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My wife and I are currently in Chu'uk, having arrived on Good Friday five days after the typhoon hit. There has been a lot of damage with 6 vessels blown on to shore, including two liveaboards, Truk Siren and Odyssey. Truk Siren has been heavily looted and vandalised and is possibly a write-off. Odyssey looks to be repairable but will have to be moved elsewhere for repairs because there are no facilities in Chu'uk. The land based diving operations are still operating (we are at the Truk Stop Hotel) as is the Thorfinn 'liveaboard' although this is in fact more a floating hotel which simply anchors in the area of most of the wrecks and diving is from skiffs.
I have photos of both Siren and Odyssey in their sorry state but internet access has only just been restored but with reduced bandwith so I can't upload photos.
There has been some damage to some of the shallower wrecks but nothing too significant. The main impact has been on visibility which normally is excellent at this time of year but is down to 12-15M on most of the wrecks. It was better on some of the deeper wrecks which we did yesterday.
Chu'uk is a very sad place. LOts of people wandering around doing very little. There is very little in terms of economic activity and the only significant employer is the government. The place effectively runs on US aid money. It is difficult to decide what is damage caused by the typhoon and what was due to general neglect. The only tourism is from divers and in a good year they will only get around 2500. Most of the people are friendly and welcoming but when we went for a walk around lunchtime the other day, we were pushed into a large puddle in the road several inches deep by two surly young men. We wouldn't feel safe walking around after dark.
The diving is not particularly well developed and could be made much more attractive. However, the dilema is that it could never be developed as resort diving - it is serious Rec/Tec stuff. We have hit deco on all but two dives so far, even using nitrox. They have a policy of safety stops of 2mins at 60 feet, 3 minuutes at 30 feet and 10 minutes at 15 feet with slow ascents between stops (not sure about the wisdom of veryy slow ascents from the deep stop though). Diving on air, this would barely have cleared our deco obligations and yesterday, one pair diving on air, ran up over 20 minutes of stops in addition to this.
The wrecks are starting to deteriorate and you are left wondering what the future for this community will be in a couple of decades time when they don't even have the wrecks to attract visitors.
I have photos of both Siren and Odyssey in their sorry state but internet access has only just been restored but with reduced bandwith so I can't upload photos.
There has been some damage to some of the shallower wrecks but nothing too significant. The main impact has been on visibility which normally is excellent at this time of year but is down to 12-15M on most of the wrecks. It was better on some of the deeper wrecks which we did yesterday.
Chu'uk is a very sad place. LOts of people wandering around doing very little. There is very little in terms of economic activity and the only significant employer is the government. The place effectively runs on US aid money. It is difficult to decide what is damage caused by the typhoon and what was due to general neglect. The only tourism is from divers and in a good year they will only get around 2500. Most of the people are friendly and welcoming but when we went for a walk around lunchtime the other day, we were pushed into a large puddle in the road several inches deep by two surly young men. We wouldn't feel safe walking around after dark.
The diving is not particularly well developed and could be made much more attractive. However, the dilema is that it could never be developed as resort diving - it is serious Rec/Tec stuff. We have hit deco on all but two dives so far, even using nitrox. They have a policy of safety stops of 2mins at 60 feet, 3 minuutes at 30 feet and 10 minutes at 15 feet with slow ascents between stops (not sure about the wisdom of veryy slow ascents from the deep stop though). Diving on air, this would barely have cleared our deco obligations and yesterday, one pair diving on air, ran up over 20 minutes of stops in addition to this.
The wrecks are starting to deteriorate and you are left wondering what the future for this community will be in a couple of decades time when they don't even have the wrecks to attract visitors.
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