Bikini Atoll Diving: Health and Safety.

[LavaSurfer]

I am scheduled to go dive the wrecks in Bikini Atoll August 2006. I am interested in advice and feedback from experienced members who have already dived Bikini. I am looking for health and safety assessments. I have contacted the Bikini operation via e-mail and they have been quite helpful in providing me with information on radiological survey of the wrecks. They and others claim the environment to be rather benign on Bikini Atoll, and the threat of "background radiation" is far greater in many US urban areas etc. Any information would be helpful. Thank you.

I wouldn't go if I were you.
Give me your ticket and I will check it out first.
If I live, you know you can go safely!

Seriously, any radiation was washed away into the deep blue sea and washed up on LA's shores long ago. Water is also a great insulator from radiation so your fine.

If you come back with gills - all the better!

 

[oceancrest67]

Everone that has been there at the same time as I are still alive. Lets' see, that would be a total of 7 people over two 1 week long trips. I don't know about any other people who were there those weeks, or any of the vast number that have been there since it opened to vacation divers (1989?).

Maybe we were just lucky.

Watch your depth and time Ocean, your profile shows you are a 'stimulus seeker/risk taker'- as are the most of us.

The first female civilian visitor to Bikini was Mary (The (new) Turtle Lady of South Padre Island, Texas). Stop by Sea Turtle Rescue Inc. and ask her all about it. She does have that certain 'glow' about her! :14:

Thanks for your advice and input. In my posting I was not trying to sound alarmist but curios about other experiences. I have read through the web site and other similar postings via Scuba Board. You are right in pointing out that this site can be a world of advice...so one has to filter through it all.

I could be wrong but from what I have read they opened Bikini up to diving in 1996 with a "controlled group" type dive environment...no resort diving...basic living conditions.

I am now reading about an increasing amount of live aboards wanting to take interested divers etc.

How did you like the food? How were the accomodations? Water?