Rongelap has a large lagoon of about 1,000 square miles and over 61 islands around the atoll.  Since it is uninhabited it makes for a great animal habitat both on shore and in the lagoon.

Giant Clams

Several other cruisers talked about finding giant clams.  However, since we have not been in the water much we had not seen any — until we got to Rongelap.

Many locals harvest small clams to sell to aquarium providers in the States (Likiep and Ailuk). The clams are a mere 3″ long by the time they are sold.

The giant clams we encounter in Rongelap are close to 4′ long!  At Tufa Island in the southern end of Rongelap, we find these giant clams in 10-40′ of water.

The largest clam we found was about 4′ long and the the others were between 1-2.5′.  Super cool and very beautiful.  Matt was able to free dive down to the larger clams which were in 30′-40′ of water and I checked out the smaller clams (1′-2’5″) in 10-12′ of water.

Matt said the clam expelled a lot of water and tried to close when he approached the large clam. Lucky for Matt he did not put his hand inside.  In our video (which you can see on sv Sugar Shack Instagram’s page from 1.22.25) you can clearly see the clam breathing and closing.  Pretty darn cool.

We ended up finding two really large clams and maybe 4-5 smaller ones (1′-3′)

Nurse Shark

We found the perfect place to leave the dinghy during our stay at Tufa island.  One morning, we spotted a rather large nurse shark hanging out.

We drove the dinghy right behind him and anchored. I got out, walked by the shark, and took some photos.  The shark did not budge during all of this activity.  He was a good 5′ long and just enjoyed the shallow waters.

Bird Sanctuary

Birds are thriving with no humans living in 99% of the Rongelap atoll.  Very similar to Rongerik, we find dozens of bird species, nests and babies all over the northern islands. 

We encountered the strangest nest we have ever seen.  Maybe you have seen or read something about this?  We saw about a dozen birds sitting in a circle on top of broken coral and rocks – strange.  We did not approach, but as we kept walking near the waters edge the birds flew away.  To our surprise, they were each sitting on either eggs or newborn baby birds, in a circle!

There are 7 speckled eggs and 3 baby birds in the photo below – can you find them all?

The boobie babies are covered in white fuzz. They are so cute and I’d love to see if they are as soft as they look!

The white terns lay their eggs on the branches (with no nest see bottom right photo) and their babies grow on the same branch (top right photo).

Portuguese Man-O-Wars

Not so pleasant are the Portuguese man-o-wars that line the shoreline.  Not sure why but they are everywhere.  Matt makes a game out of popping them, but I just try to avoid the poisonous buggers.

Our blog posts run 4-6 weeks behind actual live events.  I wrote this blog post during the first part of January 2025.  Check out our last blog post with more of Rongelap’s beauty.