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Jonathan visits the wrecks of Palau—and it’s not just ships!
Welcome to Jonathan Bird’s Blue World!
The Republic of Palau is an island nation consisting of more than 500 beautiful, unspoiled
islands in the Pacific.
This blue water paradise is a top destination for scuba divers from around the world.
Located 500 miles east of the Philippines in the middle of the Pacific Ocean—Palau
is not easy to reach.
Julia and I traveled all the way here to spend a week diving on the Rock Islands Aggressor,
a luxury liveaboard dive yacht.
We have already done some incredible dives.
We have visited massive coral caverns, filmed some shark action, seen colorful coral, huge
schools of fish and dove in strong currents with reef hooks.
It might seem like we have seen it all.
But there’s more.
Today we are diving a Japanese shipwreck called the Iro.
Follow the mooring line down…
Palau is notorious for being the site of the bloodiest battle of the Pacific during World
War II.
Here, the United States and Japan fought for control of this tiny nation in a battle that
took over 2 months.
13,000 men lost their lives.
Remnants of the battle are everywhere, both above and below the water.
It’s a cloudy morning as we head out to the wreck of the Iro.
But we soon forget the weather as we roll into the warm ocean.
The Iro definitely has the shape of ship but there’s something odd about it.
This ship grew a beard.
Closer inspection reveals that every square inch of the wreck is covered in a thick growth
of healthy coral.
Swimming across the deck at 25 meters, I pass through superstructure that barely resembles
its man-made origins.
The ladder is the only giveaway.
Sponges add a splash of red.
Sinking into one of the cargo holds, the visibility drops significantly due to the deterioration
of the cargo, and a lack of water movement.
We don’t touch anything down here because there is a lot of live ammunition that could
explode even after all this time.
Good buoyancy is important.
A layer of who-knows-what is suspended like clouds near the ceiling.
There are cases of sake bottles.
Coil springs, and ammunition.
The
wood has rotted out of these barrels, leaving just the metal hoops.
There is even rope, almost 80 years old and still intact.
The Iro was a Japanese warship, 470 feet long, that survived a sub attack and an aerial attack
before finally being sunk by a 1,000 pound bomb that hit the engine room in March of
1944.
Seventy five years later, marine life has replaced this ship’s violent past with a
peaceful and benevolent existence.
On the upper deck, a field of lettuce coral, the weight of which will eventually cause
the deck to collapse as it rusts away underneath.
Schools of fish find safety within the protection of a large stand of staghorn coral.
You need to back up to realize this is not a natural reef but more like a beautiful terraced
garden.
Soon with our air running low, we head back to the boat.
Wow!
Just amazing!
I mean the amount of marine life that grows on the wrecks around here.
It’s a whole different way of wreck diving….it’s kind of like, yeah okay the wreck is pretty
cool, but look at all the coral!
Wow!
Our dive on the Iro gave us a taste of Palau’s wide range of wrecks, leaving us wanting more.
So, at the end of our week diving with Aggressor, we decide to stay a few more days and see
a couple more wrecks.
We head over to Sam’s Tours where we meet up with local wreck expert Matt Boyle.
All of Sam’s Tours’ boats are named after sharks, and today we’re on the Silvertip.
Captain Ford Castillo knows these waters like the back of his hand.
We get our gear ready.
And then its time to head out.
You don’t even need to go diving to enjoy the beautiful scenery of Palau.
Driving the boat between the islands is a blast…and so picturesque.
We have arrived at the wreck of the Teshio Maru.
As we head down the algae-covered mooring line, soon the wreck comes into view.
At only 24 meters maximum depth, this is one of the shallowest wrecks in Palau, and it
has pretty good visibility too.
The twisted wreckage of the Teshio Maru is fun to swim through.
Matt leads the way on a tour of the wreck.
Like the Iro, it has a ton of marine growth, but the bow still looks like a ship.
As I round the corner of the bow, there is an opening in the hull that is probably a
result of an explosion.
Matt and I head inside.
Bulkheads have rusted through, providing a way to sneak between holds safely.
We can always see the way out.
In the engine room we find some kind of catwalk and some electrical boxes.
It’s difficult to determine what a lot of this stuff was after 75 years in the ocean.
We turn and head back towards the light, making our way through the twisted remains of the
hull plates.
The Teshio Maru was actually washed up on shore after the attack, but slipped into the
water following a storm, tumbling, twisting and breaking on its way down the slope to
its final resting place.
This is one of the things I love about wreck diving: crawling through tight restrictions!
Of course it means you get rust stains on your wetsuit.
On the end of a mast, I examine a small reef community, complete with sponges, fish and
coral, a microcosm of the Palau marine ecosystem.
After a decompression stop on the mooring line, I reluctantly head back up to the surface.
We switch our gear over to fresh scuba tanks, because we have one more wreck to explore.
But first, Ford wants to show us something cool.
A cave.
But this is no ordinary cave.
So this was a secret Japanese seaplane base where they would refuel their seaplanes in
a cave.
There’s a fuel pump over there, and a whole bunch of barrels.
And the American’s bombed it with a skip bomb which skipped across the water and came
in here and lit the whole place on fire, so the whole thing is all burned out.
Exploring this cave is a perfect surface interval between dives.
Then it’s off to our last wreck.
And it’s not a ship.
This is a Japanese seaplane, one of the planes that would have refueled in the secret cave
gas station.
The seaplane is an Aichi E13A Japanese Navy reconnaissance plane, powered by a 14 cylinder
radial Mitsubishi engine.
At only 38 feet long, it was not a large plane, which made it perfect for spy missions.
And the pontoons meant it could land and hide anywhere in the maze of Palau’s islands.
Today, the pontoons are deteriorating but they are still easily recognizable.
Because the prop is not bent, the engine was likely not running when the plane sunk and
because the canopy is open, the pilot most likely escaped.
Over time, the heavy Mitsubishi engine fell off exposing the internals…but there isn’t
much to see since marine growth has covered everything over.
There is some kind of electrical box on the bottom next to the wreck.
Swimming behind the plane, I can see that the tail section is missing, allowing a look
up inside the back of the cockpit.
And I can also get a pilot’s eye view out the windscreen.
On the right wing, some kind of container, possibly for oil.
Nearby, we find the tail section, completely overgrown in coral.
Seems to me this would make a great place for fish to hang out.
A fish hanger!
It’s not a very big wreck, but it’s really cool because you can see the whole thing at
once.
Marine life doesn’t seem to grow on the aluminum skin of a plane as much as it does
on the steel of a shipwreck, so the plane still looks almost ready to fly!
Plane wrecks are cool, and it’s hard to believe that that one is 70 years old.
It’s so intact, the metal is still shiny.
Wreck diving is one of the most exciting ways to revisit history.
The wrecks of Palau afford a unique and interesting glimpse into one of the most significant battles
of World War II.
But even for divers who are more interested in marine life, there is plenty of that on
the wrecks.
The ocean has an effect on all of us, but perhaps none so significant as it does on
sunken ships.
It’s amazing how these weapons of war have been transformed by the Blue World.
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