Vanuatu Diving, the SS President Coolidge
Santo diving offers access to some of the world’s finest reefs and underwater caves, together with two of the world’s most accessible shipwrecks. Hundreds of colourful and interesting fish can be seen on the reefs, and in the underwater caves.
Great reef dives can be found in most areas of the coastline. The 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’.
Wreck and reef diving is suitable for divers of any ability, provided they have completed basic training.
For anyone diving on the island of Santo, Vanuatu, there are two quality wreck dives just meters from the Vanuatu coastline and both highly accessible. The wrecks are both American ships that sunk during World War II.
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 premium dive in Santo. Novices can dive the main bulk of the ship, and more experienced divers can go deeper into the wreck to look at life on the inside.
Wreck number two is the USS Tucker, an American destroyer that was stationed in Vanuatu during the second world war. Unfortunately it was accidently sunk by one of the USA’s own mines, and now it too lies just offshore, close enough to be accessible to those diving in Santo.
Diving the relatively shallow Million Dollar Point, divers can see huge areas of military war surplus that was dumped into the ocean when the Americans left Vanuatu at the end of the war. This Santo dive includes ammunition boxes, military vehicles and even the odd bulldozer - items which understandably make this one the most popular sites when diving in Santo.
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