From Exile to Tourist Resort

Rongelap Rebounds With Fishing, Dive, Nature Resort

By Giff Johnson, Pacific Magazine
 
In a world grown small, with little in the way of frontier left to discover, a trio of isolated coral atolls in the Marshall Islands might soon cause a buzz among those who love the unspoiled outdoors. In much the way Bikini Atoll and its fleet of sunken atomic warships has become a magnet for high-end scuba divers since it opened six years ago, little-known Rongelap and its two neighbors uninhabited Ailingnae and Rongerik may soon be the talk among sports fishermen, divers and travelers with a bent for eco-tourism.

Rongelap leaders have seen the success of the Bikini dive program in the past two years, it has injected some $450,000 into the Bikini community and are keen to develop Rongelap along similar, though somewhat different lines. What Bikini is doing is working, says Rongelap Mayor James Matayoshi. But Rongelap will be different from Bikini. We won’t be competing with them. We’ll be offering blue water fishing, catch and release fly fishing, wall diving and nature tours.
 
Rongelap is aiming for big-time tourism in the coming years, but is offering a sneak preview starting this month for those who want to fish and dive in virtually untouched waters. The Rongelap Council is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a variety of dive and fishing boats, and on developing a new island-style resort that is expected to open this coming May.

Starting small, Rongelap will be able to accommodate up to 36 people at one time when its new resort opens. Meantime, it’s using its base camp with air conditioned accommodations, built as part of a resettlement program, to launch the sports fishing program in a low-key way until all of its facilities are up and running.
 
Our goal is to create jobs for the community, Matayoshi says.

Now, only a small group of workers permanently reside on the atoll. In 1985, islanders left Rongelap fearing radiation exposure from the environment. Rongelap was engulfed in a cloud of radioactive fallout from the 1954 U.S. Bravo hydrogen bomb test at Bikini. Rongelap Islanders have experienced a high incidence of thyroid tumors and other health problems.

The people’s self-evacuation in 1985 forced independent scientific studies in the early 1990s that showed the need for a nuclear cleanup. The U.S. Congress responded by establishing a $45 million trust fund, which underwrote the first phase of rehabilitation work that concluded last August. This included scraping soil from the village area and replacing it with uncontaminated coral rocks, and building basic infrastructure to support a community when Rongelap Islanders begin moving back.
 
Interested visitors might be hesitant about visiting an island dusted by nuclear fallout nearly 50 years ago. But Rongelap leaders, who are now regular visitors to their atoll, say that scientific studies show that the exposure hazard is from eating locally grown foods not from merely being on the island because cesium 137 is buried 18 inches underground and is absorbed by root crops. Because of this, food for consumption on Rongelap is imported, except for fish that scientists report is safe for eating.
 
Aside from sports fishing and diving, Rongelap has another attraction: nearby uninhabited Ailingnae Atoll. A U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Team spent two weeks on Ailingnae in mid-2002 to catalog marine and terrestrial life on this turtle-breeding atoll. Among other attributes, Ailingnae has many coconut crabs, which scientists described as huge and numerous, and a healthy underwater giant clam population. The lack of human predators has turned Ailingnae into a virtual zoo of marine and land life. Islanders plan to use the results of the Fish and Wildlife survey to nominate Ailingnae for World Heritage status. The aim, says Matayoshi, is to take visitors on nature tours to this pristine and untouched necklace of coral islands.

Rongelap is ready to host sports fishermen for bargain basement prices about $1,200 not including airfares, for one week visits beginning this month. By March, a dive master will be on board to launch the dive program. For more information on Rongelap, contact Wayne & Jenni Fox at rongexp@ntamar.com or the Marshall Islands Visitors Authority at tourism@ntamar.com.
 

Published with the permission of
Pacific Magazine

Photos: Rongelap Atoll Local Government