Northwest Dive Club

This looks to be the most amazing wreck dive of all time. I'm salivating just at the thought of getting to dive this thing one day!

Navy divers detonated explosives Wednesday aboard the USS Oriskany, sending the retired aircraft carrier on a 212-foot plunge to bottom of the Gulf of Mexico to create the world's largest intentional reef.

Also, diver_dave will appreciate this artificial reef being sunk in Alaska.

Wow- 212 feet to the bottom....I wonder what depth the flight deck will be at ?(assuming she landed upright) I know those carriers are ginormous.... that does sound like an incredible dive!

Club ROAD TRIP!!!!!!!





Sparky

I had been reading about this ship for some time now. They had some issues with the flight deck and some wiring contained some PCBs. And of course they had there fair share of opposition. Good to see that they finally got to sink it

Perrone Ford on Scubaboard posted this earlier- looks like he has insider information, so to speak. (There was a lot of speculation that the boat went sideways when she sank)

"She was confirmed as sitting upright (approx. 60 ft. minimum depth, which would be the top of the island) by the Navy ship Resolve towing side-scan sonar approx. two hours after the sinking. Took about :37 minuts from the time of the charges going off to the time she dissapeared, but I think the seacocks had been opened up early this morning, as she looked somewhat settled from the day before.
Went down stern first with a light list to port, but appeared to level herself (the pics I have with the bow in the air show the bow parallel to the horizon) as the stern landed, then the bow slowley submerged with lots of bubbles and foam spewing all over.
Talked to XXXXXX around 7:00 p.m, he's on one of the NOAA boats and will be on it with scooters tommorow doing the assesment.
If all is OK it will be open for diving Saturday. No moorings yet, obviously.


Looks like we're in business!"


How cool would diving an Aircraft carrier be? I would absolutely love to do this at some point.

Cool stuff,
while talking about sunken ships, has anyone from the club been diving the Truk lagoon?
There is so much stuff that it's hard to make your pick: http://www.truk-lagoon.com/ships.html

.J

ps. this is the place to dive, too bad it's far far far away...

I've read lots about Truk and recently watched a television show on it. If you guys haven't been catching the episodes of Divers Down you should check it out.

What I'd like to dive even more than Truk (or Chuuk), is Greece. They just opened it up to diving, finally. Do you know how many epic battles took place on the Aegean and the Adriatic?!!!!!

the Riace Warriors were greek statues that were only found because they were found midway to Italy (or was it Spain?).

The divers who've been diving there so far have said that every dive is a wreck dive, because you can hardly avoid finding undiscovered wreckage!

Greece was closed to diving? And where do you watch the "divers down" show? I've never heard of the two networks it shows on. Maybe they're some of the 217 channels I never watch on my cable package, I'll have to check.

The show is on The Water Channel. I had never heard of it either before watching the show. I emailed back and forth with the guy who produces it. He's a nice guy, they're going to BC to shoot next month!

Greece has been closed to diving because of all the wrecks and (presumably) treasure. I'm not sure what prompted them to open it, probably seeing how much $$ the countries next door make from the diving industry.

Greece! Hmmm.... sounds interesting!

I'm going to Israel in July of 07 and have been making plans to dive the Red Sea out of Eilat for 2 to 4 days.

I had been looking at a cruise of some of the Greek Islands, maybe I need to be planning a dive trip there as well!!

Wow, the Red Sea will be fantastic. I've always wanted to do a liveaboard down the red sea to the Sudanese waters and back again.

da_jab wrote:Cool stuff,
while talking about sunken ships, has anyone from the club been diving the Truk lagoon?
There is so much stuff that it's hard to make your pick: http://www.truk-lagoon.com/ships.html

.J

ps. this is the place to dive, too bad it's far far far away...

Well people our veryone tattoobob will be goin to chuuk in august Im sure that he will fill us in on how it was!!

Thats one hell of a wreck dive

I found this link which has some good info on the carrier Calvin posted about.


http://www.ussoriskany.com/id18.html