Dive Report: Lowrance Sunday February 27, 2000 Miss Conduct By: Mike Rodriguez Two divers dove the Lowrance this afternoon on the Miss Conduct out of Hillsboro inlet. I've never been diving on this boat before and was looking forward to checking it out. The Miss Conduct is a small, fast boat and can carry four tech divers comfortably. We arrived about 30 minutes before departure time, loaded the boat and headed out. The ride to the Lowrance on this fast boat took about 15 minutes once we left the inlet. At the site we found a light north current. It was sunny, the air temperature was about 78F and the water was about 75F. Visibility turned out to be around 60 feet on the bottom. I was diving 19/38/43 with 50% and 100% for deco. The Miss Conduct doesn't have a walk-through transom, so the procedure is to sit on the transom and the captain brings all your gear, including doubles, and helps you don it. I wasn't sure how well this would work, but I was surprised at how easily I was able to get into my gear. Once my buddy and I were ready, the captain set us up and we jumped in. About a minute later we were in-sight of the sand. I looked around for fish or the dark shadow of the wreck and spotted it north of us. The drop was slightly too far south, but even if we'd been unable to see the wreck, the current would have taken us there in a few minutes. Rather than wait for the light current, my buddy and I swam the short distance to the ship and tied in on the starboard side by the wheelhouse. We swam around the front of the wheelhouse to the port side of the ship, then I dropped to the sand at 210 feet and swam back to the rudder which is about the size of a house! I stayed there for a few minutes looking up at this enormous ship, then I swam toward the bow along the sand on the port side until I came to one of the holes left from the scuttling. I swam into the engine room through the hole and my buddy followed. The engine room on this ship is huge. It has several levels and is about three stories from bottom to top. It would take a dozen dives in there to explore everything. We spent about eight minutes looking around on each level, then we exited through a room on the upper level. We were now back in front of the wheelhouse, so we dropped into one of the cargo holds and continued toward the bow. The visibility was good; we could see a large area of the ship all the time. At the forward end of the hold, we entered a fairly open room then exited on the other side and entered another hold. I noticed there weren't many big fish around. This wreck never seems to have a lot of big sea life on it for some reason. It's curious; it would seem such a big artificial reef would be teeming with life, but it never has been when I visit here. In contrast to the overwhelming abundance of life I saw on the Northern Light yesterday, the Lowrance almost seemed dead. As we continued our swim toward the bow, we approached an opening into a dark room with a lot of inviting passages. Unfortunately, by this time we had only about 10 minutes of bottom-time left, and I didn't want to go in only to have to turn around a few minutes later. I made a mental note of the location so I could return and explore here on my next visit, then continued toward the bow. As we reached the bow of the ship, I hovered against the light current looking at a small cloud of fish swimming around, then I clipped off my light handle and headed back as my bottom-time ran out. To save time, I pulled myself along the starboard side of the ship at deck-level. As I did this, I was careful to look where I was placing my hands; on a dive a few months ago, I almost grabbed a scorpion-fish while pulling myself along exactly like I was doing on this dive. About half-way back to the floatline I spotted a school of tiny fish swimming around like a flock of birds. I remember seeing this same school in this same location a few months back when I was last diving this wreck. On that trip I spent about half the dive just watching these fish. Today, however, I was out of time and could only glance at them as I swam by on my way to the line. As I reached the float-line, my buddy unwrapped it. It snagged around a sea-fan growing on the side of the ship. While unsnagging it, I accidentally damaged the sea-fan and it came off the wreck and fell to the sand. I felt horrible that I'd killed it. I consoled myself with the thought that it exists only because humans put the ship there in the first place, but that did little to make me feel better. I'll have to be more careful in the future. My buddy and I followed the line up and began deco. Out of boredom, I started playing with the floatline. I pulled it up from the bottom and used it to gauge visibility. The line consisted of 100-foot lengths snapped together, so by pulling the line up to one of the snaps and letting it go again, I could estimate how far down the snap went before I lost sight of it. While horizontal visibility was about 60 feet, the vertical visibility, which is usually better, was closer to 90 feet. After we finished deco, we surfaced and removed our gear. I'd made a gear line with several clips earlier that day so I could clip off my stages and light underwater, then have the captain pull everything up on the boat. I did this to minimize the chance that I'd lose gear if it slipped while handing it up. The gear line worked well. By the time I surfaced, my two deco bottles and my dive light were all hanging about 15 feet below the boat. I nervously watched about $1500 worth of my gear hanging on the line and hoped I'd correctly tied the bowline knots that were holding the clips. I was relieved when the captain lifted the whole lot out of the water and onto the deck of the boat. I passed my doubles over to the captain who lifted them aboard, then I climbed in. We were back at the inlet about 15 minutes later. I had a great time on this dive, and I like the way the boat worked out. The Lowrance is always a fun dive and as many times as I've been there, I still discover new rooms and passages every time I return. I'm looking forward to my next trip there!