Steel Hull Working Boat (Pt Loma — 120 fsw)

Background

Tyler had recently gone out diving with friends for his birthday. While they were heading to the dive site, he saw something on the sonar that looked interesting. After diving their original planned dive site, they jumped in to see what was at the target.

They ended up finding a steel hull boat that appears to be some kind of working boat (tug, fishing, etc.). They didn’t have any cameras so a couple days later we were out diving new airplane targets and I did a late afternoon dive on the wreck to build a photogrammetry model.

For anybody who wants to dive it, the wreck is located off Point Loma at 32 39.927 N, 117 15.896 W

The Wreck

The wreck lies in about 120 feet of water and is half buried in sand. I’m not sure if this is a seasonal condition and whether it will clear out during winter. The vessel has a steel hull and structure which is why we are pretty sure it was a working boat of some type. You can also see a structure in the middle of the large, open stern deck which looks like a platform for a crane or tying lines to or towing something.

There is also an opening in the deck on the stern port side (and probably on the starboard side but it is buried) that might have been for bait or fish but I’m not sure.

The wreck is buried in sand to the point where identifying it is going to be really hard and not worth the effort.

Below are some pictures of the key features and I even got a picture of some nice fish! Note that these pictures were all intended for the photogrammetry model so they weren’t taken with the goal of publishing them.

Photogrammetry Model

I spent about 15 minutes on the wreck taking photos for the model. That area can have limited visibility and this was one of those days where there was a lot of stuff in the water so I had to get relatively close to the subject and take more pictures. The model came out pretty good. I took 309 pictures and all of them were aligned.

Model Screenshots