Monday, September 6, 2010

Wreck Diving in San Diego

This time last year I didn't even know we had wreck dives in California, but now I know there are four wrecks within 15mins boat ride of the shore.

I believe "wreck dive" was the PADI specialty of the month this month, which explains why the shop was running a trip to SD to dive off the Yukon.

I didn't bother doing the specialty class, but I did go on the dive. Of course, this limited me to the outside of the wreck, but as I'm more into diving for the fish than anything else, that wasn't much of a limitation.

The Yukon is a great wreck to dive. 366ft long and still intact, you get to 'fly around the boat', although the affect is slightly wrong as the boat is on it's side, not upright.

For me the best thing to do was 'fly' over the top of the bridge, past the crows nesty thing and to the smoke stacks, which you can peer into (but can't see far).

The crows nest was great as it's covered in little white anemones, making it look like a snowy winter's day.

From the crows nest you really get to see the whole layout of the ship. Wish I'd done this profile for the first dive, not the third.

Next best area, probably, was my close inspection of the life boat booms, and their covering of strawberry anemones.

Anemones seem to be the main inhabitant, there are many Metridium, Sheephead and Sinorita fish. I also think I saw a leopard shark, though it may have been a big Lingcod! Thinking about it, it was stationary in the shadows of the hull, which doesn't sound very shark like. Either way, it was a really big fish. At the end of the fourth dive we saw a very big bizarre jelly, just ahead of the bow, in about 90ft of water.

Greenling on Anemone
Painted Greenling
larger

Finally it was nice to swim up to the top and the radio mast and see the stars and stripes next to the jolly roger. Wish I'd got a picture of that.

Besides the Yukon, we also did a dive on a smaller boat called the 'Ruby E', and a dive on a sunken radio tower. Tower was a bit of a jumble. I'm told it's also a nice site for looking for lobsters and eels. The Ruby was a nice little boat and totally covered in various shades of Anenome.



Photos
Photos are at http://sagar.org/slideshow

Bloosee Map

BlooSee - HMCS Yukon