Pohnpei Reefs

One of the ways to fly into Pohnpei is on United Airlines (formerly Continental Air Micronesia) from Guam or Honolulu. These shots taken out of the aircraft window show a lagoon full of shallow reefs and small islands. Most of the reefs are very shallow, making navigating around the lagoon difficult. In the shot below, an old rusty small freighter sits on one of the shallow reefs. Fortunately, the dive guides and boat operators are well versed in the layout of the reefs, and have no trouble winding among the reefs, many of which are marked with poles.

Many of the shallow reefs encircle deeper pools.

Flying over the main and the isolated small islands, you can spot dwellings that appear to be reachable only by boat.

The pier jutting from small island below is the remnants of an abandoned aquaculture station. We stopped there several times for lunch. On the small faint point of reef visible directly below the pier, we saw numerous broken up and abandoned cages and the empty shells of numerous Tridacna clams (one of the giant clam family). It appeared that they were trying to raise these clams, perhaps to try to replenish the giant clam populations of Pohnpei. In all our diving there, we saw only a few of two of the smaller species, Tridacna maxima and Hippopus hippopus. Old empty shells of the two larger species, T. gigas and T. squamosa, were common along beaches and on some outlying islands, but it looks as though the living ones have all been harvested for food. Unfortunately, it appears as though the aquaculture program did not succeed.

The airport landing strip is visible on the island at upper right in the photo below.

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