How quiet have things gotten in western Iraq, once known as the "Wild, Wild West" and one of the most violent regions of the country?

Some Hawai'i Marines have hung out the "gone fishin' " sign in the Fallujah area where they are based, and report life there is pretty boring.

Camp Fallujah, once bustling with about 20,000 service members in the main camp and at satellite posts, is about to be closed.

Marines also are being moved out of the cities and are being consolidated back at remaining bases.

If it sounds like the Marines are beginning to close up shop, they are.

Counting the so-called "surge forces" that were added to Iraq in 2007, U.S. maneuver battalions in western Iraq have been reduced by half, said Maj. Gen. Martin Post, the deputy commanding general for Multinational Force-West.

From 34,000 U.S. troops in February, the American contingent has dropped to about 26,000, Post said in a teleconference briefing with reporters recently.

The disparity in figures between maneuver battalions being halved and the less-than-50-percent drop in overall troop numbers takes into account the additional support forces that are based in the region.

Several battalions have gone home without being replaced. The most recent is the 2nd Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment out of Camp Lejeune, N.C.

Approximately 1,000 Marines with the 1st Battalion, 3rd Marines at Kane'ohe Bay are several months into a seven-month deployment to the Fallujah area, including Karmah.

Hawai'i Marine battalions have been on continual rotations to Iraq, including the Haditha and Fallujah areas, since 2004.

That year, the 1st Battalion, 3rd Marines was involved in some of the heaviest fighting of the five-year-old Iraq war, conducting bloody house-to-house clearing in what became known as the "Battle of Fallujah."

In the future, Hawai'i Marine battalions may be routed to Afghanistan instead of Iraq.

In Iraq, Master Sgt. Troy Buss, 43, from Bonduel, Wis., has been getting in some fishing once a week at Camp Baharia near Fallujah.

The Hawai'i Marines in his unit have transitioned into an overwatch position as Iraqi security forces have begun to take over and conduct their own operations.

"Fishing is something to look forward to each week, and it makes time go by," Lance Cpl. Dustin Riesterer, a 21-year-old mortarman from Manitowoc, Wis., told a combat correspondent with the Marines.

Riesterer, who was deployed to the same location a year ago, said the "operational tempo" has changed dramatically in that time.

"I credit the change to the Iraqi police and Iraqi army stepping up," Riesterer said in a news story published in the Marine Corps base newspaper, the Hawai'i Marine. "It's quiet enough to have just a little time to ourselves. I didn't expect to have any leisure time. Last year operational tempo was nonstop."

Marines in Karmah say they're pretty bored.

They continue to patrol, pursue remaining insurgents and help to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure.

Staff Sgt. Mike Brown, a 27-year-old platoon commander from Jacksonville Fla., was deployed to Iraq in 2003. At the time, the Iraqi police and other security forces were pretty much nonexistent, he said in Hawai'i Marine.

"Because we were the main effort, operational tempo was nonstop," he said. "At least one long-range, short-range patrol a day."

The Marines got plenty of action then. Not now.

"Every day, you were seeing something," Brown said of the earlier deployment. "If you weren't getting shot at, you were getting blown up."

IN BRIEF

PILE-DRIVING PART OF NAVY PROJECT

Construction noise from pile-driving may be heard along the waterfront areas of Pearl Harbor through mid-December as part of work on a new $84 million submarine Magnetic Silencing Facility at Beckoning Point, near the entrance to Middle Loch, the Navy said.

Naval Facilities Engineering Command Hawai'i said the test pile-driving of 12 piles is part of a Navy construction project awarded in August.

The testing will help determine ground conditions and future pile-driving actions for the submarine magnetic silencing project.

The project, awarded to Watts-Healy Tibbitts (Joint Venture), is expected to be completed in October 2010.

The new drive-in facility would measure a submarine's magnetic signature and adjust it to help it avoid detection by enemy sensors and underwater mines.

Once completed, it would be the only magnetic silencing facility in the Pacific capable of treating all Navy submarines, including the new Virginia class, and would allow the closing of other, less-capable facilities at San Diego and in Bangor, Wash.

The current magnetic silencing facility at Pearl Harbor handles only Los Angeles-class attack submarines, and none of the current Pacific facilities can handle the newer Virginia- and Seawolf- class attack submarines.

Reach William Cole at wcole@honoluluadvertiser.com.