Beistle Coconut Bikini Top

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Indeed, some of the highest radioactive readings came from the coconuts, whose trees concentrate the radiation in the soil and groundwater. That in turn raises questions about another of the atoll’s denizens — the platter-sized coconut crab, which feasts on the fruit.

Using the navigation device, they then boated around the perimeter of the missing coral to estimate how much mass had been hurled heavenward. “It’s equivalent to 216 Empire State Buildings being blown into the sky,” Palumbi says. “These tests are the most violent thing we’ve ever done to the ocean.” Given their short life spans and their mobility, the hearty fish were comparatively easy to understand. But the corals look like they have been growing in place for 50-some years. How they emerged from such toxic beginnings is a question Palumbi and doctoral student Elora López hope to illuminate using the genomes of samples they took from Bikini. It’s an area of research López says has received scant attention.It took a moment to realize the alarm wasn’t malfunctioning. The navigation system was simply relying on maps that haven’t been redrawn since before 1954, when a bomb 1,000 times more powerful than the one that dropped on Hiroshima vaporized three islands in the lagoon, including the one where the expedition crew was. Planted in the ’60s as part of the atoll’s recovery, they stand in mechanically precise rows with the exactness of soldiers in formation, totally unlike the randomness of trees on a normal Pacific atoll. “There’s a grid of them in every direction, so you know you’re in a very, very strange landscape,” Palumbi says.

The figurative sense of "shattering or devastating thing or event" is attested by 1859. In reference to a pretty woman "of startling vitality or physique" [OED], especially a blonde, it is attested by 1942. "Bombshell" as title of a movie starring blond U.S. actress Jean Harlow (1911-1937) is from 1933; it was believed to have been loosely based on the life of screen star Clara Bow. On other islands, the crabs are a highly sought delicacy, with full-sized adults rarely seen in the daytime. On Bikini, giant coconut crabs amble about with impunity. And despite Bikini’s remove, the rest of the world wasn’t beyond the reach of the blasts, which is how Palumbi grew interested in the atoll. The explosions — along with similar tests by other nations — caused a spike in atmospheric levels of carbon 14, a radioactive isotope that’s naturally created by cosmic rays interacting with nitrogen. Like other forms of carbon, C-14 is readily absorbed by plants and, in turn, animals. Dan Griffin, a photographer on the trip, said the serenity of the place could be lulling. Fish, birds and other animals, unaccustomed to human presence, were fearless and hardly reacted to the visitors, he says. To remind themselves of the more ominous side of paradise, they had a phrase they’d bandy about: “The coconuts are radioactive.”It’s equivalent to 216 Empire State Buildings being blown into the sky. These tests are the most violent thing we’ve ever done to the ocean.’ Every human on Earth had twice as much radioactive C-14 after those tests as before,” Palumbi says. It’s tempting to draw reassuring lessons from the atoll’s recovery. The research, López says, provides at least preliminary evidence that even if you destroy an ecosystem, it can heal with time — and with freedom from human interference. Ironically, Bikini reefs look better than those in many places she’s dived. At one point, Palumbi was boating around Bravo Crater, a mile-wide scar blasted into the lagoon by the most potent U.S. bomb ever detonated, when the navigation system began screaming a warning. The device thought they had run aground. The boat, Palumbi says, was in 160 feet of water.

Yet despite their radioactive diet, the crabs suffer no obvious ill effects. Palumbi and López are sequencing their genomes for comparison against samples from American Samoa and from Bikini before the nuclear testing began. “The question is, what is it doing to them?” Palumbi says. “We don’t have any idea. The way to get into the heart of it is to look at the DNA.” One of the guys working on the boat we were living on was of Bikinian descent,” López says. “Talking to him put in perspective what his family went through and how weird it is now to make a living off bringing scientists and tourists to the islands when his own family can’t live there.” We found, much to our surprise, not just scattered corals, but very abundant, big healthy coral communities — corals larger than cars scattered about the edges of a hydrogen bomb crater,” he says. “You’re kind of looking at that and thinking, ‘Well, that’s strange.’ Planted in the ’60s as part of the atoll’s recovery, they stand in mechanically precise rows with the exactness of soldiers in formation, totally unlike the randomness of trees on a normal Pacific atoll.

WEDDINGS

It’s a promise that remains unfulfilled today. Normal life on the atoll is impossible, because the groundwater is contaminated. No one lives there apart from a half-dozen custodians who tend a small ghost village. All food and water must be imported. The research, Palumbi says, could eventually have ramifications not just for understanding how corals tightly manage their genes, but for advancing therapeutic applications to prevent cancers and other mutations in humans.