Tag: wreck diving
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Getting Riggy on Eureka
The silence of my rebreather allows me to hear every hydraulic hiss, every crash as steel collides with steel, the sounds of industry happening above the surface. I catch myself wondering whether the fish are anchovy or sardine, realizing that I have been contemplating the question for several minutes, lazily resolving the taxonomical conundrum with…
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Obligatory End-of-Year Post (A Summary of 2013)
Because (a) It’s pretty much in the rules of blogging to make an end-of-year summary post, and (b) 2013 was full of great diving and photo ops. From technical wrecks to nudibranchs: a photographic summary of my underwater exploits in 2013.
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Diving the UB-88 Submarine Wreck
Part of the allure of technical wreck diving is getting the opportunity to experience bits of history that very few others, not even many other divers, get to experience. This is why when I received an invitation to go dive the UB-88, a German WWI U-boat off San Pedro, California, and the only U-boat wreck…
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Wednesday roundup: Feliz Nudidad! Benthic ecology on lost shipping containers!
An animated GIF of a nudibranch in the snow might be the funniest thing ever.
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The Ruby E: One of San Diego’s Most Richly Historied Shipwrecks
The Ruby E, one of San Diego’s premiere wrecks for divers, has a rich and colorful history. Although initially commissioned to intercept Prohibition-Era alcohol shipments on behalf of the United States Coast Guard, she also assisted in Bering Sea patrols, thwarted Japanese task forces in the Aleutian Islands during WWII, and worked as a commercial…
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I saw things in the Sea of Cortez that were not nudibranchs
Despite troublesome conditions on our Sea of Cortez diving trip (on the liveaboard dive boat Nautilus Explorer), we did manage a few days where the visibility was good enough to leave the macro lens in the cabin and get underwater for some wide-angle action. In fact, the water was so clear and beautiful on our first…
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Diving the Hogan Wreck
USS Hogan was a Wickes-class destroyer commissioned in 1919. During WWII, she served as a minesweeper and coastal convoy ship. In November of 1945, she was used as a target ship for firing tests and sank. Located south of the Point Loma peninsula on the US-Mexican border, the Hogan wreck rests just far enough from the…
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Diving the Palawan Wreck
Palawan, formerly a Liberty Ship, is an artificial reef off Huntington Beach, California. What is a Liberty Ship? Liberty Ships were WWII-era cargo carriers designed to be built cheaply and quickly, and were mass-produced by the thousands in the later years of the war. These steel-hulled ships were 441 feet long and 56 feet…
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Tech Diving Catalina Island and the California Oil Rigs
Southern California Tech Diving with Ocean Research Group This past weekend, I attended my first Ocean Research Group technical dive trip on the Sand Dollar out to Catalina Island, California. As a fledgling SoCal tech diver, it was pretty cool to do some “big kid” deep dives under the guidance of experienced divers and instructors. I’m also…
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Wreck Diving North Carolina’s Graveyard of the Atlantic
After our ill-fated attempt to dive the caves of north Florida, we needed a Plan B if we were to salvage our trip. Armed with cell phones and hope, the three of us piled into our go-kart of a rental car and started the nine-hour drive north, making calls to dive shops and charter boats…