Fuzzy blocks

Got out to the "Granite wreck" today on the Independence II with the group from the Diversion dive club. This is one of the many nameless faces littering the sea bed off New Jersey. This particular wreck in 120 feet of water gets its name from the large stone blocks scattered about the site (that may or may not be granite), and is likely the remains of a wooden barge. It is known among the hunting crowd as a particularly good lobstering wreck due to the many nooks and crannies in between ribs available for these sea roaches to hide in.

The layout is pretty simple and consists of a continuous keel with ribs, a small donkey boiler, and a large chain pile at one end. Today we were tied into the donkey boiler and the visibility was good enough (about 25 feet) to spot the "granite" blocks in the distance from the anchor line which gave the feeling that you were descending into an underwater Stonehenge. The temperature was still a nippy 48F on the bottom, and sitting in place messing with the tripod made me feel it. A picture is worth a 1000 words so I am going to shut up and put up 4k. Gotta love Jersey diving.

Exposed tubes of broken down donkey boiler

Fuzzy block

Chain pile

Bidevind 17-Aug-2008

Sunday found the Independence II tied into the stern section of the Bidevind, over 60 miles from Manasquan Inlet. This large freighter was a victim of U-752 in the second World War. Really the only word that comes to mind to describe this dive is awesome. This huge wreck sits in 190 fsw on a white sandy bottom, and generally has (as we did today) the warm clear Gulf Stream waters lingering overhead making for a relaxing decompression. This was my first time on this wreck and did a nice long swim. The temperature was 48F at depth with the visibility 50 feet or better but with lots of "snot" in the water that pretty much killed my pictures. That, plus the fact that I was too busy taking it all in to mess much with the camera.

The wreck sits on it's side and is mostly collapsed but has sections that rise 30 feet of more off the bottom. With the good visibility it truly was an impressive sight. I started my dive swimming forward along the keel and noted several openings offering penetration opportunities. I rounded the wreck at a break and found myself overlooking a huge debris field that I'm guessing was the remains of the superstructure. I spent some time poking around and it didn't take long to locate a compete porthole with intact glass. It was covered by a couple beams and would require more work than I was interested on this dive so I gave it a quick shake test, snapped a picture, noted it's location for a future trip and moved on.

As I began my trip back aft I could spot Capt Dan a good ways in the distance and watched him disappear into the wreck. I still had some bottom time left as I passed the anchor line and proceeded all the way aft to the prop which is partially buried in the sand but still a pretty sight. There was a lonely bollard sitting upright in the sand off the wreck and for some reason it seamed almost surreal to see this part of a once great ship completely out of place in a vast landscape of sand.

At the end of the day I did a bounce to pull the hook and what should have been a mundane 20 minute routine, turned into more excitement than I had anticipated. On the bottom, one of my cells was reading lower than the other and I suspected it was bad. Well, back at 20 feet I was playing with my handsets when I caught out of the corner of my eye a HUGE tail and about 8 feet ahead of that a HUGE dorsal fin swimming off into the distance. The big fish must have swam right past me when I was fooling around and was at least 15 feet long. I think it was a basking shark, but I didnt get a face shot to confirm. It was definitely an exciting way to end one of my best dive trips this season.

There were TONS of cunners swarming the top of the wreck

Do you see what I see ;-)

Not a very good picture but Capt Dan gives a good sense of scale of how big the wreck is and the visibility

Terry does his deco

So you want to be a deep sea diver?

"Dive! Dive! Dive!"

After an all night boat ride and spending some time by the bottom finder carefully picking the mark, the command to dive seemed to come pretty quickly... considering the boys were dropping down to nearly 400 fsw!

Yesterday a team of New Jersey divers on the Independence II ventured nearly 100 miles off the coast in search of long lost shipwrecks resting in deep water, hidden from daylight and human eyes for years, decades, and perhaps centuries. The bottom divers, Richie Kohler, Evan Kovacs, and Frankie Pellegrino are no strangers to deep expedition level diving and were pooling together their combined decades of experience to turn the dial on Northeast diving to 11 (yes, one louder).

I was honored to be invited along as support diver and crew on what was an incredible team effort. This is my version of how I saw things.

It was clear from the start that this was not a group of cowboys only looking for the "extreme" factor. Every detail and contingency was planned in case of emergency, and the bailout gas alone took up half the boat. The plan was to shot the wreck and live boat the entire operation to minimize stress on the divers during decompression. Three safety divers (Steve "the scab" Lombardi, Dan Martinez, and myself) were available and ready to splash at any time to ferry tanks and assist the bottom divers. Bill Trent was acting as dive marshal and would be running the show.

Capt Dan Bartone had several sets of numbers to investigate in 350-400 fsw and we spent some time checking a couple out to determine the best site to splash on. There were interesting bottom features on both numbers but the excitement mounted when a big showing came 30 feet off the bottom on the second and it was decided to hit that. After deploying the shot and nearly 500 feet of line, and checking the current, the three bottom divers splashed into a deep blue sea of anticipation.

I will leave the details of the dive to the guys who did it (hint: look for an article in a upcoming Advanced Diver Magazine), but I will say that things went without a hitch and the guys did find a wreck and had a great dive. They reported relatively warm (51F) conditions on the bottom with water 70+ near the surface. Support divers were used to swap out bottles and check on divers starting at about 120 feet. A support diver was in the water with the decompressing divers at all times from ~40 feet to the surface to monitor for any signs of oxygen toxicity. The entire team was CCR with nearly every major manufacturer represented (Evolution, Prism, Ouroboris, 2 Megs, and an Optima)

For me this was a great learning experience, and to see how expedition dives of this magnitude can be conducted safely in a dynamic environment using a team approach was eye opening. I will say that we did not find what we hoped, which means it's still out there, along with countless other lost vessels waiting to be discovered. The adventure continues, and when working with friends like these guys, I can't wait!

Many thanks to Fourth Element, TDI, and OMS for supporting this effort.

Glory days (they'll pass you by)

Twins

Got to dive the Glory wreck twice this weekend off the Tuna Seazure. This large steel wreck lies busted up in 70 feet of water 8 miles off Atlantic City and is still waiting proper identification but is thought to be the remains of the Kennebec or Lake Frampton. I was looking forward to getting some more practice with the camera and tripod on something shallow where I'd have plenty of time to mess around. Saturday morning seemed to roll in way too early and with the lack of caffeine I thought I had woke up on the Mars when my handset was reading PPO2s of 0.00 0.00 0.00, but oddly enough I seemed to be breathing just fine? I shook the cobwebs out of my brain and realized the battery that was reading low must have died and lost the calibration data. A quick swap (isn't that easy at 23 knots) and re-cal and I was ready to dive.

The vis on the wreck was 20 feet or so and I was having fun playing with my camera when all of a sudden it went from nice and bright (I didnt even have my light on) to dark as night. I thought "hmm that can't be good". Soon after, the rumble of engines clued in me into the fact that we might no longer be attached and sure enough the topside conditions had deteriorated as a squall moved through. The winds (I was later told) had quickly kicked up to 35-40 knots which brewed up some good 6 foot or better seas which had been enough to rip a large chunk of the wreck out. I worked my way back to the tie-in and sure enough a sizable portion of the Glory had gone missing (along with the anchor line). I cleaned up my toys and fired off a bag and managed to time my surfacing to be right after the storm passed. Just shows how quickly things can change in the North Atlantic.

Which leads us to Sunday... the plan was changed to head back to the Glory and recover some gear that got left behind. Vis was better than yesterday and closer to 30 feet. Long story short we got in some dives, recovered some of the gear, a lobster and a seabass, and left a little as an offering to Neptune, lest he smite us again.

Overall I'd rate the weekend at an A- with the only deduction being for the loss of my beloved Jotron strobe. I small price to pay for a good time. It had been way too long since I've been out with Kenny and Capt. Bill and I haven't laughed so hard in a long time.

I think this is where good lift bags go when they die?


Shaft alley

Engine and boiler (this was taken during the storm and required a 20 sec exposure)


The "crack" in the starboard boiler is actually John Perozzi's light trail over a 6 second exposure and gives a a cool effect

Stolt Dagali

Dan Martinez inside the engine room of the STOLT DAGALI

Made it out to the STOLT DAGALI today and got a chance to play with my strobes. Despite the flat seas we were forced to proceed at a reduced pace due to some heavy fog. The Independence II steamed on and we made it in decent enough time. The STOLT is one of the areas best dives and offers a little of something for everyone. Bill tied us in nice and high on the top of the wreck around 60 fsw. The first time Jersey divers on board were spoiled by the flat seas, lack of current, and great visibility which was at least 40 feet on top of the wreck but dropped down to around 15 feet or so near the bottom at 130 fsw. I headed down to the sand to play with my exposure settings before taking a tour along the sand. I gradually worked my way up and came across Danny who was entering the engine room area. Anxious to have a model and test the power of my strobes in the inky darkness of the cavernous engine room, I followed suit. I think Dan was annoyed with the blinding flashes because he didn't waste much time disappearing out of sight into a hatch going deeper into the recesses of the tanker. All too soon it was time to head outwards and upwards.

Top of the wreck looking forward

Entering the engine room

The engine

Heading up

Shedding light on the PINTA

Cargo of lumber spilling out of the PINTA broken holds


Stern of the PINTA

Sunday the NOAA guys were way off and we headed out to the PINTA on the Independence II in seas that were quite nice, proving once again that sometimes you just have to stick your nose out and sea. The PINTA was chosen as the first New Jersey dive for a group of wreck diving students who had traveled all the way from Kentucky and Louisiana to see what diving in the North Atlantic is all about. We were tied in quickly and divers were quick to splash in the off chance that the deteriorating weather forecast for the afternoon was correct. After everyone else was taken care of I hit the water with camera gear in hand to work on some new techniques. My goal is to get some wide angle shots of some deep shipwrecks using long exposures and this was my first time trying out a tripod. Descending down the line and expecting to find the bow I scratched my head as I landed in the sand next to the rudder (I guess NOAA aren't the only ones handing out bad reports). The visibility was a bright 20 feet or more. There was a decent surge on the bottom that made getting crisp focus a little tricky with longer exposures. The pictures aren't that great but I accomplished what I needed to. I was able to barely make out the lights from Richie's class doing drills in the distance and got a decent shot without them ever seeing me by using a 2 second exposure. In the image of the stern above I was out in the sand and could just make out a shadow of the wreck and had no idea the 2 divers you see had just come down so using a tripod definitely gets results that are not otherwise possible.

At the end of the day most people were able to sneak in 2 dives and we were hitting the inlet by the time the forecast caught up with reality. A great day of diving and some out of towners were wondering what was up with all the hype of deep, dark, and dangerous that is usually associated with New Jersey diving.

The now exposed engine room area


Close up of engine


Cargo

Pinta and Immaculata

Mark Clark with a nice milk bottle on the Immaculata

Got out to the Pinta (85 fsw) Saturday and the Immaculata (100fsw) today. Great dives and weather both days from the Independence II. Visibility in the 30 foot range on both wrecks with bottom temps around 46F. Blew out my wrist seal on the Pinta so just dropped into the hold and played around with some ambient light shots before calling it short. This was my first time on the Immaculata and it's a great wreck. Bugs and bottles everywhere. Lots of both came up, including some other odds and ends like a nice antique beer stein.

All Pinta pictures are at this link --> Pinta Pics
All Immaculata pictures at this link --> Immaculata Pics

The Pinta was carrying a cargo of lumber when she went down

Arriving on the Immaculata

This bottle is still there

This one is not ;-)

Remember to clean up when you're done

Departing the Immaculata


My bottles