Rose Atoll

Well, the moment I have been waiting for since moving to this island has come. I am getting to dive at Rose atoll and Swain's Island over the next 10 days. We arrived at Rose early this morning. I even got up for the sunrise, if you can believe that! Really...I did. Here is the photo.That little tiny dot on the right side of the picture is Sand Island the only part of Rose atoll which sticks up out of the water. It is about a hundred yards across and is the only warning for ships passing by that there is a sinking mountain nearby.

Rose is very steep as you can see from this 3D projection made using the NOAA bathymetric data. The top blue line runs from -2 to -500 feet deep! So you can see we only dive the very tip of the volcano.

Here is the satellite overview of the atoll. It is oldly square-shaped and has a central lagoon which is over a hundred feet deep in places!

Even close-up, Sand island is really not much to see. I was rather jealous that the governor got to go wander around on Sand island today, but then I remembered that I got to dive... That's an octopus for those of you not used to seeing them in the wild.