Wrecks offer great places to dive and they are located all over the world. As technology evolves divers are able to go to sites much deeper than in past years however those dives involve greater risk to the diver and advanced training. In my younger days I did dive to much deeper wrecks but now I focus on shallower sites within what is referred to as “sport diver limits”. Wrecks provide areas that attract wide varieties of marine life and many of the sites have interesting stories attached to them. All of the sites I will post on this web site are wrecks that are within the sport diver limits of no more than 130 feet down. When you travel on a dive trip, the local dive shop can be the focal point to find those interesting sites that are attractions in the area. Sometimes, if you are lucky, you can find a local who will take you to a site that’s not on the tourist trail.
Airplane wreck – Mexico. As with most airplane wrecks, it’s upside down and now a home for the fish.
Airplane wreck found upside down…somewhere in the Bermuda Triangle. The story is that it’s the results of a drug smuggling operation gone wrong.
USS Bluegill WWII submarine once located in 130’ of water off Lahaina, HI. This is the view looking up at the conning tower.
Divers swimming along the deck of the USS Bluegill towards the bow. These photos were taken during the late 1970’s before the boat was relocated to very deep water out of the range of divers.
Dive conditions were a bit murky on the day of the USS Bluegill dive. This is the base of the conning tower looking forward. The boat was used as a training location for Navy divers and a popular site for recreational divers before being relocated.
This is the wreck of the “Baby Barge”, a small barge that was sunk to become a reef near Honolulu, HI. The bubbles are from the divers under and in the wreckage.
This turtle was taking a nap on the wreck of the YO-257, a Navy fueling vessel from WWII, before the divers woke him up! There were three turtles hanging around the wreck when we arrived.
These are the oil pump connections on the YO-257 used in pumping oil during the refueling process. The YO-257 was 174’ long and now home to much marine life.
The top structure of the YO-257. I love diving on wrecks, partly because of the history of the ships and partly because they attract a wide variety of marine life. The YO-257 was intentionally sunk off Honolulu to become a reef structure in 1989.
A short swim from the YO-257 lies the wreck of the San Pedro. The 111’ vessel was sunk as a reef off Honolulu, HI in 1996. Two turtle gracefully swim into the wreckage.
This is my youngest son, James, diving with me to a sunken sailboat at about 125’deep in the Caribbean. The boat was about 50’ long and was now the home of tropical fish and moray eels.
This turtle was located during a night dive on a sunken sugarcane barge that sunk off a small Caribbean island in about 30’ of water. It makes a perfect sleeping station for the turtles. They find a comfortable spot on deck to sleep and when they need air, it’s a short swim to the surface then back to the boat for more sleep. The remora on his back just tags along for the ride.
On the way to the sugarcane barge this ray went swimming by in the darkness.
