Our first dive of the day is on the Unkai Maru. An old, medium sized freighter, the Unkai is resting upright in 130 ft of water. We started the dive in the engine room and, despite being the last two divers in the water, we were the first ones in. The beauty of that is that it wasn’t silted out. I’m not sure what it is, but I think I am really starting to get a thing for engine rooms. They are so beautiful and a little eerie, all at the same time. I know it probably sounds strange (and trust me, I never thought I’d feel that way), but the engine rooms on all of the ships have been one of the highlights for me. Maybe it is because they were once the heart of the ship (I know that sounds corny) – whatever it is, it is really awe inspiring. The engine room on the Unkai is relatively small, but it still has gauges on the engines, catwalks and steep ladders. We felt fortunate to be the first in. The rest of the dive we spent swimming in and out of the holds – not much left in them, but interesting nonetheless – the forecastle filled with small personal items, and the galley. We swam to the stern and saw the old-fahsioned rudder mechanism and swam to the bow and saw the bow gun (with the manufacturer’s plate still intact). We did part of our deco on the mast and completed the rest of our obligation on the hang bar.

During our surface interval we headed out of the Lagoon to Pizion Reef for a shark feed shark dive. Before any divers got in the water, the mates threw chum in the water to let the sharks know it was time. We all suited up at about the same time; the Captain got in the water first and everyone else followed. We crossed over the reef and dropped down on the wall, all the while the sharks followed. Captain Mike showed us where the “shark theatre” would be (an indentation in the wall) and we all sat on the hard coral and waited. Once all of the divers arrived, Sam (one of the dive guides) signaled to the divers on the surface we were ready for the first frozen tuna. They attached it to a line, then Sam inflated a lift bag and as it rose to the surface, the tuna came down. Once it arrived, the sharks started for it. Most of the sharks were relatively small, however there were a ton of them. We fed them twice (the whole show probably lasted 10-15 minutes) before we started swimming back to the boat. As we swam along the wall, the sharks swam with us. Just before we turned to go up the wall, we spotted a spotted eagle ray.

We did our safety stop on the reef below the boat. It was in beautiful shape (my guess is it only sees a handful of divers each week) loaded with various corals, clams, anemones and other sea life.

The last dive site of the day is Rio de Janeiro Maru. A passenger liner turned submarine tender and troop & weapons transport, the Rio is 461 ft. long and rests on her starboard side in 110 ft. of water. The Odyssey is moored near the bow of the Rio however the bow of the Rio is essentially just wreckage at this point so they run a line from the mooring ball to the top of the wreck. We follow it down and do the cargo holds and engine room first. The cargo holds felt more like wreckage than a wreck to me. We penetrated some, but I just had an eerie feeling about it…it all seemed very unstable to me. We did, however, enter the engine room. Once again, that was the highlight of the wreck. That was sill fairly well intact with the catwalks hanging, some of the gauges still legible and the control panels still on the walls.

We swam around to the stern and saw the props before swimming on the top of the wreck back to where the line that was attached to the Odyssey – “was” being the operative word. When we found the line, it was no longer suspended, rather it was lying in the sand…someone had inadvertently pulled it from the boat. So, we made our way back to about midship where a jug was floating at the surface. We completed our deco obligation on the jug line and then tried to guess where the Odyssey might be. As we swam in the general direction of the boat we looked up and noticed a large oil slick above us. The Rio is leaking oil - we could actually see it bubbling out of the wreck. In a matter of minutes we spotted the mooring ball the boat was tied into and realized we weren’t far from the boat. We made it back to the hang bar and watched a barracuda swim around a bit before surfacing.