Million Dollar Point

Million Dollar Point is a dive and a history lesson in the same hour. At the end of the Second World War, the United States military had built up an enormous forward base on Espiritu Santo, Vanuatu's largest island, and faced a problem that did not feature in any manual. Hundreds of millions of dollars of jeeps, trucks, forklifts, cranes, bulldozers, tractors and quartermaster stores were sitting on the beach, and shipping them home was prohibitively expensive. The US offered the lot to the local French and British administrators for a fraction of its value. The offer was refused. The response was to drive every single piece of equipment off the end of a purpose built pier directly into the sea. What you see today is the result. The site is a shallow, sloping shore dive running from the waterline down to around 40 metres, with most of the scattered equipment sitting between 5 and 30 metres. The layout is bizarre and honestly moving, like swimming through the mechanical memory of a war. Jeeps sit upside down on their own axles, engines tumble among tyres, forklifts hold their last positions. Coral has colonised the softer shapes over the decades, and octopus, lionfish and scorpionfish use the nooks the metal provides. Penetration is not really the point here. Swimming slowly above the field with a torch off to the side is what makes the story land. Advanced Open Water is appropriate given the depth gradient, though a guided dive in the shallow zone is entirely doable for Open Water divers who stay above 18 metres. The current along the shore is usually mild. Visibility typically sits between 15 and 25 metres, dropping during the wet season when river runoff from nearby valleys pushes sediment offshore. The site dives reliably year round, but the best window runs from April to November outside the cyclone season. Pair it with the SS Coolidge a short boat ride away for a full day on the east coast of Santo.