Wewak WWII Wrecks

Wewak · East Sepik Province · Papua New Guinea

Wewak was the largest Japanese military base on the New Guinea mainland during World War II, a sprawling complex of airfields, supply dumps, and harbour facilities that supported operations across the region. From 1943 onward, Allied air attacks systematically destroyed the base's infrastructure, sinking ships in the harbour and scattering wreckage across the bay floor. Today this quiet provincial capital on Papua New Guinea's north coast gives little outward sign of its violent past, but beneath the warm waters of Wewak Bay lies a scattered museum of wartime debris that has spent eighty years being transformed into a tropical reef. I dived Wewak with a local guide who had grown up swimming over the wrecks and knew every one by sight. Our first site was a Japanese transport ship lying on her port side at 18 metres, her hull split open amidships by what was likely a bomb hit. The wreck was barely recognisable as a ship beneath the growth. Soft corals in every shade of pink, purple, and yellow covered every surface. Sea fans the size of dining tables grew from the exposed deck beams. Clownfish colonies occupied anemones attached to the hull plating, their territorial displays continuing uninterrupted by my arrival. Swimming along the wreck's exposed starboard side, I could see through the bomb damage into the cargo holds. The interior was a tangle of fallen structures colonised by sponges and encrusting coral, with schools of glassfish filling the open spaces in shimmering clouds. A large moray eel occupied a gap in the hull plating, its mouth opening and closing in the rhythmic breathing pattern that always looks more threatening than it is. Batfish in a group of six drifted alongside the wreck, their disc-shaped bodies turning slowly as they tracked my progress.