Former Pearl Harbor Ship Becomes a New BVI Dive Site

The Kodiak Queen, formerly U.S. Navy barge YO-44, is gaining a new lease on life as part of the Project YoKo BVI Art Reef, a collaboration between Sir Richard Branson and a number of BVI stakeholders. The Kodiak is being sunk off the coast of Virgin Gorda in March with a giant kraken sculpture, made of rebar and mesh, wrapped around the ship. Kodiak Queen will become a unique dive and art destination to help bring awareness to marine-health problems.

The Kodiak Queen launched in 1940 as U.S. Navy fuel barge YO-44, and is thought to be one of only five ships that survived the attack on Pearl Harbor. It was later renamed the Kodiak Queen and began a new life as a fishing boat. Historian Mike Cochran found the ship rusting in a Road Town junkyard in 2012, and set up a website in an effort to save this piece of history. Owen Buggy, a friend of and photographer for Sir Richard Branson, saw the site and suggested the ship as an artificial reef. The project was soon underway.

The future of the Kodiak Queen

The Kodiak Queen will be a platform for coral restoration, featuring coral planting on its art sculptures. There will also be a coral garden on deck and an “eDNA” research area to monitor the impact of artificial reefs. Environmental DNA, or eDNA, is an inexpensive and non-invasive way to collect DNA and monitor the presence and abundance of marine species. Scientists will use the information to monitor the area’s repopulation of large predators, including sharks and the now-rare goliath grouper.

The Kodiak Queen as underwater art gallery

The website for the initiative invites visitors to imagine the dive site’s possibilities, asking ‘‘What if…a WWII warship could mobilize a global network of researchers, philanthropists and artists…to solve marine health problems through the power of play?” With that in mind, an underwater art gallery will include the kraken as mentioned with its 80-foot (24m) arms, as well as other art installations. A swim-, dive- and ocean-education program is also being created for the youth of the British Virgin Islands, hoping to foster the next generation of ocean ambassadors.

In a recently released statement about the project, Sir Richard Branson said, “This project provides an exciting opportunity to capture people’s attention and then to refocus it on important issues facing our oceans,” said Sir Richard Branson in a recently released statement. “For example, the importance of addressing global warming to protect our coral reefs and the need to rehabilitate vulnerable marine species such as severely overfished grouper populations.”

Divers can visit the site within two months of the ship being sunk and will be able to swim through the boat structure and the kraken.

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