Million Dollar Point

Shore-entry dive over the largest WWII military surplus dump in the world, 6 km east of Luganville on Segond Channel. When the US Navy abandoned its Espiritu Santo base in 1945 it offered the gear to the incoming French-British condominium administration; the offer was refused, so Seabees bulldozed bulldozers, jeeps, semi trailers, forklifts, cranes, ambulances, crated Coke bottles and sheet tin straight off a purpose built ramp into the sea. The debris field runs several hundred metres along a coral sand slope that drops from 5 m at the beach to about 35 m. Vehicles sit stacked or upended, swallowed by hard coral and gorgonians; schooling barracuda, dogtooth tuna, batfish, lionfish and the occasional turtle work the wreckage, and dugongs are seen rarely in the seagrass shallows above.