Question Kiribati Diving

[beccam]

Hello all!
My fiance & I are planning our honeymoon for this upcoming May/June and we stumbled upon Kiribati. He's a fly fisherman and I dive so it seems like a great location. However there is very little information!!
Hoping some of you might have experience with Kiribati and could offer your advice (and perhaps some contacts).

 

[-JD-]

I just read Maarten Troosts' Sex Lives Of Cannibals which is about his 2 years living there some 20 some years ago. Might be out of date no, but maybe some interesting background for you - unfortunately no Scuba or fly fishing info, though.

 

[Jim Carbin]

Hello all!
My fiance & I are planning our honeymoon for this upcoming May/June and we stumbled upon Kiribati. He's a fly fisherman and I dive so it seems like a great location. However there is very little information!!
Hoping some of you might have experience with Kiribati and could offer your advice (and perhaps some contacts).

How did you dives in Kiribati go? I am considering heading there this fall but dont see much info on the dive conditions or quality, viz, marine life etc? any comments?

 

[bakodiver391]

I did a series of dives there in Feb to survey a desalination plant outfall at the SE corner of Tarawa Atoll. My understanding is that there is no dive operator in Tarawa, however we were able to use tanks and compressor from the gov't fisheries office. I would not count on this being available, we were doing an important infrastructure project so the gov't was inclined to help. I was pleasantly surprised at the state of the oceanside wall at the SE corner, mostly healthy coral, good fish life including giant trevally and little trash. I also found a pair of props from a WW2 B24 that were not known.
Lagoon diving would be a no-go as the lagoon is very shallow sand and polluted with waste and garbage. Topside, the atoll is very crowded and full of trash. My room was more like a jail cell and I would say the food is not adequate.
I would not go to Tarawa as a tourist. There used to be a guy named Kim running dive operations on Christmas Island but I have not heard of him in a decade or more so I suspect he is gone.