The Red Sea.
This past Saturday morning I had a great group of FSU Alumni and students on the dive boat along with my dive master, dive master candidate, and a good friend for a couple of dives. Our destinations for our two dives were the Red Sea and bridge span 14.
Once we got everyone on board and equipment assembled the Captain gave his briefing. I would like to point out as before whenever the Captain is giving a briefing we should all show respect for him or her by stopping any activity or talking so we will know what to do in case of an emergency as well as where the life jackets are and fire extinguishers are on the boat.
When the briefing was finished we left the dock for our 20 minute ride to our first wreck, the Red Sea. The Red Sea was a cargo vessel that was sunk in 75 feet just 6 miles off Panama City Beach. She’s 125 feet long with a beam width of 30 feet and if you have your wreck penetration certification she has three levels that can be dived but be careful the silt is very heavy so you will need to tie off a line as you go into her cargo holds.
The Captain brings us over the wreck amid-ships and drops the anchor on the starboard side of the wreck so when you descend you will drop off the anchor chain directly on the wreck.
They put a new state of the art bottom machine that he can side scan, and 3-D scan to overlap to give an exact picture of the wreck so he can place the anchor right where he wants. He also replaced the anchor chain with a nice stainless steel one, its much nicer to grab the smooth chain if you need to.
I was the first one in the water so I descended down and dropped to the wreck just above the front deck. We had about 30 foot visibility which is pretty standard a couple weeks after a major storm in the Gulf.
I went to the bottom to see if any Goliath grouper where present but I didn’t see any. I turned on my GoPro and started filming parts of the wreck and I did it from a stationary spot. The feeder fish where everywhere and sometimes so thick they would block out the wreck from three feet away. I slowly made my way around the wreck and as I would look into the open holes and cargo bays I noticed a lot of nice size mangrove snappers, it made me wish I had brought my pole spear.
I decided to make my way back up the anchor chain to my safety stop and then back on the boat. I was a very relaxing dive, then the other divers made their way back on the boat to switch to a fresh tank for the second dive, Bridge Span 14. That’s next weeks article.
Keep making bubbles.
– Russell Miller, NAUI instructor #59999