Hoki Maru 450’, Thanksgiving Day - Dive 1, Log #285 Lies upright, decks at 100’. 140’ for :48
It’s Too Early to be Attacked by Sharks
The wind had risen overnight and was now blowing 12-15 knots. Surface chop and swells built up as we listen to Capt. Lenny brief the first dive of the day to the Hoki Maru. It was going to be a deep one if you wanted to see the good stuff in hold 5, around 135’ or so.
Marcia and I kit up and get our cameras ready. We splash, not realizing that the Odyssey had swung away from the wreck. Swimming out with Steve, we have trouble on the surface against the chop and decide to go on down. We swim down to 30’ and still can’t see anything (you usually can see the wrecks easily, they’re huge). I continue to descend to around 118’ in the blue, then go back up to 90’ or so. About then I see a 5-6’ Grey Reef shark swim by. Cool, So I take a shot as he turns and come back. About then, another one swims by and they start to circle me. The first one turns again in a tight turn, drops his fins and arches his back showing classic, pissed-off shark behavior. Ok, I’m out of here!
I abort and swim up quickly to Marcia at 70’ and we head for the surface to re-group.
Surfacing, the guys yell at us to swim forward. We swim hard and then start back down when we see the bubbles from the other divers and then the down line. Dropping down we come on the Hoki amidships and swim forward as we drop. I thought we needed to go to the furthest forward hold, but seeing Vern he motions us to aft one hold. We have to be careful on this one, as there are holds still full of aviation gas.
We drop into the wreckage of hold 5 and see a bulldozer perched on a girder and an asphalt roller and trucks everywhere in the huge hold. We circle around hitting 140’ with our computers beeping loudly that we’re close to our MOD of 143’. Shoot, move, adjust the strobes and shoot again, no time to be artistic.
Marcia glances at her gauge as mine beeps into deco. Time to get out of here. Going up to the decks at 100’, we wipe our brow and swim around for a brief tour and then go aft to the totally blown apart amidships. The ship is in two pieces, cut apart like a knife went through it. The stern is around 150’ off in the distance, but we can’t see it.
Running low on gas and time we ascend up the mast and then down line, doing deep stops as we go. We then decide to swim for the hang bar on the boat. Reaching it, we do 6 mins of deco and another 5 mins for safety.

Dive 2, Log #286 Pizion Reef – Outer fringing reef 83’ for 1:08
After motoring 1.5 hours to the outer reef Capt. Lenny ties the Odyssey up to a mooring he has in Pizion Reef. It’s a bright sunny day and the sea is calm, the reef is very pretty with the seas breaking gently on it.
We are quickly surrounded by small black tip sharks, as this is the place that we’ll do our shark feeding dive and the sharks are used to a free lunch, hopefully not us! (It should be mentioned that most sharks are very shy in the water and are not easily approached. Air bubbles scare them. They are curious to sounds and will come and investigate, but don’t usually pose a threat to divers under the water, most attacks are on the surface to swimmers.)
We drop in and do a tour of the reef edges and go back up into shallow water shooting macros of clam fringes, etc. Nice hard coral and sand patches. Lots of small fish with black and grey tip reef sharks cruising by every so often. I’m not over impressed with it in terms of the reefs I’ve been on in Fiji and Palau, but it’s nice to be on a reef again after diving all the wrecks.

Dive 3, Log #287 Pizion Reef Shark Dive
After lunch the guys chum up the water and we all suit up and jump in the water together. Lenny leads the way over to a rocky cut in the reef to which he has attached a pulley with a wire running through it. We gather round and sit in a circle in about 60’ of water. He attaches a lift bag and shoots it to bring down a large chunk of frozen tuna bait. I sit a few feet away front and center camera in hand.
When the bait comes down a huge pack of sharks attack it and each other. Rolling around they zoom in and out, black tips, grey reef and a few large silver tips. One shark tears off the bait and makes off with it and the rest follow. Huge schools of sweet lips and fusiliers also gather to eat the tidbits that soon cloud the water.
Lenny waits for the water to clear and repeats the feeding. I shoot some in available light as well as with the strobes (but leave on the diffusers which make the shots mostly too dark, only a couple come out). One shark grabs the tail of the bait and high over us the sun is nearly blotted out with the dark shapes of sharks and fish.
I continue to shoot sharks and people and the swim out over the reef edge to about 80’. Afterwards we swim up into the shallows and enjoy all the small stuff, including a baby leaf fish and baby triggers.
Later I find out that Kevin, who dives in shorts was sitting with his calves exposed and had a black tip slightly nip him. He said it just sort of mouthed him and he kicked it away. But he has the million dollar wound to take home, just a small cut thankfully.

Dive #4, Log #288 - Rio de Janero Maru, 463’ lies on it’s port side. 106’ for 1:14
We tie up to the mooring as light is starting to fade. Vern gives a good briefing, cautioning us that this is a wreck that we shouldn’t penetrate the cabin structure on. As it’s on it’s side, it’s easy to get turned around and is unstable.
We kit up and splash after the others, just at dark. Our goal is a couple of the holds, the stern, props and the lettering of the name on the bow.
I’m a bit surprised to drop down on the huge expanse of the hull at only 35’, seeming as flat as the moon. Swimming along we quickly find the railing and the deep drop off of the deck and holds, now a vertical wall.
Each is like a cavern opening but with I-beams and wreckage lying across them. We duck into a couple of them, find one empty and the other tween deck full of wrecked sake bottles and then even more stacked cases of bottles still in cartons, just as they were when the ship went down 60 years ago.
We continue aft along the huge wreck, still and eerie in the dark. Marcia says later that I looked like R2D2 with my twin focusing lights on my strobes and red cylume light on my tank. Finding the stern, we swim along and run into the deeper of the two props at around 80’, not seeing the monster rudder, until we realized that it was beneath us.
The props are gargantuan – I can’t even frame one in my 16mm 100° view lens. We fire off a few shots and then swim up to find the other prop. After shooting it too, we rise back up a bit shallower to swim back forward along the rail, cabin and companionway. After shooting the huge running light on the side of the cabin, we work our way forward to check out where cannon rounds had cooked off and blown up the focastle under the bow gun.
We finally reach the section and it is torn apart, inch and a half steel plates like torn sheets of paper, twisted and sheered off in sharp shapes. We continue past and finally find the bow, then the hause pipe and anchor, looking for the 18” lettering of the name. Orienting ourselves correctly, we find the first few letters and then can make out “RIO D” – poignant in the dark, I try to take a few pictures using side lighting to bring them out.
The Rio, a converted passenger liner, was a feared coastal raider. It was hunted and attacked several times before it was finally sunk here in Truk.
Marcia continues to shoot the railing as I stupidly decide to swim into the blown apart focastle to see if I can find any leftover 6” cannon rounds. With only 800# of gas left, at 70’ this is just plain dumb as I quickly realize. The torn apart area is not as easy to swim in and out of like a hold. I shoot a couple of shell casings and what looks like an old gas cylinder, then get turned around and as I swim back out. I dart around a couple of bulkheads and wrecked plates still not seeing a way out, then calming myself down, I turn around and look at the floor behind me and swim back, make another 90° turn, see some growth and finally a very dim glow of Marcia’s light showing me the way out.
At 650# now, it’s time to pull the plug on this one. We quickly find the line and rise up, just at no deco limits. We do a stop at 25’, then swim off to the boat, seeing the strobes in the distance. Coming up to the dining room, I am truly thankful for my Thanksgiving dinner while in the back of my mind I see the walls of a dark, twisted, closed-off hold.