All that remains will be wrecked
Back thirty years ago, when I was a young diver in search of knowledge, I was a regular reader of various magazines devoted to the sport. A feast of images, harvested in waters much warmer than those around the Island, and a steady stream of articles praising the opportunities for the well-finned tourist. I never boarded a plane in the direction of those crystal-clear waters, but I knew that the ocean was ch0ck full of sunken treasure.
One of the more haunting sites was the Truk Archipelago, now known as Chuuk. Back during the war, the Japanese and Allied forces had spent fortunes sending each other’s boats to watery resting places. Given the climate, those wrecks remained particularly accessible to anyone with a Nikonos and some Kodachrome, and there were regular reports on how any diver worth his salt could go and see sunken treasures.
Tonight, the folks at Thalassa took me back (vicariously) to see how thirty years had changed the spectacle. As it turns out, all isn’t well.
The local people can’t afford to learn the skills of SCUBA, so the wrecks are of little interest. Instead, they’ve developed a counter-economy based on fishing near the reefs using other wartime debris: explosives. A few hours with some improvised “lures” and a boat can be filled with fresh (somewhat damaged) fish. Unfortunately, the explosives are also damaging the wrecks (which are the main economic foundation of the tourist trade) and diminishing the stocks of fish. Bit of a vicious circle…
I’ll likely never go to Truk/Chuuk, but there’s sadness in hearing that the site may have less than two decades left. The rate of destruction due to dynamite fishing (by people who will never see the wrecks), and the resulting loss of habitat for those fish means that the legacy of war will disappear. After that, those remaining will have nothing left. And the tourists will turn to other places, drawn by other beautiful photos in a magazine.
