THE RECLAIMERS

BIKINI ATOLL

Marshall Islands

The blast flash-boiled the water in the lagoon to 55,000°C. It was left a blighted underwater wasteland, devoid of life.

The Bikini Atoll is a ring of coral islets encircling a turquoise lagoon that sits in the Pacific Ocean about 2,900km north-east of Papua New Guinea. It was used by the United States as a testing ground for nuclear weapons during the 1940s and 1950s – most notably for the Castle Bravo test in 1954, during which a thermonuclear device was detonated to produce an explosion more than 7,000 times the force of that dropped on Hiroshima.

The blast gouged a crater more than 1.5km across and 80m deep, vaporised two islets and flash-boiled the water in the lagoon, which soared to temperatures of 55,000ºC. It was left a blighted underwater wasteland, devoid of life.

But in 2008, an international team of researchers found a thriving ecosystem had formed up in the crater in the intervening years. While above ground the atoll remains eerily abandoned, its coconuts too contaminated to eat, its waters are now a whirl of kaleidoscopic life, hosting one of the most