By Spencer.

A plunge into the lagoon’s cerulean waters revealed a wonderland of clams, sea cucumbers, and a plethora of fish who have made a home in the wreckage of an aircraft now resting on the bottom. This was the wreck of the Catalina, a sea plane that in times past was an atoll hopper bringing provisions, mail and people to and fro the remote atolls of the area.

In 1995 the Catalina landed as it had many times before; however, a chop in the sea and a gust in the wind that fateful day dipped the wing into the lagoon where the water was waiting to greet it for all eternity. The watery grave the plane sits in is on the edge of a shelf where the depth is only 5 meters and the broken starboard wing of the craft sticks above the water like a headstone.

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