Sea Girt Wreck Night Dive 8/17/11

Tina & I after our 1st dive together in over 20 years!

 Just a day ago, my friend, Tina Held invited me to go out on a night dive with some of her friends.  Therefore,  this was completely a last minute decision for me and it ended up being a great night so I am glad I went along.  This dive is sort of part of a 20 year twist of fate story that I had mentioned in a prior post about artifacts that we all obtained about 20 years ago on the Sea Girt Clammer off of Atlantic City (See the Old Dive Logs post 2/6/11).  All those years ago I met Tina Held, out on a dive boat.  At the time she was still in college and I was a college graduate at my first "real" job.  One particular day we ended up out on Bob Meimbrese's boat together as we dove the Sea Girt Clammer which had recently sunk.  We all came up with artifacts including portholes, brass horns, cage lights, running lights and Tina got the best artifact of all of us...the binacle. At the time, I never told her, but I was so jealous...to this day I have never found an artifact as beautiful as her binacle.  It was a day that neither Tina nor I ever forgot.  She went on with her life as did I.  Many years went by and I always wondered what happened to her because I never saw her out diving.  Well this is where the twist of fate comes in...I was at back to school night last fall for my daughter whom goes to a marine and environmental technical high school when I saw Tina.  We were staring at each other trying to figure out if we knew each other.  Finally, when the crowd cleared I approached her and said you look so familiar, do we know each other.  She said she was thinking the same thing..now mind you its been 20 years since we saw each other and we both look very different.  Finally she asked if I dive and then we figured out that yes we know each other through diving and she immediately brought up that day we dove together on the Sea Girt Clammer.  Talk about a small world.  It turns out that Tina, is a teacher at the school my daughter goes to.  She has continued to dive in NJ all these years but our paths never crossed.  So here we are today, our first time diving together after all these years.  We actually both want to dive the Sea Girt Clammer together again but, thus far, our schedules have not permitted that to take place but it will someday soon, I hope.

Both Tina & I were so excited to finally dive together again, we had been talking about diving together ever since we reconnected.  Our destination tonight was the SS Mohawk since, her friends did a night dive there about a week ago and did well with fish and lobsters.  We were underway by 6pm on a private boat and it was turning out to be a beautiful evening to be out in the ocean.  Once we arrived at the Mohawk, there was another dive boat already anchored on it.  Given the wind direction and the fact that the dive boat was anchored in the center of the wreck prohibiting us from sharing the wreck, we had to move on to Plan B.  Capt. Gerard evaluated our options and we headed over to the Sea Girt Wreck.  Both Tina and I said this is too weird that after all these years we end up diving together on another wreck also called the Sea Girt.  Kind of eerie we thought but, it goes along with our crazy twist of fate so, we'll go along with it.  The Sea Girt Wreck is and unknown schooner barge in about 81' of water and was named due to its location off of the town "Sea Girt".  It has low lying wooden walls that is awesome for lobsters and jona crabs.  There a two small boilers and a large chain pile.

Our first dive took place just as the sun was setting at about 7:45pm.  Tina and I splashed to pea soup visibility that opened up once we were on the bottom to about 15'.  I ran the wreck reel and we swam along one of the wooden walls collecting lobsters and crabs.  There were tons of skates with their big eyes glowing at you plus lots of flounder.  We swam for a long time and finally hit the chain pile and winch.  There were large lobsters under the chain pile and Tina was trying to figure out how to get to them.  I focused on the conger eels that were out of their holes swimming all around.  Their coloring seemed so different at night.  I actually saw a skate try to  attack and eat one conger eel that dared to enter his path.  The conger naturally got away unscathed.  This wreck was teaming with life and made for an exciting dive.  We spent about 30 minutes on the bottom and headed up into the glowing illuminesence.  It was an awesome dive!!!  I actually was planning on doing only one dive but, I loved it so much I decided to do a second dive.  During the surface interval we had the music blasting and just enjoyed being out on this beautiful night. These guys are lots of fun to dive with.  At one point I looked at the horizon and this huge Red moon was rising...it was a spectacular site. 

Our second dive was at 9:45 pm and it was dark.  The visibility wasn't as great as on the first dive but we ran a reel again and still managed to find out way.  There were small lobsters everywhere walking about and for some reason just tons of skates and flounder.  One flounder we came upon at the end of our dive was enormous...we should have actually scooped him into our bug bag but, we let him live.  During this dive there were eel puts out feeding and their heads would poke at the wreck for food and their body and tail would rise up perpendicular to the bottom.  They had a neon blue color to them and it was wild to see. The other divers spoke of the squid stacked along the wreck but, I did not notice any.  There was large sea bass all over, I guess the big guys come out of hiding at night.  Since it was even later at night for this dive it seems that there was even more life on the wreck, it was like every little think was moving.

One thing that both Tina and I have in common is a strong intellect and also incredible passions for diving North Atlantic Wrecks. Tina still dives "old school" and I have modified my diving techniques a little with the times.  In the end..we both have been diving a real long time and it felt great to be out diving together again.  We are planning on diving with some other old friends from the 1990's and are both looking forward to that. I am also still hopeful that we will dive together again on the Sea Girt Clammer out of Atlantic City this season..

A special thanks to Capt. Gerard, Frank, Scott and Al for such and enjoyable night even though I didn't get home till 2am.  It was fun...See Gerard I didn't mention any of the crazy things that went on during our Rage Night Diving Adventure!!!