The marine forecast did not promising for this weekend. Saturday was to have 3 to 5 foot seas, mostly in a swell with light winds and Sunday was a south wind at 5 to 10 knots and 2 to 4 foot seas. My dive buddy, Beth Dalzell and her husband, Wes, had just returned from Florida on Friday and my guess was that Sunday might be better than Saturday. My wife, Veronica, and I were out walking around the reservoir behind our home and ran into our good friend, Charlie Raspantini. He told us that he was meeting his son to go fishing. Veronica asked him to call us on his cell and let us know how the ocean was. He said he would and we finished our walk and were doing chores around the house when the phone rang. It was Charlie and he said that ocean wasn’t too bad. I kind of hemmed and hawed about going but Veronica finally said that we should really consider it because it was sunny and there wasn’t much wind. We called Beth and Wes and agreed to meet at the boat at 11:30 am – a very late departure time for us.
We departed Manasquan Inlet and I steered a course for the Sea Girt Artificial Reef off Sea Girt, New Jersey. I am on a summer long self-imposed assignment to shoot wide angle photos of artificial reef sites that I do not have in digital format. My two destinations today were the Spartan Tug and the Travis Tug. As usual, we were at the mercy of the people who were out before us. I had some contingency sites but these were two that I wanted to do.
There was a swell on the ocean but it wasn’t too uncomfortable. We had about a 3 1/2 mile trip to the Sea Girt Reef and our first stop, the Spartan. The Spartan is an 85’ long canal tugboat. It was sunk on Friday, January 31, 1986. It lies upright in 70’ of water. It was sponsored by the Spentonbush Red Star Company (Hess Oil). I originally dove the Spartan in the summer of 1986 and there was minimal growth on the tug. I dove it again a year later and it was overgrown with frilled anemones, tubularian hydroids, blue mussels and a cornucopia of marine invertebrates and fish. I really like the Spartan but I don’t get back to it very often. It isn’t a big site and experienced divers would probably lose interest in the dive after a trip around and through the tug. It is a great dive site for new divers because it looks like a ship and it is easy to navigate without getting lost.
I haven’t been on the Spartan in at least ten years or more and I was wondering how it had changed. The tug has been on the bottom for twenty-three years. It took us two tries to hook in and Beth and I started getting ready to go in. The ocean was pretty flat except for the swells. I was in the cabin putting my camera together when Veronica yelled “Ocean Sunfish”. When we originally purchased our current boat, a 33’ Wellcraft Sportbridge, I chose it because of its flybridge. I wanted to be able to find ocean sunfish and turtles when we were traveling to and from dive sites. We have had the boat for about six years and I have yet to see an ocean sunfish while on the boat. I have seen a few turtles but ocean sunfish, Mola mola, have eluded me. I have been in the water a few times with them and have photos on film but nothing on digital. When I got into the cockpit, Veronica yelled that the ocean sunfish had just breeched about twenty feet from the boat. I got there in time to see a big disturbed area of water when the breech took place. We were all in the cockpit now looking for the ocean sunfish and we saw a fin swimming away from the boat. It is easy to mistake an ocean sunfish dorsal fin for one belonging to a shark and I have jumped into the water thinking that I was going to photograph an ocean sunfish only to be surprised that it was a shark. Fortunately, the shark wants less to do with me than I do with it and I haven’t gotten close enough to a shark on the surface to get a photo. I for one was ecstatic that Veronica got to see the sunfish breech. She can’t dive anymore because she has multiple sclerosis. She only gets to see the underwater world through my photographs. She deserved that wonderful experience. I asked Veronica what the breech looked like and how far out of the water did the sunfish jump. She says it reminded her of when I told her about a baby humpback whale that I had seen breech. They kind of try to get out of the water but they only end up getting out of the water a little bit and then flopping on their side. She said the sunfish got its whole body about a foot out of the water but the diving judges would not have scored it well. What a way to start the day!
Beth and I started down the anchor line and I wasn’t sure what to expect. With the ocean swells, the bottom usually gets stirred up and visibility isn’t very good. When we reached the deck of the tug, the visibility was about fifteen feet. I thought that I could work with that and went ahead and set up my camera and twin Ikelite DS-125 strobes. I started taking photos of the bow and moved my way back to the pilot house. I was reading on Rich Galiano’s web site www.njscuba.net that the pilot house on the Spartan could be raised and lowered so that the tug could get under low bridges. It was in its lowered position when it was sent to the bottom. Beth had her underwater camera and was taking photos on the top of the deck house and I moved towards the stern of the Spartan. I noticed that there was deterioration to the metal walls on the deck house. It is understandable after all this time underwater. As I headed across the top of the deck house towards the stern, I found the weight for our marker buoy near the rear end of the deck house. I guess that we were right on with the buoy. I moved the weight off the tug into the sand so that it wouldn’t get in the way when we were retrieving our anchor.
I swam around the stern and took some photos of it before moving forward and photographing the deck house. I love to look through doorways on the deck house and see the green water in another doorway or porthole opening on the opposite side of the ship. When I capture it correctly, it is a favorite shot of Veronica’s.
I went around the tug three times and took nearly 300 images. That still boggles my mind. That’s a little more than eight rolls of film taken on a single dive. How great is that! Before I knew it it was time to head to the surface. I looked at my dive computer and noted a bottom temperature of 57° F. A little chilly but not so bad in my DUI drysuit. Beth and I moved our wreck anchor so that it would come out easily and made our way up the anchor line to the surface. It was an enjoyable dive and another addition to my wide angle summer. It was now about 2:30 pm and I hoped to add the Travis Tug to my wide angle collection.
The trip to the Travis Tug was great. The first thing that we had to do was find Veronica’s boat shoes that had fallen off the foredeck when a huge boat wake caused them to slide overboard. They are orange in color and float. I thought our chances of finding them were less than zero. Wes thought that he had a good handle on the direction that they floated in and we started our search. Wasn’t I surprised when Wes yelled, “there they are” and sure enough, the two boat shoes were floating about ten feet apart. Wonder of wonders! To add to our good fortune, the flat sea allowed us to see schools of moss bunker on the surface being herded around by bluefish (we think). The surface water boiled as the moss bunkers where herded together and the larger fish raced through the school scooping up dinner. We even saw seagulls diving into the school grabbing a meal. What a sight!
We arrived at the Travis Tug and there was a boat anchored near but not right on it. We tried to hook in three times and each time, the hook would grab and then pop loose. Finally on the fourth try we were in. Beth and I got suited up and headed for the bottom. When we arrived, we saw that we were not hooked into the tug but into some debris that may belong to the horseshoe wreck reef site that is nearby. The wreckage that we were on was really small and the visibility was not very good. We ended up making a short dive and calling it a day. The Travis Tug will have to wait until another day.
The trip back to the dock was beautiful. Being at sea, we had cool weather with low humidity. We knew that at home it wasn’t like that. We arrived at the dock at around 6:00 pm, unloaded and washed down our trusty boat and headed for home. It was the end of another great day on the ocean. When Veronica and I woke up on Sunday , we found overcast skies and a descent wind blowing. We looked at each other and smiled, knowing that we had made the right choice as to our dive day.
To see more photos from the Spartan, visit my Photo Gallery or click here.
© 2009, Herb Segars. All rights reserved.
Of all the great diving jersey has to offer,you only seem to dive the Art.Reef. The TUGS are the most boring dive there is. There is nothing there. Try diving some of the great(real) shipwrecks jersey has to offer. Diving will be much more exciting. give it a try next time you get out…..
Dan:
I am sorry that you feel the way that you do. I have been diving off the New Jersey coast for more than 30 years and I have dove on many of the great shipwrecks that are here. You may think that tugboats are boring dives but I enjoy almost all the dives off the Jersey coast. I find neat things on most dives. I am diving artificial reefs this summer as part of a self-imposed project. I intend to dive other spots before the summer is out. I hope that you have a great diving summer.
Nice pics and thanks for showing them. Once they are down for a while, many of the artificial reef wrecks are just as enjoyable and productive as the “natural” wrecks. Any day you get a nice dive in you should go home happy. ( I just got blown out 4 out of 5 days in North Carolina! )