Bikini Atoll

IslandsRalik Chain, Marshall Islands

Fragile nature — stay on the trail, leave no trace.

August·Peaking now

May–Oct

The only months anyone reaches Bikini: liveaboards run the 24-to-30-hour crossing from Kwajalein once the northeast trades fade and the open sea settles, and visibility over the Saratoga and Nagato tops 30 metres, often 50. Water holds 27-29°C.

Year-round The ghost fleet, the recovered reef and the empty beaches are here every month; only the crossing and the diving are seasonal.

Bikini Atoll's largest bomb blew a crater two kilometres wide into its own reef. That was Castle Bravo, on 1 March 1954 — 15 megatons, the most powerful weapon the United States has ever detonated, and one of 23 nuclear tests fired here between 1946 and 1958. The atoll's 167 people had been moved off in March 1946, asked to give up their islands "for the good of mankind"; they were dropped on Rongerik, nearly starved there, and their descendants have never come home. Most now live on Kili, a single island with no lagoon to fish. On the floor of Bikini's 594-square-kilometre lagoon lies the fleet the bombs were aimed at: the aircraft carrier USS Saratoga, upright with her flight deck 27 metres down, and the Japanese battleship Nagato, turned turtle on the sand — the ship from whose bridge Admiral Yamamoto sent the order to attack Pearl Harbor. UNESCO listed the atoll as World Heritage in 2010. Underwater, Bikini healed in a way the land did not. Most of its coral species have grown back, colonies rise inside the Bravo crater, and grey reef sharks climb to meet divers dropping onto the Saratoga's flight deck, aircraft still parked in the hangar below. Ashore it is another story: background gamma radiation on Bikini Island averages around 184 millirem a year, above the limit the US and the Marshall Islands agreed on, and nothing that grows here can be eaten — the coconuts, and the coconut crabs that feed on them, carry caesium-137 up out of the soil. A short visit is considered safe; living here is not. Only a few caretakers remain, the beaches are as empty as beaches get, and the way in is a 24-to-30-hour crossing from Kwajalein on one of the last liveaboards making the run.

Worth knowing

Good to know

Liveaboards are the only way in — a handful of expeditions run each year, each carrying eight to twelve divers, and places are taken a year or more ahead.
Kwajalein is a US Army base, and you transit it to reach the boat — clearance letters go through the operator well before you fly, so nothing here can be improvised on arrival.
Everything but the Saratoga's superstructure is decompression diving — most of the fleet lies near 50 metres, and operators expect technical training and full gas redundancy before you board.
Grey reef sharks turn up on almost every dive, patrolling the wrecks and the passes. They are unfed and simply curious; hold your line, let them make the first pass, and they lose interest.
You will not share the water with anyone — the atoll is uninhabited apart from its caretakers, so the wrecks, the reef and the beaches belong to your boat alone.

Things to do

1
Drop onto the flight deck of the USS Saratoga
The carrier stands upright with her deck at 27 metres, wide enough to lose your buddy on, and aircraft still parked in the hangar below. Follow the deck forward and the bow disappears into blue — she is 270 metres long, and no dive gives you all of her at once.
2
Swim in the lagoon that absorbed 23 detonations
The lagoon that absorbed Castle Bravo, the 15-megaton bomb fired here in 1954, is warm, clear and completely ordinary to swim in today. Its radiation washed out into the Pacific decades ago, while the land stayed contaminated. Floating here, knowing what happened under you, is the strangest part of the whole trip.
3
Walk beaches that see a few dozen people a year
Bikini's beaches see a few dozen visitors a year, and the tide wipes your prints before anyone follows them. The palms behind them were replanted over an evacuated village; the fruit above your head is the one thing on the atoll you must not touch.
4
Step inside the concrete bunkers that watched the bombs
Reinforced bunkers built to shelter cameras and instruments still stand among the palms, walls a metre thick, floors open to the sky. They were made to survive what happened here, and they are the only structures on the atoll that did.