Intro
Tyler and I had a few targets that were deep that we wanted to check out and we had a weather window recently to go look at them.
We headed out on Dec 11, 2023 on the Marissa with Lora, Chris, Captain & Scout. Tyler had a friend who had located an airplane during some survey work and we had the approximate location. We had also recently randomly seen a very big return on the way to dive what turned out to be the Brewster Buccaneer. Lora, Tyler, and I really wanted to see what this mystery object was.
We had an absolutely amazing day in terms of conditions. It was literally “Lake Pacific.” Below is a picture looking towards the end of Point Loma.
If only we could get more days like this — especially in mid-December! We were also joined by large pods of dolphins!
Target 1 – Airplane
We got to the location of the airplane and started scanning around. We had a few hits on the sidescan so we then looked at them with the sonar to see if we could see fish, structure, etc. One of them looked pretty good so I geared up and splashed. It is a LONG way to get down to 280 feet without a scooter.
The water was an awesome blue color and visibility was really nice. When I got to the bottom, as usual, the drop line was very close to the target and I saw some white metridiums about 20 feet away and swam over. It was obvious it was an airplane, but it wasn’t the one that Tyler’s friend had found. We have ROV footage of that one and it was upside down.
This target was an upright airplane but had the wings clipped and the engine was gone with a clean break. Therefore, it is likely another “dumped” airplane but there are a couple oddities. The first is that then port side landing gear is still on the airplane and is extended. The other is that quite a bit of the fuselage is there (but as debris). Below are some photos and a link to the photogrammetry model I built.
Photos
I also noticed some interesting numbering or something on the inside part of the wing that was there. Key features are show in the photos below:
Photogrammetry Model
Below is a link to the on-line photogrammetry model of the airplane along with some screen captures. You can clearly see that most of the fuselage is there in the debris field. This is very different than most dumped airplanes we find where the fuselage is usually “cut off” right around the area behind the wings.
Here is a link to the online model:
Target 2 – Rocks!?!
As mentioned, we saw this on the side scan on the way to the site that ended up being the Brewster Buccaneer. It was very large and had a long, straight edge so we were pretty excited. This is what we saw on our 22 November dive day:
As you can see in the sidescan above, there appears to be something “round” or “oval” and then something with a straight edge. I had already done one deep dive but figured after 75-90 minutes of surface interval I would take a quick look at this one and then spend some extra time on deco to help flush out the bubbles.
I got to the bottom and found … a big rock structure. 🙁
There was literally nothing else around it. It had about 8-10 feet of relief and was 20-ish feet long. I did a circle around it and snapped a few pictures just for the record.
Just because, I built a quick model based on a the few photos I shot. I didn’t plan on making a model so all the photos don’t go together but enough aligned to build something.
After diving the structure, we believe that I was on the “round” or “oval” part that showed up in the sidescan. We aren’t sure what the part that has the straight lines is. We probably won’t go back given the depths, but you never know.
