Delaware & Morania Wrecks June 25 2006

On Sunday a group of us got out on the Stingray. We had initially planned on the Stolt, but weather was gray and foreboding. Capt. Henrik decided not to go out into the shipping lanes in all that fog, which seemed a wise choice. Besides the fog and a little rain at the dock it was a beautiful day, sunny only briefly but cool and comfortable.

The Delaware is a big junk heap in 75 foot, but not without its charms. Viz was a respectable 15'-20', nothing great but very doable. Some folks got chilly in the 48 degree water, but I managed to stay warm for the entirety of my 95 minute dive. I found a nice artifact, an old brass doorknob with an ornamental escutcheon and ring. It was lying out in the open, sort of tucked into one of the boilers. I'm sure there are plenty more artifacts left for someone willing to put the time in, but I'm a little off digging of late after I saw what the silt on the Mohawk did to my gear (sticky O2 injectors are NOT cool.) There was a beautiful 3lb bug that flirted with me for twenty minutes or so, and even let me touch it, but I blew the grab. Damn! I had great respect for its hidey-hole, several interconnected 5' deep spaces in the ribs. I'll call on it next time and inquire after its health. As I often do, I trekked off into the sand to see if there was anything interesting off the wreck. It was like Moon Snail Girls Gone Wild out there, lots and lots of snail humping. I'd like to take some for scungilli salad, but call me sentimental, not under those circumstances. I'd hate to see their little slimy appendages reaching out to each other in despair as I pulled them apart.

I had never dove the Morania before, and loved it! Its an intact oil barge sitting in 75 feet, with a really funky notch in the back where a tugboat would push it. The relief is about 18 feet, with thumb-long mussels covering it. I had a very nice, albeit snug penetration into the stern, which involved knocking off quite a few mussels and entering head down. It was tight inside, and incredibly silty, but there was decent ambient light. A keeper bug winked at me from under some steel, but it was sitting in an enormous pile of silt. As careful as I was to wedge my feet up, and as much as tried not to disturb things, the viz still immediately went to near zero. So, no bug for me.

After squeezing out of the stern I swam along the bottom, looking under the hull and generally checking things out. At the starboard bow I tied my reel off to explore the sand. As always of late, dogfish swam up to and around me, staring at me with their big black eyes. There were a number of tires cast about, all of which had crabs but no lobsters. About 300 feet off the wreck I found three abandoned lobster traps. These really pissed me off, as they were covered in growth, and had obviously been down there a long time. They wind up working as fish-kill catalyst, since fish get trapped, die, and then lure in other fish to eat their remains, perpetuating the cycle. So I went on a mission of mercy, to disable the traps. The first trap I approached was packed densely with fish, and in their agitation they hurled their bodies at the sides. It sounded like rain pounding on the side of a tent. I cut free all the bungees, opened it, then cut free all the netting inside. The fish seemed to be a bit freaked out by the big black thing hovering over them and didn't want to swim out. Finally I just started pulling them out by the tail one by one, after which they would take the hint and swim off.

At this point a really obvious lightbulb went off over my head. I mean, this thing was packed with fish, and I really do like tautog, and that big one right there just looks sooo tasty. Would it be a sin to perhaps cull the herd a bit while I liberate them? Hmmmm. Perhaps I could do a riff on the US Army line in Vietnam - "In order to save the village, we had to destroy the village." Maybe I could just eat the village a little bit? Seemingly with a mind of its own, my goody bag leapt into my hands, which busily guided the tog's nose into it. And what's this? A 2# bug? Well, move over Mister Tog, it would be a crime to leave a good bug. By the end, things got a little cramped in there, with five lobsters on top of the Tog. And while my conscience entered a rather murky area, there weren't any complaints from the folks who helped me dispose of it (the spoils, not my conscience.) I did at least free the sea bass, so that counts for something, right? Provided they made it past the cordon of a dozen or so circling sharks, that is...

I had offered to pick us some mussels for Henrik, but now I had no room in my bag, so I just hoisted a big soccer-ball size clump. Thus, for the second time in three days, I came up with a full bag, and had to hand the overflow to the mate while ascending the ladder with one hand. There are much worse problems in this world.