Coral flourishing at Bikini Atoll atomic site

Coral is again flourishing in the crater left by the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated by the United States, 54 years after the blast on Bikini Atoll, marine scientists said yesterday.

A team of research divers visited Bravo crater, ground zero for the test of a thermonuclear weapon in the remote Marshall Islands on March 1, 1954, and found large numbers of fish and coral growing, although some species appeared locally extinct. "I didn't know what to expect, some kind of moonscape perhaps. But it was incredible," Zoe Richards, from Australia's James Cook University, said about the team's trip to the atoll in the south Pacific.

"We saw communities not too far from any coral reef, with plenty of fish, corals and action going on, some really striking individual colonies," she said.