Okikawa Maru

For decades dive guides called this ship the Taiei Maru, and the wrong name still surfaces in briefings — wreck identification in Coron was untangled slowly, from rivet counts and archival manifests. She was the Okikawa Maru, a big civilian tanker of the late 1930s pressed into naval service to move the fuel that Japan's war ran on. Anchored off Concepcion when the September 1944 carrier raid swept Coron Bay, she was hit and left burning, and air attacks in early October put her on the bottom for good. She settled upright in comfortable depths, which is why she has become the most dived wreck in the bay: her main deck lies shallow enough for long, unhurried tours, and her pump rooms and long tunnel-like passages give wreck students their first taste of overhead. The bow section, wrenched by the attacks, drops away in a tangle that rewards a slow look. Corals have made a garden of her catwalks.

How she sank: Damaged in the 24 September 1944 Coron raid and finished by follow-up air attacks in October 1944.

Condition: Upright and diveable end to end, though the bow area is heavily broken and the hull is softening after eighty years.

Penetration: Full With Training. The engine room and fore-and-aft passageways are Coron's classic guided penetrations; training and a guide are expected, and silt punishes poor trim. Entering any overhead environment requires specific training — a wreck certification at minimum, technical wreck training for full penetration.

Recommended certification: Advanced Open Water; wreck training for interiors

Current: Mild · Visibility: 5–15 m

Marine life: Hard and soft corals across the deck, sweetlips and batfish in the shade of the superstructure, banded sea kraits hunting the plating, turtles overhead.

Hazards: Visibility can fall to a few meters; interior silt; occasional current over the bow.

Protected wartime wreck; Coron local dive fees apply.

Portholes and fittings stay on the ship — removal is prohibited.