User:Sethnessatwikipedia/Dive sites of saipan

Saipan seen from the air

A map of Saipan, Tinian & Aquijan

Located at latitude of 15.25° north and longitude of 145.75° east, about 200 km (120 mi) north of Guam, Saipan is about 20 km (12.5 mi) long and 9 km (5.5 mi) wide. The island is a popular dive destination in the Pacific, attracting a large number of "introductory", beginner, and advanced divers from Japan, Korea, America and elsewhere. Its underwater beauty and appeal to divers is greater than Hawaii's and Guam's, but less than Palau's or Australia's Great Barrier Reef.

The island is a typical middle-aged island composed of ancient fossil-rich coral limestone atop a subsiding, extinct marine volcano. A fringing reef of healthy offshore corals forming an extremely large lagoon and many small shallow lagoons in its larger bays, as well as a few offshore subsurface coral mounts.

Saipan's excellent reefs, white beaches, clownfish colonies, underwater caves, WWII shipwrecks, underwater WWII munitions dumps, and underwater WWII plane wreck offer diving that appeals to almost every type of diver.

Visibility, typically in the 50~90ft./16~30m range, varies enormously based on location, tide, and season.

Wave conditions are ideal, seldom rising above 1~2ft. / 30~60cm in height, except during typhoons and tropical storms.

Divers should consult weather reports for the region before traveling to Saipan during the typhoon season, as the frequent typhoons and tropical storms can cause travel delays and undivable water conditions for several days at a time.

The following are some of the official dive sites in Saipan:

The Grotto

The Grotto is possibly the most popular and most challenging dive in Saipan. It is a natural tunnel leading from the top of a high cliff down below sea level, then exiting into open ocean through three wide openings at depths between 0~60ft./0~18m. Outside the openings, the cliff descends far beyond the depths of recreational diving, but allows for easy drift-diving along the cliff wall. To the left (southwest) of the openings, along the cliff face at 40~50ft. deep is a large divable underwater cavern known informally as "the batcave". (Divers should not attempt to reach the batcave without a local guide, and only if their air consumption rate is quite slow.)

Because of the physically demanding 112-step staircase, beach divers visiting this site should be in good physical condition. There are occasional boat-dives outside the Grotto, but distance from the harbor and the ease of beach entry make this an uncommon boat dive.

Access is via a well-paved asphalt road from San Roque to a parking lot atop the cliff, then down 112 cement steps to a sunlit large natural rock in the cave lagoon. From this rock divers make a giant-stride entry into 15ft./5m of water and hold onto a mooring buoy until all the members of their group are in the water.

Exit is also via this rock, and accomplished by holding onto the mooring buoy rope while swinging onto a sea-level ledge on the entry/exit rock.

Visibility here is quite possibly the best Saipan has to offer, typically exceeding 90ft./30m.

Snorkellers and swimmers should avoid exiting the Grotto even under the calmest conditions, since exiting at or near the surface is sometimes easy but reentry can often be impossible because of strong currents, whitewater waves crashing against the cliff, and extremely sharp rocks. Once outside the Grotto, the nearest surface-exit points are the far-away Bird Island to the northeast and equally distant Wing Beach to the southwest. It's therefore imperative that divers retain enough air to return underwater and make their safety-stop within the Grotto.

Typical natural life in and around the Grotto includes 1~3 harmless white-tip reef sharks, bubble coral and lace coral (in the batcave), a small group of barracuda, and pyramid butterfly fish. Occasional fauna include green sea turtles, Napoleon wrasses, tuna, and spotted eagle rays.

Coral growth is slight.

This site is one of the four Saipan divesites most frequently visited by professional dive shops on Saipan. Because of its difficulty, it is typically used only for divers who have already been certified to the "advanced" level, though on rare rough-weather occasions when all other sites are undivable, open water divers [CDNN news article], open water certification students, and even introductory divers are brought here.

Wing Beach

Wing beach is the beach/boat dive closest to The Grotto. Access is via a very poor dirt road, then to a small jungle clearing near the far northeast side of Wing Beach. From there, beach divers walk across a white pebble beach and follow the northeast rocky wall of the beach down a flat rocky slope, then follow the underwater wall around further to the northeast. Exit is by the same route.

The site has poor-to-moderate coral growth but excellent visibility and fairly interesting rock formations including a 30m/90ft. tower and equally deep canyon in the underwater wall. Common sights there are coral-eating pincushion starfish, crown-of-thorns starfish, and butterfly fish.

This site is not commonly visited by professional dive shops.

Tanapag

This shallow introductory beachdive site should not be confused with the Saipan boat harbor of the same name. The two locations are separate, with extremely different beach and water conditions.

Tanapag is possibly the easiest, most convenient, safest introductory dive site on Saipan.

Although occasionally strong longshore currents inside the lagoon may reduce visibility to near-zero and require that divers cling to a submerged, anchored rope "walkway" along the dive's route, typically the conditions are near-ideal, with near-zero currents, moderate 30ft./10m visibility, and 0~15ft./5m depths. Access is via a well-paved asphalt road very close to Garapan City and San Roque, then parking next to a small church and an open-air public theater. From there, divers typically sit around the edges of the theater on low walls, listening to dive instructions and arranging their gear. Next, divers enter the water via an extremely gently sloping sand beach and practice their dive-training in water where they can stand up. Then the divers proceed into deeper water along a submerged anchored rope, visiting several small coral outcroppings surrounded by small reef fishes, sea cucumbers, small boxfish, clownfish pufferfish, and occasional scorpionfish.

Controversially, professional dive leaders will often bring canned and plastic-wrapped hot dogs underwater so that customers can enjoy feeding the fish, who will flock around the diver in large numbers. While this is undoubtedly thrilling for the diver, the unnatural food source leads to health problems for the fishes and the cans/wrapping are often abandoned underwater, polluting the area.

This is an ideal site for using an inexpensive snorkelling camera without flash to take underwater photos, since the area is well lit and depths are within snorkelling-camera depths.

The Korean/Japanese Troop Ship "Shoan Maru"

This World War Two troop ship was owned by the Japanese, but sank while carrying conscripted Korean soldiers. It is a rare type of shipwreck since it is in shallow (30~40ft./10~13m) water and contains almost no overhead environment, making it a very simple, safe dive.

The wreck is located in the large lagoon outside Garapan/Tanapag. It is strictly a boat dive, being too far from shore for a beach entry.

Occasional strong currents may make diving difficult and visibility poor, but conditions there are typically 50ft./17m visibility and zero current, with a white sandy bottom and no surface wave activity.

Controversially, in the mid-1990s Korean divers placed a memorial plaque on the wreck and a large stone memorial within a few yards of the wreck. The plaque, it's said, mourned the death of the Korean soldiers but made no mention of the other war casualties. This caused a minor uproar in the multinational professional dive community of Saipan.

The area has moderate coral growth, limiting the types of fish that gather at the wreck. Divers shoudl not be surprised, however, to find small 3ft./1m whitetip sharks occasionally napping in and around the wreck.

Ice Cream

"Ice Cream" is a boat dive outside the lagoon, slightly south of Garapan. It is a very large submerged coral mount of antler corals with its baseball-diamond-sized summit roughly 40ft./16m below the surface.

There are several permanent boat moorings.

Visibility is typically 20m/60ft, and currents are rarely problematic, though divers should take care to cling to the anchor rope while descending, ascending, and making safety stops.

Life includes large populations of moorish idols and butterfly fish, particularly pyramid butterfly fish.

Obyan Beach

Pronounced "ob-JAHN".

The dive site is near the airport, and accessed via a poorly maintained pothole-ridden asphalt road and a dirt/coral-rubble road. Occasionally, dive boats will moor and dive here and also visit the nearby site called "mushroom rock/boyscout beach/secret beach".

This beach is particularly well used by professional dive shops, both for easy "fun dives" and for open water training dives. Access and exit are typically from the beach along a rope anchored inside a natural cut in the coral plateau near the beach.

World War II history enthusiasts will note a Japanese pillbox near the parking lot. As with much of Saipan's beaches, shallow waters, and jungles, Obyan's underwater sandy regions and the nearby jungle area still give up occasional artillery fired from American warships and from the pillbox. If you see one, do not touch it, as roughly a third of the undetonated armaments are still capable of explosive reactions to mishandling.

Depths are 15ft./5m~60'/18m, and visibility varies from 30ft./10m~60ft./18m.

Life includes good hard coral growth, large colonies of soft coral, all manner of reef fishes, occasional green sea turtles, and an excellent colony of charming garden eels.

Snorkellers should be cautioned to stay in the yard-deep lagoon inside the wave-break zone, because although moving out into deeper water through the coral cuts is easy at the surface, return is not-- the waves break in extremely shallow sharp corals, and the coral cuts experience strong outgoing rip-tides.

External Links

• reviews of Micronesian shore dives at shorediving.com
• board devoted to diving in Saipan
• "Heart of Gold Divers SAIPAN": Private dive company in Saipan with extensive underwater photo collection organized by divesite.
• condition reporting / macrofauna survey report form
• Resources Management of the C.N.M.I. (Government oversight & planning organization)