Click here for a photo of the Vanuatu post office. However, because diving requires specialized training, local dive masters often help. When it first opened, the post office trained postal clerks to scuba dive to run the undersea post. A flag flies at the surface so they know the post office is open.

The post office has a special metal device to cancel the postcards without ink, since it would smear. They must use special postcards, made of waterproof plastic and embossed with a special stamp. Next to it stands a mailbox that vacationers can swim up to and mail out their postcards. About 160 feet off the coast and 10 feet below the surface, the post office is made from a converted fiberglass water tank. Vanuatu opened its own underwater post office in May 2003. US #2863-66 – To reach most modern underwater post offices, mailers may need scuba suits. Click here for a brief video about the Susami mailbox. Every six months, the mailbox is repainted, and every year, it is replaced with an old, unused mailbox. Today, some of the cards are edible and flavored. Mailers use special waterproof cards and write their messages with oil-based paint markers. The box receives up to 1,500 pieces of mail per year. It once held the record for the deepest underwater postbox at 10 meters (about 32 feet). The small fishing town of Susami Bay, Japan, established an underwater postbox in 1999 during a fair to bring attention to the area. US #3775 – These post offices are all near seacoasts. You can view a cover sent from the post office here, which includes a cachet depicting it. I am sure that this unique contribution to science will give immeasurable pleasure to those persons who are privileged to visit the Bahamas.” Those who could make the trip flocked to the unique post office and collectors around the world ordered covers bearing the special “Sea Floor” postmark.

Roosevelt sent a response that read: “I greatly appreciate your kind thought in writing to me upon the occasion of the opening of this most unusual and interesting post office. He took the tube down to the underwater post office and sent letters to King George VI and President Franklin Roosevelt. The first two letters sent from the post office were written by the governor of the Bahamas. US #1827-30 – Williamson created his photosphere to photograph underwater scenes. The post office opened on August 16, 1939. It was a scientific expedition that drew increasing interest, leading organizers to decide to set up a post office there for publicity. In 1939, he started the Bahamas-Williamson Undersea Expedition to film underwater scenes. The Bahamas had clear waters that let the sun reach down to the seafloor to help illuminate his images.īahamas #216 – 1965 Williamson film project and undersea post office stamp. He called it the Williamson Photosphere and he set it up in the Bahamas in 1914. Williamson would lower himself in the tube to take photographs of the sea floor and its inhabitants. Williamson expanded on the idea and designed a chamber with a glass window that could be attached to the tube and lowered to the sea floor. His father had created tube that enabled communication and air flow to underwater depths of more than 200 feet. The first undersea post office was made possible by photographer John Ernest Williamson, a pioneer in undersea photography. US #893 – Alexander Graham Bell visited Williamson’s photosphere in the 1920s.

Decades later, more underwater post offices and post boxes were established in other countries, many of which are still in operation today.īahamas #242 – Surcharged Williamson film project and undersea post office stamp. It was developed by an undersea photographer and garnered significant interest from around the world. On August 16, 1939, the world’s first undersea post office opened in the Bahamas. Bahamas #264 – 1967 stamp picturing the photosphere and underwater post office.

Susami bay postbox