Diving Viking Targets II (Point Loma, California — ~ 200 fsw)

As part of our search to find the Ables’ Viking, we had a bunch of targets to dive (shown in the diagram below).

On previous dives, we had identified a Wing Section (green pin in the diagram) that might be from the S-3 Viking and a debris field of a WW II Airplane (one of the orange pins) that we are trying to identify.

The two targets that I was diving today were:

• Target 1 – Interesting shape which we weren’t sure what it was and it was on the very edge of the search field but looked interesting

• Target 2 – This was close to the debris field of the airplane so we were hoping that it would be the engine which would help us identify the wreck. It was about 230 feet away from the center of the debris field and was about 5 feet across.

Dive 1

On the first dive, I got to the bottom and the downline was right next to the target.

It was a rectangular box about 4 x 2 feet and had lids and divided compartments inside. It was definitely made from aluminum. I’m guessing that it was some kind of airline container given that it was aluminum. Below is a short video of when I first got down to the target. There were a ton of fish and life on this small little object.

I used my nylon brush to scrape off some of the outside debris to see if I could find any writing or marks but couldn’t. I then opened up all the lids to see if there was anything inside.

The biggest surprise was when I opened one of the lids and a wolf eel came flying out! I didn’t get a picture but I had my GoPro running and got a short video:

Dive 2

We were really hoping that the second target was the engine for the “mystery airplane” that we had already dove and we have been struggling to identify.

As usual with Lora & Chris, the downline was literally a couple feet away from the target. When I got down, I knew immediately that it wasn’t the engine; however, I’m not even sure what it was. It was definitely man made and had a lot of growth on it, but it wasn’t readily identifiable. There was some kind of cylindrical obeject in front of the main object but I couldn’t figure out what that was either. I scraped off some growth and tried to remove it from the sand but it wouldn’t budge.

Below are some photos in case anybody is interested.

Next Steps

This is the way that wreck hunting goes.

Often times you don’t find what you are ultimately looking for but still find interesting things. We plan to go back and do more scanning with the AUV in the quadrants to the south and west of the wing that we found and we still have a couple debris fields (as noted above in the diagram) that we need to investigate at some point.