divides the Gulf of Mexico from the Caribbean Sea, has a truly unique geology. It is a flat slab of limestone with 1,000 miles of shoreline that is completely devoid of surface water. There are no rivers, bridges or lakes in northern Yucatan. Instead, brittle limestone cracks and fissures drain rainwater from the surface into a vast underground river system that stretches for hundreds of miles.

Cenotes, or sinkholes, dot the surface and provide access to the underground waterways. The ancient Mayan civilization relied on cenotes for potable water and regarded them as sacred wells, building cities, like Chichen Itza, around these gateways to the underworld and placing offerings to the gods in them, occasionally in the form of human sacrifices.

Two of our staff divers, Matthew Ballish and Stephanie Quinn, have journeyed to the popular Dos Ojos Cenote to explore what lies beneath. Dos Ojos, from the Spanish “Two Eyes,” is north of Tulum in the state of Quintana Roo and refers to a pair of cenotes (blue eye and black eye) that connect into a large cavern below. Snorkelers can swim in the crystal-clear water at the surface, while scuba divers follow two lines (known as the “Barbie Line” and the “Bat Cave”) through pitch black tunnels studded with stalagmites and stalactites.

Matthew, who has been the Greater Cleveland Aquarium Assistant Dive Safety Coordinator for eight years and has more than 600 dives in his 36 years of experience, was drawn to Dos Ojos because of its proximity to the cities along the Riviera Maya, allowing him easy access while on vacation to a great dive spot. Though there are more than 6,000 cenotes across the Yucatan Peninsula, Stephanie and her husband found that the wealth of information available about Dos Ojos and the easy access made it an ideal spot to explore these ancient gateways.

Formal exploration of Dos Ojos began recently in 1987, and in 2018 an access point was found to the much larger Sistema Sac Actum, making the entire system the longest underwater cave system in the world.

Free of particulate matter as the rainwater filters through the limestone, the waters of the cenotes are amazingly clear and their temperature stays a constant 77° F year-round. The depth isn’t more than 33 feet in the cavern, and though there are few fish, divers will find signs of life at the aptly named “Bat Cave.”

“Underwater, you’ll see pieces of fruit tossed aside by the bats,” Matthew remembers. “When you surface to look at the bats above your head, you’ll be happy you have a mask on . . . the odor is powerful.”

Cenote Dos Ojos is the third in our weekly series of the Aquarium dive team’s favorite dive locations. Stay tuned for the rest of our list or suggest somewhere new we might want to explore.

–Ray D.

Best Places to Dive: Neptune Memorial Reef, Key Biscayne, Miami, Florida

May 15, 2023

Diving

Written by Greater Cleveland Aquarium

When Greater Cleveland Aquarium Diver Damon Johnson swam with his first eagle ray in the Atlantic Ocean a few years ago, it was at one of the more unusual dive sites in the world. Neptune Memorial Reef, which will be the largest man-made reef in the ocean once it’s completed, offers people an opportunity to mix the cremated remains of their loved ones into the cement structures that make up the reef.

Just over three miles off the Atlantic Coast of Key Biscayne (south of Miami, Florida), and 40 feet underwater, plans for Neptune Memorial Reef show it eventually covering 16 acres of ocean floor and including more than 250,000 memorials to both humans and their beloved pets. It already has at least one famous resident—celebrity chef Julia Child.

Although far from finished, the reef is already transforming the underwater environment. The bases, pillars and arches are engineered to support marine life in all its forms. Coral and other benthic animals grow on the texture of the base and pillars, and the arches have holes where prey animals can hide from predators. A recent survey showed hundreds of species including bluehead wrasse, sergeant majors, barracudas and pufferfishes. Crabs, lobsters and sea urchins can be found in the crevices and of course, as Damon and his father discovered, divers might even find a majestic eagle ray, which can have a wingspan up to ten feet. The bevy of life swimming amongst the cremated remains is perhaps perfectly summarized by Neptune’s motto “creating life, after life.”

Damon has been diving since 2019. His father got certified soon after and they found that they enjoyed diving the warm, turquoise South Florida waters together. He and his father are now both certified advanced divers and look forward to diving Dubai in the near future.

Neptune Memorial Reef is the second in our weekly series of the Aquarium dive team’s favorite dive locations. Stay tuned for the rest of our list or suggest somewhere new we might want to explore.

-Ray D.

Best Places to Dive: Forfar Field Station, Andros Island, Bahamas

May 5, 2023

Diving

Written by Greater Cleveland Aquarium

We dive for a variety of reasons. To commune with nature, to unwind, to explore. Our “pale blue dot,” as astrophysicist and author Carl Sagan pointed out, is just a “very small stage in a vast cosmic arena,” but perhaps by diving in we can learn to better appreciate that fragile ecosystem largely invisible to us as we commute between school, work and the grocery store in our busy daily lives.

Greater Cleveland Aquarium diver Stephanie Quinn took a formal approach to learning about our dot when she enrolled in a study abroad program during her senior year at Ohio University. Stephanie and her future husband spent a week at the Forfar Field Station, an educational and scientific non-profit organization that has served as a resource to over 50,000 thousand students ranging from middle school to graduate students and researchers. Most field study trips last a week and involve groups of 10-45 students with a focus on marine science, geology, botany, climate change or other scientific fields including social science. Imagine a classroom along the shoreline where students put their learning to the test by plunging into their environment.

“Forfar Field Station is a rustic former dive resort nestled in a beachfront coconut grove on the east coast of Andros Island,” according to their website. The largest of the Bahamian islands, Andros is host to rich diving opportunities for the students, including “coral reefs, offshore cays, sea grass beds, sandbars, blue holes, subtropical terrestrial habitats, Bahamian settlements and more.” The waters nearby are filled with colorful reef fish, including blue tang, angelfish, parrotfish and butterflyfish.

“It was the best diving,” Stephanie recalls. “Crystal clear water. Great biodiversity. We dove both there (Forfar Field Station) and Small Hope Bay during our study abroad. We then went back to Small Hope Bay for our honeymoon.”

Stephanie joined the Aquarium’s dive team in 2015 and has been a certified diver for 22 years. She lost her logbook, but estimates she has roughly 75 dives outside of the Aquarium. According to Aquarium Assistant Dive Safety Coordinator Matthew Ballish, she has more than 1350 dives in the habitats here.

Sagan, in his well-known speech, said that astronomy was a humbling experience. “To me,” he said, “it underscores our responsibility…to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.” These words were meant for the study of the stars but could apply just as well to those that look under the sea.

Forfar Field Station is the first in our weekly series of the Aquarium dive team’s favorite dive locations. Stay tuned for the rest of our list or share your favorite place to dive with us.

– Ray D.

Best Places to Dive? We Know a Few

April 27, 2023

Diving

Written by Greater Cleveland Aquarium

Scuba diving and Cleveland, Ohio . . . sort of go together like peanut butter and monkey wrenches, right? I challenge you to find one of those “101 Places to Dive Before You Die” books with a cover that isn’t turquoise, tropical and filled with colorful reef fish. And yet Cleveland has its own extensive dive community. Lake Erie, the shallowest of the Great Lakes, has hundreds of shipwrecks to explore and is serviced by several dive shops that teach classes, sell gear, and organize trips all over the world. Northeast Ohio is home to around 4.5 million people and an untold amount of scuba divers who love to explore the waters in their own backyard as well as adventure to distant places to see what there is to see in the 70% of our planet that is underwater.

“What is your favorite place to dive?” is usually the first question posed to a diver. Could there be a better place to ask that question than of the staff at Greater Cleveland Aquarium? Not to toot our own horn, but we pack a ton of dive experience into the historic Powerhouse.

The Aquarium currently has 25 divers on staff; that’s not just the dedicated dive team members but also diver-certified aquarists, Life Support Systems staff and some of the Guest Experience folks regularly answering your animal questions. The numbers are dizzying. We did 1,265 dives in 2022 totaling 99,162 minutes. That’s almost 69 days or 10 weeks underwater. We could have watched Avatar: The Way of Water 5,204 times last year!

The Aquarium team has logged 22,246 dives since the downtown venue’s doors first opened in 2012 through the end of 2022, and we have well over 300 already this year. In fact, there’s a good chance that someone is underwater at the Aquarium as you read this blog post.

Best places to dive? Yeah, we have a few. I asked around and started a list. What follows will be a series of ten dive locations around the world as recommended by our team. Some are tropical, some feature shipwrecks and one is even under ice.

We hope that the discussion stirs a passion in everyone to explore the world while you can. There’s so much to experience and we love to talk about all the curiosities we’ve seen underwater. I think I speak for all the staff here when I say that we advocate for the protection of the species and environments that we’ve seen firsthand and feel there’s no better way to learn and love what’s out there than diving in and encountering it, face-to-face. I’ve been diving since 2017 and have been a Greater Cleveland Aquarium diver since 2018. I have more than 1,000 dives here and 65 or so out in the world, including the Florida Keys, Bahamas, Honduras, Niagara River, Tobermory and Greece.

So, if you see someone at the Aquarium and you’re curious, don’t be shy. We love to talk diving and follow this blog series to add some of our recommendations to your “must-experience list.”

-Ray D.