turtleisland

This island is more commonly accessed as a boat dive, but I swam to it from shore. It's off a point between Dadi Beach and Old Wives' Beach. These beaches are on the Navy Base so they can only be visited by people with access to the base. I wanted to dive the Western tip of the island. The closest beach was Old Wives' Beach so that's where I swam out from.

I did the long snorkel out to Turtle Island. The area near shore was only about knee-deep so it was awkward to crawl/stagger out to deeper water. Most of the swim out was in water around 30' deep. Unlike most of the areas around Guam, there was hardly any coral on the bare-rock bottom.

I reached the tip of Turtle Island. This point dropped underwater in a wall to about 50-60' deep. There were some red gorgonian corals at the base of the wall. This was the only place I saw them on Guam.

Out past the base of the wall there was a very gentle solid-rock slope with a few large boulders scattered around. Some of the boulders had small caverns under them. There were some clumps of a kind of soft coral that I didn't see anywhere else on Guam. I saw a few turtles. This dive had a very different feel from the other dives I did on Guam since instead of being covered with coral, the bottom here was mostly bare rock. My maximum depth was 80'. This site is known for current and I felt a slight flow.

I'm still a bit confused as to the lack of hard coral in this area compared to pretty much everywhere else on Guam. At Dadi Beach, which is just on the other side of the point, the bottom is almost completely covered with hard coral. I don't think it has to do with damage or pollution since there is no sign of dead or broken coral or that there was ever any coral here. Despite this strange lack of coral, I think this was my favorite shore dive on Guam. I liked the clear water (around 100' visibility) and the unique gorgonians and soft corals. This site also had the most turtles I've seen on Guam (I don't know if this is why it's named "Turtle Island").