Dive Report: Pappa's Wreck Sunday September 19, 1999 Tonto By: Mike Rodriguez Five of us dove the Pappa's Wreck this Sunday. A sixth diver couldn't make it due to car-trouble. With all the rain we had Saturday, I was expecting more bad weather Sunday, but the weather turned out alright. The seas were running about three feet with occasional fours. It was cloudy with a light wind; the air was warm. Everyone was ready on the boat by 1:30pm, and we headed out. The Pappa's Wreck is south of the Hillsboro inlet. It took a while to get there since the current was working against us the whole time and the boat we were on wasn't especially fast. Eventually, we reached the site and found greenish water... a bad omen since this usually means poor viz. Nobody on the boat realized at the time how bad it really was! We dropped a grapple hook on ~600 of line and trolled over the wreck. It took several passes, but eventually, we snagged it. That was when we realized that the current ripping past the large float-ball was at least two knots plus; GPS read 2.5 to three knots with the boat in neutral. Some of that may have been wind-effect, but I don't think so. We decided the current was too strong to descend on the line, so the captain took us almost a tenth of a mile up-stream (south) and we jumped. Mark Zurl and I went in first followed immediately by Bob Sheridan and John Spanos. The moment I hit the water, I knew this was going to be a strange dive. I could see the bottom timer on my wrist, but not much beyond that. Well, I'm exaggerating a little, but the viz at the surface was no more than 10 feet. It improved a bit at about 25 feet, but not by much. At about 30 feet, I rolled over to make sure my buddy was still with me. I could make out his silhouette against the daylight, so I rolled back and continued the rapid descent. "OK", I thought, "We're going to have bad viz; we'll deal with it." Well, that wasn't the end of it. At about 100 feet, the usual way the water fades below you to a blue-green-gray at the limits of visibility began to change into blue-green-BLACK! It looked almost like it does when you're descending on a wreck and the wreck just barely enters the limit of visibility; there seems to be a darkish thing below with no distinct shape. Well, since I was only at 100 feet at this point, and the wreck sat in the sand about 180 feet further down, I knew the darkness below me couldn't be the wreck yet. A little further down to about 150 feet and it started to get DARK. Usually, I don't turn on my light on daytime dives until I get to the bottom, but since it was getting dark and I had another 130 feet to go, I decided to switch it on at this point. That turned out to have been a good idea. I later found out that one of the divers was headed down at a pretty good clip and crashed into the sand in the dark before he could slow down. Ouch! Lucky it was relatively soft sand instead of the hard deck of the ship! We continued down, and it got darker and darker. At about 200 feet, it was almost pitch black, and the visibility was still only about 15 feet. About now, I started to slow my descent so I wouldn't inadvertently crash into the wreck. That was fortunate because, even though my descent had slowed, I suddenly saw something whiz by me from below. "What the hell was THAT!", I thought, then realized it was part of the wreck. I took a deep breath, spread my arms and legs out adding drag to slow down, and I got on my inflator. I got neutral and found one of the ship's masts. The top of the mast was the thing that had zipped passed me a moment before so it was still nearby. We followed the mast down to the deck, and I rolled over to look straight up. I could just see the very faint glow of sunlight directly above; it was almost totally dark and the visibility was all of 15 feet. "GAWD!", I thought, "we must have jumped into lake Michigan by mistake!" Fortunately, I dive with a 50-watt canister-type cave light on all tech dives so I had plenty of light. It didn't do a lot of good in the awful visibility, though. I had to hold the light out to my side at arm's-length and point it forward to see. If I held it too close in-line with my line of sight, the dirty water just scattered and reflected it back at me, making it harder to see. Holding it out to the side like an offset UW photography strobe was much better. I feel so spoiled by the usual conditions off the southeast Florida coast. If the visibility is under 80 feet, I complain. :-) We were on the wreck near the bow by now and strangely enough, there was no current whatsoever. For me, one of the most interesting parts of any wreck is the prop, so I headed down to the sand and swam along the bottom toward the stern. My Uwatec read 281 FFW in the sand, so that probably makes the depth around 273 feet. In the sand by the hull I saw several of the biggest Arrow Crabs (aka Spider Crabs) I've ever seen. Those are the light brown, skinny, long-legged things with a triangular body and pointy nose. The biggest was about a foot across! Further along, I saw a conch shell with a big hermit crab inside and several more arrow crabs. The hermit was foraging for food and seemed annoyed by my light, so I left it alone and continued toward the stern. The area around the prop is interesting and complex. The prop and rudder are still there, and there's a compartment by the prop with a lot of growth in it. I shined my light in there and saw a humongous lobster staring at me. "DINNER!", I thought, and moved in to grab it. Just then, one of the other divers tugged on my fin to get my attention. He indicated that his light was not functioning, and it was too dark to read his gauges. He wanted us to stay close together so he could see in my light. I shined my light on his gauges so he could establish where his gas supply stood, got an OK, and turned back toward dinner... er uh, I mean the lobster. DAMN! It was gone! ARRRGGGGHHHH!!! Oh well, I have to go back to Pappa's Wreck in good visibility some day soon; maybe that lobster will still be there. Yeah, right. Frustrated, I headed back up toward deck-level making sure the lights-out diver was with me. On the deck, he found his buddy and he and I split up. My buddy and I continued to explore the wreck. There are several large cargo holds and numerous openings into the wreck. We elected not to go inside though; maybe on the next visit. Our 15 minutes on the bottom were over and we began our ascent in nearly complete darkness. Just below my first deep-stop I hung my light cord over my neck and shot my lift-bag. Deco went well though my buddy and I had to stay close to remain in visual contact. The water temperature during deco was about 84F with about 76F on the bottom, but it felt much colder somehow; I think this was a psychological by-product of the low visibility because I frequently dive in the ocean at this temperature and it never seems cold to me. I'm always amazed at how dependant humans are on our vision. I'm glad everyone on the dive was diving trimix with ENDs no deeper than 130. Narcosis is bad enough in perfect conditions; in gloomy darkness and poor visibility, it's that much worse. Deco went as planned and everyone was back on the boat a while later. Mark and I never did see the down-line and it turned out that nobody had released it. We drifted well north of the Hillsboro inlet during deco, so we had a long ride back to the float line. When we got there, we snagged it and pulled it up-current to try to release it from the wreck. After several unsuccessful tries, George, our divemaster, volunteered to go down and get it. He hadn't been in the water yet and was the logical choice since doing a second bounce dive would greatly increase the risk of DCS for the divers who'd already been down. After a dive, all divers have venus bubbles that are trapped and expelled in the pulmonary circulation. Diving again while those bubbles are present can compress them enough to allow them to pass the alveolar-capillary complex and enter the arterial circulation where they can expand again during the second ascent. If you wanted to deliberately induce DCS, doing double-bounce dives is probably the best way to achieve it. Anyway, George geared up but while he was getting ready, we managed to un-snag the hook, so he lucked-out and didn't have to get wet. The trip back was quick with the two plus knot tail-current. Everyone on the trip enjoyed the dive despite the poor conditions. We all seem to enjoy the out-of-the-ordinary, which is probably why we do these dives in the first place; and today was definitely an out-of-the-ordinary dive! While I've been deep enough in the ocean before to be in near darkness, on those dives I was expecting it. Today, the darkness was completely unexpected and I'm glad for the experience. I definitely want to come back here again when the visibility is better, though. So, I got to see the Pappa's Wreck Sunday, but only one square meter at a time.