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On March 24, 2024, the series Shipwrecks Taiwan began broadcasting on Sunday evenings at 9 p.m. over channels including Public Television Service (PTS) and Line TV. These are Taiwan’s first ever documentaries on the ecology of shipwrecks. Eight 30-minute episodes will take viewers diving from 35 to 52 meters deep and introduce them to beautiful shipwrecks and Taiwan’s rich undersea ecology. In the future there will be a movie version, and an English-language version that will be broadcast in various countries.

Taiwan’s world-class diving

“I’ve always felt there’s something special about the seas around Taiwan,” says Tim Lee, who has visited tens of countries around the globe and dived in over 100 locations. Taiwan is an island country, but the undersea ecology off the West Coast differs from that off the East Coast. This is because the Kuroshio Current, which flows northward from the Philippines, separates into two streams upon reaching Ken­ting at Taiwan’s southernmost tip. The main current flows past Eastern Taiwan, passing Orchid Island (Lanyu) and Green Island (Lüdao), where the water is exceptionally clear. Meanwhile, the secondary current heads northwest into the Taiwan Strait toward ­Penghu, where it collides with the southward-­flowing Oyashio Current, giving a different appearance and ecology to the waters off Penghu and Xiaoliuqiu.

The second thing that is special about the seas around Taiwan is that they are easily accessible thanks to Taiwan’s convenient transportation network. It only takes about half a day to travel from Xiaoliuqiu off the southwest coast of Taiwan to Orchid Island, southeast of the main island, which makes Taiwan unlike other countries where dive locations are far apart from each other.

Entertainer Sunny Wang, host for Shipwrecks Taiwan, also loves freediving and has been on dives all over the world. “The seas around Taiwan are world class,” he says. Thanks to this documentary, Taiwan should be able to attract international divers with Advanced Open Water certification to visit shipwrecks around the island.
 

A new perspective on Taiwan’s beauty

“There are two interesting aspects to shipwrecks: One is the history behind them and the other is their rich ecologies.” Lee previously produced the series Fun Taiwan on the travel and lifestyle channel TLC, and has also explored undersea scenery in places such as Taiwan, the Philippines, and Palau with his series 30 Meters Under­water. He says with a laugh, “If this time round we still filmed nothing but coral reefs, I fear everyone would change channels as soon as the program started.”

Lee often says: “If you had a house in the wilderness, would you want to live out in the open? Or would you rather live in the house, which could keep out the elements and protect you from attack?” Like us, he says, fish choose safety. Wrecks are often located on wide open stretches of sand, and because they provide a place where fish can shelter from predators, they become home to shoals of fish. If there are no fish living around a sunken ship, this may reveal that the surrounding waters have been overfished, and in this way wrecks can serve as ecological indicators.

Lee, respectfully known as “Uncle Bai,” selected 15 shipwrecks out of a total of more than 400 recorded by the Fisheries Agency to play starring roles in his documentary. He also asked well-known Taiwanese composer Lee Che-yi and the OneSong Orchestra to create a dedicated soundtrack for Shipwrecks Taiwan.

During filming, Lee was lucky enough to find very accommodating fish on several occasions. He says that at the stern of the wreck of ROCS Wan An (AP-523) off Yilan in Northeast Taiwan, the number of chicken grunt fish far exceeded his expectations, as did the density of black coral. Wan An was the first decommissioned naval ship to be used by the Fisheries Agency to create an artificial reef for fish.

Similarly, ROCN Zhong Rong (LST-210, also spelled Chung Yung), a tank landing ship that saw meritorious action during the Battle of Guningtou, was scuttled by the Fisheries Agency off Pingtung’s Checheng Township. Lee says: “The visit to the Zhong Rong was our deepest dive for this docuseries. The size of the fish surpassed my expectations: There were two-meter-long grouper as well as schools of jackfish.” There were also stalactites, a very unusual sight, which formed because the dust that had originally been on the ship’s deck had not been disturbed by the ocean water for a very long time.

Moments of maritime history

The wreck that Lee finds most beautiful, and the one he is most familiar with, lies in Orchid Island’s Badai Bay. This is the Korean freighter Fortress, which was overwhelmed by wind and waves off Orchid Island while sailing from Japan to Singapore 40 years ago. A detached portion of the ship’s bow stands upright, embedded in the seabed.

As Lee was preparing the script for filming the Fortress, he made a number of dives to scout the location. Unexpectedly, in 2023 Typhoon Koinu struck Orchid Island hard, and various structures on the deck of the sunken ship were completely destroyed. When Lee’s team filmed the wreck, the scars of the damage caused by the storm’s giant waves were still visible.

In fact, says Lee, the sudden disappearance of the features that had made the wreck particularly attractive to divers highlights his team’s motivation for filming shipwrecks. Because sunken ships are exposed to buffeting by currents and to corrosion caused by incrustations, they are continually being degraded. “These wrecks will not look the way they do now forever!” Making a record of them today will provide important evidence for future historical research.

The first episode of the series, “The Shipwreck in Orchid Island’s Badai Bay,” contrasts the Fortress today with the way it looked in 2021 prior to the typhoon damage and adds newly shot footage. One can still see the dense arrays of large sea fans, while the ship’s deck, which lies at an angle to the seafloor, has become a wall of coral. In the beams of the ­camera lights, the undersea coral glows with bright colors, while schools of short-nosed unicornfish, sea goldies, and glass perchlets swim about. The camera captures all kinds of fish that normally stay hidden in the ship by day and only emerge to search for food at night. Host Sunny Wang says with feeling: “It is so damn gorgeous. This is something I’ll remember for the rest of my life.”

Loving the ocean

In fact Wang, who had only ever practiced freediving (diving by holding one’s breath, without using oxygen tanks or other breathing apparatus), had to learn scuba diving in order to film Shipwrecks Taiwan. He earned his certificate after five days of intensive training, even taking the more difficult technical diving course to execute dives to depths of 40 meters.

But on the first dive after the official start of filming, off Green Island, they went down to 40 meters. “Green Island is blessed with very clear water, so I was super excited, which perhaps shows that I’m a little weird.” Wang can’t hide a smile as he adds: “I don’t want to sound conceited, but when I was equalizing my ear pressure as we dove, I could do it without using my hands.” Tim Lee has high praise for Wang: “He’s very gifted.”

Nevertheless, the production team encountered a number of “scary moments.” Wang says that at 40 meters the water can be very murky, and as dark as night even in the daytime.
 

Mutual dependence

“He was the least experienced of the whole team,” says Lee, “and under water there’s no room for error, so we made sure not to let him out of our line of sight.” By “least ­experienced,” Lee means that before filming Wang had only used 100 tanks of oxygen in total, whereas Lee himself had used 3,000 and both the cameramen and the dive guides were experienced scuba divers who had each used more than 1,000 tanks.

In another incident, Wang became euphoric due to nitrogen narcosis at 40 meters’ depth and began disregarding safety rules. “Luckily for me, Uncle Bai was there.” Wang sees Lee as being like a diving instructor, and the team bonded and developed a sense of mutual reliance under water. But Wang can’t help but note: “Uncle Bai is really crazy, because if a diving coach encountered heavy seas, he absolutely wouldn’t dive in those conditions.”

“He’s absolutely right!” says Lee. “I am crazy.” With a look of complete agreement, Lee stresses that a love for the sea is very important. During 18 months of filming, the six-person team, including the dive guides and cameramen, averaged four dives per filming day, and plunged into the sea over 600 times, which would be hard to do if you didn’t love the ocean.

Sunny Wang took as many dives in those 18 months as most divers—even frequent divers—would take in six years. Wang, who has long been working to promote marine ecological conservation, explains how he was able to complete this intensive filming task: “By doing this project with Uncle Bai I was able to help create materials for marine ecological education and also tell viewers about maritime history. The series is something very meaningful.” He emphasizes that few people know that the water at dive spots around Taiwan is very clear, with visibility at Orchid Island and Green Island being comparable to places like the Maldives.

Discovering a sleeping giant

For the eighth episode, the original plan was to film sunken aircraft from World War II in the waters off ­Penghu, but then the team discovered a shipwreck that was not on the Fisheries Agency’s register. The only parts of the vessel that remained were the bow and the stern, with the middle section collapsed. The production team dubbed this unidentified wreck the “Sleeping Giant.”

The first time they dove to the unknown shipwreck, Wang saw three round ribbontail rays swim past. “Each of them was as big as a dining table for ten people. They were particularly fat and healthy. It was really an adventure,” says Wang, who couldn’t help but shout out when he saw that undersea scene.

“There was still a lot of machinery in the ship’s hold, so we assume it sank by accident. From the depth of the incrustation, the many masts and spars of various thicknesses, and the capstans, we deduced that this ship is very old.” By reading historical information, Lee learned that in the 1890s several European freighters powered by a combination of steam and sail may have sunk around Penghu, and he began looking out for stories of other unknown shipwrecks. “This will be the theme of my next documentary.”

Whether it be the little-known Zhong Rong or the typhoon-­ravaged Fortress in Orchid Island’s Badai Bay, “The seas around Taiwan are so beautiful that it makes you want to protect them,” says Lee with feeling. This is also the message he wants his documentary to convey to audiences.

For more pictures, please click 《Beautiful Undersea Taiwan—Telling Stories Through Shipwrecks》