Chuuk

[Chris E]

Has anyone dived Truk lagoon recently - any recommendations - liveaboard vs shore based?

[Tristan Green]

Chris,

This was first posted on the Divernet diverforum a while back by myself when someone posted a similar question. It was written about a year ago but most of it is still relevant.

I have dived Truk (about 4 years ago) and would like to share my experience with you.

First off, diving to 50m in Truk is very different to diving to 50m in the UK. The water is warm (I wore a 3mm wetsuit for all dives - unfortunately it was crushed to about 1.5mm after the trip - a very practical way to observe how neoprene responds to increased pressure) and generally clear - on some of our dives you could still see the surface cover boat from about 40m down. I'd estimate the vis to be between 20-30m on the week I was there.
As for the equipment used: we dived on air with single 80 cubic feet tanks (about 11 litres I think) for all dives. There was a spare bottle hanging on the shot line at 6m if anyone ran low doing the safety stop. I took a torch on some of the dives, but not all. Usual kit included delayed SMB and reel and two computers.

All dives were nominally no-decompression dives - if your computer ran out of no-stop time you were on the way up. However, we performed safety stops as follows for each dive - 1 min at 18m (or 12m - not sure now); 2 min at 9 m; and 5 min at 6m even if our computer showed no-stops required. If we needed longer stops to clear our computers these took precedence over the safety stop timings.

All dives were uneventful except for one where one of my computers insisted that I perform 178 mins of stops at 3m - this was quite bizarre at the time as I watched the stop time clocking up like a stopwatch, even as I ascended (using my other computer for reference - that showed no decompression penalty). Suffice to say this computer had a day of rest and performed fine thereafter and ever since. The diving was packed in to the trip - I did a total of 35 dives in 8 days.

Of course now that I have progressed, with suitable training, to extended range diving looking back on this trip it all seems a bit risky now. Would I do it again? Well, yes - when you see the wrecks you'll understand why. Only this time I would probably take a redundant air supply with me as a minimum and if kit was available I'd dive twins and take stages for decompression stops.
The original question on diverforum asked for advice about training to do this type of diving - to which I answered:
I'd recommend doing a deep dive course - the effects of narcosis will be all to apparent to you when diving in Truk.

Other than that - unless you know you'll be using nitrox for the decompression I'm not sure it's worth doing the Adv nitrox or Extended range. Check what gas you'll be using - if it's air in single tanks then I think you'd be better off getting some depth build up before the trip. If you'll have access to twins and nitrox for decompression then get up to extended range so you can make the most of the trip.
I stayed on the liveaboard - MV Thorfinn. A very enjoyable way to spend a week indeed. I think a liveaboard offers you much mnore scope for doing a lot of diving (and lets face it if you are shelling out the airfare to get there you might as well go for broke and get to see as much as you can in the time available) rather than day trips out from one of the shorebased operations. Although having said that I haven't stayed on shore in Chuuk and don't know anyone who has.

If you want to see the original post in context it's here:
http://www.diverforum.co.uk/talkforums/diverforum/posts/30253.html
and here:
http://www.diverforum.co.uk/talkforums/diverforum/posts/30819.html

Enjoy your trip.

Cheers,
Tristan

[MattS]

Has anyone dived Truk lagoon recently - any recommendations - liveaboard vs shore based?Hi Chris
I dived Chuuk/Truk in 2001 (http://www.trukodyssey.com/scrapbook/DSCN1192A.html) en route to Bikini Atoll.

Personally I think liveaboard is the only way to do it. Although it seems exxpensive, by the time you allow for the inflated hotel menu prices it isn't really that much more. Taking into account that you have the opportunity of up to 5 dives a day, it works out cheaper per dive. There is little in the way of sightseeing on the islands so you are not missing out on anything. The only advantage of the hotel is that you can dictate exactly which wrecks you dive. So if you wanted to do some extended dives on the deeper sites a hotel might be better. Having said that and although we were diving longer/deeper than most on the boat, I was wary of the fact that the nearest chamber is a few hours away.

I did quite a bit of research on the available boats before parting with my hard earned;
Thorfinn is the absolute cheapest. My buddy was on his second visit. His first was on Thorfinn and he remarked that their service left a bit to be desired.

Aggressor is the most luxurious but at the cost of American style diving (40m max, follow the guide, no deco). They charged extra for Nitrox and for deep weeks.

We chose the Odyssey. It's not quite as 5 star as the Aggressor but it's still a very nice boat. The service is fantastic and the crew friendly. They have a grown up approach to diving. Show them you know what you are doing and they let you get on with it. Nitrox >30% is provided free for the qualified and they agreed to let us have the twinsets for no extra charge.

I would definitely reccommend taking some time to work up and making sure you are Nitrox qualified before you go. There is soemthing for almost everyone at Truk, you don't have to dive deep and long to enjoy it. However the more comfortable you are with depth the more you will get out of your diving.

HTH