I was planning on diving offshore this Sunday but mid-week I saw that the winds were going to pick up on Sunday so I was scrambling to find a boat to go out on Saturday which was going to be a very calm 1' or less seas. The Independence II was chartered so I was fortunate enough to get out with Divers Two on the Dina Dee. We were originally destined for the Tolten but thick fog kept us closer to the inlet and we ended up on the Vizcaya. I was quite happy with this decision since earlier this summer I dove the Cornelius Hargraves. The Hargraves, a schooner, collided with the Vizcaya on October 30, 1890 and resulted in the sinking of both vessels. The Vizcaya was a passenger freighter in which most of the passengers perished, a handful survived. Today the wreck sits in 80' of water and the engine and boilers are still sitting high off the sandy bottom. There has been a lot of china, silver dinnerware and portholes brought up from this wreck over the years. I think it is pretty cool that I was able to dive both the Cornelius Hargraves and the Vizcaya in the same year. I am sure that lots of divers do that quite often but, I do not always have the opportunity to dive often out of Barnegat Inlet.
On the way out to the Vizcaya, Gary the mate was telling me how he dove the Sea Hag the day before and had only 5' of viz. I was hoping that today would be different because I spent a few days up at the beach this past week and the water at the shore was crystal clear and very warm. Once we anchored up and Gary did not come back up right away, I knew this was a sign that the conditions were going to be much improved. I waited for the entire boat to empty into the sea prior to splashing. As soon as I splashed I see that the surface viz was still not the best but much better than in the past, a good 15'-20'. At about 47' the engine of the wreck came into view. Not bad, I'd say on the bottom we had a decent 25'-30' of viz and it was not too dark either. I started taking photos around the engine and headed off towards the stern since it appeared that most of the divers were in and around the boilers. The ribbing is still quite visible as they stand up out of the bottom and I spent sometime trying to photograph them.
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| Did not even notice this lobster until I was viewing my photos..haha! |
I then circled back towards the engine and over the large boilers towards the bow and followed along the debris field on the starboard side of the wreckage. The wreck has a lot of cold water coral so I spent some time taking macro shots of it.
I swam back to the bottom of the engine block where I found some rope that when photographed has some neat coloration to it.
Finally before surfacing I found a fish carcass inside a pipe with a bunch of fish eating it and as I was trying to photograph it I noticed a lobster hiding on the top inside of the pipe sort of smashed up on the ceiling of the pipe. I took pictures of him by shoving my camera lens inside the pipe and hoping the lobster didn't latch onto my camera. Capt. Dennis and Tricia were just descending onto the wreck came and I showed him where the lobster was. Turns out the lobster was too small to keep.
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| Fish carcass in the pipe. |
I ended up on the bottom for about 42 minutes, it was 61 degrees on the bottom and 74 degrees down to about 50'.
During my hang there were waves of Leidy's Comb jellyfish coming through so I tried to photograph them as they passed by. It is hard to get them centered in the bracket of your camera. It helped to pass the time and was fun! My jellyfish photos are not very good, I sure could use some pointers from Herb Seagars..
There were flounders, some pretty large ones and lobsters boated. We decided to stay at the Vizcaya for two dives because now that the fog lifted, there were a ton of fishing boats out. In fact it was an all day adventure of trying to keep the fishing boats away from the divers in the water.
On my way down the anchor line for my second dive I saw fishing line that was wrapped around the anchor line so I took a minute to cut the line so that other divers did not get caught in it on their way to the surface. Once on the bottom I went towards the bow again and just checked out the wreck and shot some more photos. There seemed to be fishing line all over the wreck on this dive plus it was very noisy with all the fishing boat engines on the surface. I still enjoyed my dive and was thankful that I was able to find a boat to go diving on today. My dive on Sunday was blown out so my instinct to get out today was correct! I checked my dive log and my first dive on the Vizcaya was on June 14, 1992, over 23 years ago, I am so lucky to be still able to dive after all these years!!
Next week I am headed to the Virginia which is an awesome dive, looking forward to it!
