Today we dived the Hoki Maru and the Fujikawa Maru.

The Hoki Maru rests at 175 ft. and is missing the entire midship and bridge (they were devastated from an aviation gasoline explosion). Our deep dive of the day, we only did one dive here and it was well worth it. We started the dive by dropping down into the first cargo hold to about 145 ft. In it we found bulldozers, trucks, a tractor and a steamroller. We then made our way to the second cargo hold where we found drums of aviation fuel. After checking out the cargo holds, we swam along the starboard side of the ship to the stern and back down the port side. The ship, as most of them are, has an amazing amount of coral, anemones, and sea life. We made our way back to check out what is left of the engine room before heading back to the anchor line. We completed our deco obligation on the line and on the hang bar. In all, it was another awesome dive.

After a long surface interval (and some lunch), we did our first dive on the Fujikawa Maru. A transport ship, the Fujikawa was sunk in February 1944. For the first dive, we decided we would do a long one and spend the majority of our time at the bow of the ship. We started the dive in the engine room. I never thought these words would come out of my mouth, but the engine room was beautiful…truly breathtaking. There was enough ambient light coming through various openings that really lit up many areas of the main portion of the engine room. As we swam through, we found the infamous “R2D2” – a compressor that looks like a robot. We made our way out of the engine room and into the cargo holds where we found airplane parts, Japanese Zero airplanes, wings and cockpits, oil drums, shells, shoes and much more. We then swam around the pilot house and down to the main deck where we saw plates, light fixtures, a gas mask and two plaques – one commemorating the 50^th anniversary of Operation Hailstone and the other dedicated to one of the survivors (who also happens to be the man credited with starting the dive industry in Truk). We completed our deco obligation on the kingposts and made our way back to the boat.

Our second dive on the Fujikawa took us to the stern. We started by dropping down to the props where we saw a spotted eagle ray before heading up to the starboard side. We swam through the three aft cargo holds. They were less impressive that the forward three, but interesting nonetheless. We came back up to the main deck and wrote Samantha’s name using Saki bottles (after taking a picture, we removed it…I thought it was bad luck to leave her name on the wreck), tooled around a little and then completed our deco obligation on the kingposts.

We had originally planned on doing a night dive, but after dinner, decided maybe we should take the night off. So, we headed back to the room to watch a movie, download our pictures and chill.