Bikini Atoll

Bikini Atoll, a remote ring of coral islets in the northern Marshall Islands, is one of the most sobering and significant places on earth, a UNESCO World Heritage Site recognised as a symbol of the dawn of the nuclear age. Between 1946 and 1958, the United States conducted more than twenty nuclear tests here, including the enormous Castle Bravo hydrogen bomb, after evacuating the atoll's people, who were promised return but, because of lasting contamination, have been unable to go home to this day, a profound and ongoing injustice. Beneath the atoll's beautiful, deceptively tranquil lagoon lies a fleet of warships sunk in the tests, including an aircraft carrier, making it a haunting, world-famous, and strictly limited, deep-diving destination.

What you actually see

• The story of the Bikinians - the displaced people and their exile.
• The nuclear test legacy - the history of the atomic and hydrogen tests.
• The sunken fleet - the warships and carrier sunk in the tests.
• The atoll - the beautiful, poignant, largely uninhabited ring.

When to go

Access to Bikini is extremely limited and has come and gone with the operation of specialist dive expeditions, so it is not a place one simply visits; when trips run, they are for experienced deep and technical divers only, by special charter and arrangement, in the calmer months. Its status should always be checked, and the human history approached with the utmost respect.

Honest expectations

Bikini is, above all, a place of profound human tragedy and injustice, the lost homeland of a people displaced by nuclear testing and unable to return because of contamination, so it must be approached with deep respect rather than as a mere adventure; visiting is extremely difficult, expensive and intermittent, and the wreck dives are strictly for experienced deep and technical divers. As a haunting, world-significant monument of the nuclear age and its human cost, though, and an extraordinary if sombre dive site, Bikini is genuinely unforgettable.

Nearby

The capital Majuro and the other Marshall atolls are reached by air.