Three islands of Bikini Atoll were vapourised by the Bravo hydrogen bomb in 1954, which shook islands 200 kilometres away. Instead of finding a bare underwater moonscape, ecologists who have dived there have given it a clean bill of health. “Apart from occasional forays of illegal shark, tuna and Napoleon Wrasse fishing, the reef is almost completely undisturbed to this day,” says Maria Beger of the University of Queensland in Australia. “There are very few local inhabitants and the divers who visit dive on shipwrecks, like the USS Saratoga, and not on the reef.”
