Diving Japanese warship wrecks in Palawan is an eery experience
The clear waters of Coron Bay in the Philippine island province of Palawan contain 12 second world war Japanese shipwrecks and are a paradise for divers
CORON – PAST AND PRESENT
Our plane touches down on the small airfield in Busuanga. A short ride takes us through hills, past farms and down to Coron on the southern shoreline. The first impression is of a typical Philippine town. Dusty streets wind past local stalls; the soft, undulating thuds of rickshaw motors; children of all ages play freely in the roads. We head for the dive shops.
The pre-dive briefing prepares us for what we are about to see, and explains why we will see it. There are remnants of 12 Japanese second world war ships on the seabed of Coron Bay. Seventy years have passed since they were sunk by American fighters and the intervening time has warped the structures, eroded the steel and created marine habitats.
From the surface it's impossible to tell what lies beneath. Struggling to hold onto the guide rope against the weight of the current, we make our final checks and the descent begins. Jellyfish appear and are pulled past us by the current. From the depths, structures start to appear. Murky and indistinguishable at first, slowly we see masts, railings and the stern. Twenty-three metres below the surface we can make out the tear in the deck of the Okikawa Maru oil tanker, blown apart by American bombs. This is where we enter.
OKIKAWA MARU
The light from the surface dims. Our torches are the only illumination and we lose awareness of the size of the space we are in. Ducking through an opening in the wall we emerge in the first of the oil chambers. Green light streams in through an opening above our heads, highlighting sections of this cavernous room and silhouetting shoals of fish that call this place home.
The path to the next room is through a small opening below us. Minding our tanks we squeeze through, balancing our buoyancy with our breath to minimise contact with the rusty walls. The structure of this next room is broken and more of the ships' features can be seen. Old machinery hangs, frozen in time. Prison bars tell an ominous tale.