Vanuatu Dives
Santo dives include two of the world’s most accessible shipwrecks, the USS President Coolidge and the USS Tucker. Plus, on the reefs and in the submarine caves you can see hundreds of colourful and interesting fish.
Wreck and reef diving in Santo is suitable for divers of any ability, provided they have completed basic training.Great reef dives can be found in most areas of the coastline. Dive operators tend to stick to the south-east coast, where you will find the wrecks of the SS President Coolidge and the USS Tucker and an area known as ‘Million Dollar Point’.
These two quality wreck dives are just meters from the Vanuatu coastline, both highly accessible to those diving on Santo.
The SS President Coolidge is a American luxury liner converted to a US troop ship during the second world war. It sank just meters from the shore and is generally considered the largest accessible wreck dive in the world, and the top dive in Santo. Novices can dive the main bulk of the ship, whereas more experienced divers can go deeper into the wreck to look at life on the inside.
The SS Tucker was an American destroyer stationed in Vanuatu during the second world war. It was accidently sunk by one of the USA’s own mines, and now it too lies just offshore.
Diving the relatively shallow Million Dollar Point, divers can see huge areas of military war surplus that was simply dumped into the ocean when the Americans left Vanuatu at the end of the war. This Santo dive includes ammunition boxes, military vehicles and the odd bulldozer – items which make this one the most popular sites when diving in Santo.
