Today we dived the Fumitzuki and the Shinkoku Maru.

We only did one dive on the Fumitzuki. A destroyer, the ship is listing to the port side and the wheel house is hanging over the edge of the wreck. We saw a urinal, torpedo launchers, ammunition, a machine gun nest, gas masks, china, bullets and the stern gun. The amazing part about all of these wrecks so far is the vast amount of soft coral and reef fish. Most of the wrecks, in that regard, are in good shape. We have seen a ton of clown fish (and several juveniles). In fact, while waiting to look into the forward cabin, I was hovering over an anemone and a clownfish kept swimming up and bumping my leg. I was obviously too close for comfort for him.

After lunch we dived the Shinkoku. The Shinkoku is a tanker ship that is sitting upright – the bow is at 105 ft., the stern is at 130 ft. Jon, Scott and I decided we would do three dives on this wreck – a long dive just after lunch, a shorter dive before dinner and a night dive. The plan worked out perfectly because we were the only people in the water for our first dive and we were able to spend a lot of time in the engine room. The engine room was incredible – one of the highlights of the site, to be sure. We started the dive through the torpedo hole at around 125 ft. and swam up through the cat walks and engines. On several of the engines, you could actually see the numbers on the thermometers on the gauges. At one point, Jon swam up between the primary exhaust and the bulkhead. Scott tried to go next, but got stuck (it was a little sketchy there for a moment)…so we decided to swim around. We made our way up to the deck and spent the rest of the time around the house.

The second dive ended up being a dusk dive and it was fantastic. We spent the majority of the dive in the house looking at the operating theatre (complete with medicine bottles and skeletal remains), sick bay, crew quarters, bathrooms (bathing tubs, urinals, etc.). The beauty of this wreck is that it is fraught with artifacts and amazing marine life, coral and anemones. We ended the dive just in time for dinner.

After dinner, Captain Mike did a slideshow presentation about the history of Truk Lagoon and pictures of things we will see on future wrecks this week.