wreck

Log This Dive

HIJMS Nagato

The Nagato is a monster, a genuinely immense piece of history. We’re talking about the flagship of the Imperial Japanese Navy, the vessel from which Admiral Yamamoto ordered the attack on Pearl Harbor. Now she rests upside down, at about 52 metres, and the scale of the wreck is just humbling. It's not a dive for the faint of heart, or for anyone without solid wreck experience, a deep cert, and preferably, sidemount. Our favourite part has to be the huge bow section, a leviathan of steel covered in life. You drop down, and it just keeps going. Schools of barracuda hang off the structure, shimmering in the shafts of light that pierce the gloom. Look out for the gigantic four-bladed propellers, they’re still mostly intact and give you a sense of the sheer power this ship once had. Inside, the sheer scale of the engine room is incredible – a cathedral of twisted metal, now home to clouds of glasseye snapper and the occasional patrolling reef shark. You can spend an entire dive just on one section of the Nagato and still feel like you’ve only scratched the surface. The wreck is slowly but surely transforming into a thriving artificial reef, with blackfin squirrelfish darting between fire coral and the larger parrotfish grazing on the hull. We'd suggest staying shallow on your deco stops, exploring the upper sections of the superstructure which are now a maze of coral growth.