Coral Reef Travel

My very first ocean dive was off New Jersey – I forget exactly which exit. I do remember the experience vividly. The boat was an old, deep-sea fishing charter converted to handle divers by the addition of a rinse bucket that smelled strongly of squid. We chugged out of Barnegat Inlet, a bunch of guys from Philly, New York and Jersey with names like Porthole Pete, K-Valve Vito and Two-Finger Franny, the lousy lobster hunter. It was the first time I’d seen anyone use a dry suit, double tank rig or a pony bottle. The BCs were all horsecollars and the gear was either black or rust brown from the assortment of chisels, sledgehammers and hacksaws that hung from belts and D-rings.

Few things about diving New Jersey and New York have changed. Thankfully, dive boats are now designed for that purpose, and they carry safety equipment instead of bait. There are more women and video divers aboard, but it’s still the bug and lug crowd, seeking claws for the kettle and metal for the mantel that fill the boats week after week.

“I’ve done up to 15 dives to recover a single porthole,” confesses Dan Berg, author of Wreck Valley II and producer of videos and a CD-ROM on wreck diving in these waters. “Sometimes you’ll work an artifact over a series of trips and then another diver pops the last bolt and gets it. It’s all part of the game.”

Are You Ready For This?

What’s not a game is the diving itself. It’s deeper (averaging 80 to 90 feet), darker (vis varies from the other side of your mask to 60-plus) and colder (50 degrees) than what most divers are used to. Most wrecks up here were sent to the bottom by storms, collisions or Germans – real wrecks with real ghosts. They’re not “diver-safe,” EPA-inspected or mother- approved. A few of the favorites:

USS San Diego

This 504-foot-long armored cruiser sailed as part of Teddy Roosevelt’s Great White Fleet of 1907. In World War I she was our Pacific Fleet flagship before being ordered into the North Atlantic to help bully Allied shipping through lurking gangs of U-boats. The subs proved no match for the cruiser’s 36 guns, but in July of 1918 she hit a floating mine that ripped through her hull and blew her magazine and a boiler. Rolling and sinking in less than 30 minutes, San Diego was the only major warship we lost in that war.

She now rests upside down in 110 feet of water in the New York Bight. Charter boats anchor near the stern where divers can first touch the hull at 70 feet. Sunlight pours through large openings and the huge gash in the ship’s starboard hull provides easy penetration. Down in the sand, the San Diego‘s big guns still jut out from under the wreck, defending the legions of lobsters and squadrons of fish now manning the ship.

Oregon

Many local divers consider the remains of this Cunard liner the very best of the New York Bight wrecks. Steam-powered and fully sail-rigged, the 518-foot Oregon was fast for her time and set an Atlantic crossing record in 1883 – three years before her scandalous demise. It was a clear March night and Captain “OK, I’m Up” Cottlier was asleep in his cabin as the Oregon drove through calm water just five miles off Fire Island, N.Y. At 4:30 a.m., the liner collided with a smaller schooner. Eight hours later she sat lower in the water – 125 feet lower. The captain lost no passengers but a lot of face. And his job.

Everything about this wreck is big. Oregon‘s 13,000-horsepower engine towers over the site and is large enough for divers to penetrate. Lobsters up to 20 pounds (claws big enough to feed your neighborhood) are regularly wrestled from the wreck. “It’s a great site for everyone from new wreck divers to the para-professional,” says Steve Bielenda, owner of the charter boat Wahoo.

The only thing on the Oregon more abundant than divers is marine life. Anemones and sea stars dot the deck while cod, ling and blackfish (sea bass with collagen injections) fill first, second and steerage classes.

RC Mohawk

RC stands for Revenue Cutter, and in October of 1917 this sleek 205-foot ship was on wartime duty when a collision with a British tanker almost cutter in half. Rudely dunked by an ally, the Mohawk would not really hit bottom until years later when New York City decided to use the wreck site 12 miles off Sandy Hook, N.J., to dump up to six million tons of “sewage sludge” a year. The Atlantic latrine was Johnny-on-the-spot up until 1992 when NYC took its last offshore dump.

Conditions around the wreck had always been described as “crappy” with single-digit vis and sparse, nauseated marine life. With the cessation of sewage and the natural flushing action of ocean currents, the bottom is turning back from unspeakable, silty black to its natural grayish-white. A 100-foot dive, the cutter’s bow, stern, engine and boilers still stand proud, providing diveable structure.

“It’s amazing,” says Bielenda, who has been diving these waters for 37 years. “Now there’s clean, clear water out there with up to 30 feet of visibility. The marine life has come back and we finally get to see a great wreck loaded with beautiful artifacts like china engraved with the ship’s blue emblem … but I still wouldn’t eat the lobster.”

Varanger

This 470-foot Norwegian tanker was transporting oil to New York in January of 1942 when the U-130 set upon her. The third torpedo to hit the big ship found the engine room and, when the boiler blew, Varanger went straight to the bottom. All 40 crewmen escaped but were so fondued in fuel oil that they had to be given kerosene baths.

Varanger, well known to South Jersey sportfishermen as the “28 Mile Wreck,” is a migratory waypoint for tuna, marlin, bluefish, blue sharks and makos big enough to carry cargo. It’s also on the must-see list for wreck divers. “Varanger is the most visually spectacular wreck off the Jersey coast,” says Gene Peterson of Atlantic Divers, who has made more than 4,000 wreck dives out here. “Visibility is predictably excellent – 40 to over 100 feet – and there are three big, intact sections with structure rising more than 30 feet off the bottom,” says Peterson. The coolest penetration starts at 120 feet where you can swim down a stairwell from the bridge to the engine room, then exit the hull through a torpedo hole at 150.

R.P. Resor

The crew of the U-578 deceived lookouts on this American tanker by showing a pattern of running lights like a fishing boat. The sub was able to close to point- blank range before firing torpedoes. Only two of Resor‘s 50 crew survived the attack, and the ship wallowed for two days before sinking with 80,000 barrels of burning oil as its pyre.

The stern of the 435-foot Resor remains mostly intact and makes for the best dive. At 110 feet you swim past the stack (it’s draped in fishing nets) to the aft gun aimed down to the sand at 130. There is easy, open access to the engine room, and divers penetrating the wide interior passageways emerge with monster lobster every season. Artifact hunters are still bringing up portholes and gauges from the wreck, and the collapsed bridge has yet to yield any of the navigation equipment. Spearfishermen also love the Resor for the big cod and pollack that saturate the wreckage.

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