Unknown Fishing Vessel (Santa Monica Bay — 240 fsw)

Summary

I went diving with Steve Lawson & Chris Gilmartin on their boat right before the rain and storms hit Southern California. It turned out to be my last dive of 2025.

We had good weather in the morning but the swell and wind picked up later in the day. We found one new shipwreck (fishing vessel) and some kind of tower. Both are detailed below.

Dive 1 – Unknown Shipwreck

Steve got a target from Tyler a while ago and lowered a drop-cam on it and saw nets and some structure so we were pretty sure it was some kind of wreck but there is only one way to really know. We met up at the Marina del Ray boat launch and headed out while Chris & I got suited up since it wasn’t too long of a boat ride. The ocean was flat with almost no current and no wind.

We got on-site and verified that the target. It was very obvious from the sonar that it was a valid target so we dropped the anchor.

I was the first in the water and down the line. The water was a beautiful blue color with very little plankton. It takes a bit of time to get down to 240 feet without a scooter and it was pretty dark once I got to the bottom. I attached my strobe and started looking around and didn’t see any of the usual signs of a wreck. I continued to search and ran across a sonar cover:

I knew that there must be more nearby. I figured that since the current was running north-to-south that I should head north and I eventually found more debris and the wreck. I hadn’t tied a reel into the downline so I quickly returned on a 180 degree heading, found the anchor line, tied in and went back. Since we were anchored, losing the line and putting up a SMB is definitely not a good idea since there really isn’t any way for the boat to chase me down with other divers in the water.

I got back to the wreck and took a bunch of photos. I left my reel and strobe for Chris & Steve as we had pre-arranged. As I got back to the anchor line, I met Chris coming down and showed him what I had setup and the line I had run. I continued up the line and did my deco. My runtime ended up being almost 2 hours. Fiddling with running lines and searching around at 240 fsw is costly in terms of deco.

I got back on the boat and took a picture of Steve before he got in the water and Chris while he was on deco. It gives you a good sense of the water clarity and color.

I haven’t spent any time touching these up so ignore that. It is mainly just for the record and for trying to identify the wreck.

Just to give you an idea of how much of a “mess” this wreck is, here is one photo of the middle area of the ship:

There are a number of characteristics that are evident:

• It is a fishing vessel based on the nets. I don’t believe they are nets that got caught from another vessel.
• It is relatively recent based on the sonar dome and some of the electronics at the site and all the wiring
• I estimate it at about 40-45 feet long
• It looks like it was a wood and fiberglass construction
• It seems like it met a pretty violent end and is split open

We haven’t identified it (yet) but I’m pretty sure we were the first divers to ever see this wreck. Steve had it labeled as “AT Wreck” in his system and he didn’t know where that came from.

UPDATE : Tyler contacted me and gave me the history behind the name. Apparently Ashley Tindall was working on the Sand Dollar and they were out looking at targets. Tyler showed her some multi beam data and indicated it looked like a wreck to which Ashley said she didn’t believe him. He said “we’ll call it the AT wreck” for Ashley Tindall. That was 2009-ish. Well, 16-17 years we confirmed Tyler’s conjecture!

Dive 2 – Tower

After the first dive, we looked at a bunch of targets that Tyler had sent. We didn’t see anything that looked worth diving so we went back to a mark that Steve had on his system simply labeled “Tower” or something like that. I’m not sure who originally found it, but we figured we should dive it and take a look.

I was the first down the line again and the anchor line was right on the tower. There were quite a few rock fish and a nice crab nestled up near the top of the tower.

I’m not sure what kind of tower it is and it had some kind of writing that I brushed off to see if I could uncover more information. It almost looks like a tower for a diving board. The first few letters on the tower are “SPEED” so I’m wondering if it was “SPEEDO?” Or possibly it is just “SPEED” and it was some kind of tower for a raceway?

After doing some dusting off, here are the letters:

I took a few more pictures in hopes of building a rudimentary photogrammetry model which I did. Below are a few screen captures of the model. Once again, there is a lot of value in photogrammetry to really understand overall size and shape. Based on my dive and on the photos above, it is hard to really get a sense of how much the tower tapers but the model below makes it very obvious.

I think it is cool the way that the lettering came out in the model.

UPDATE: I got a message from “Walter N” to the blog with an interesting insight. This was his message:

I think Walter might be onto something with his comment.

Next Steps

We have another target close to the new ship wreck that is also in about 240 fsw. We scanned it with the sonar and there is definitely something there and it is likely another shipwreck. As soon as we get a weather window, we will make a dive and see what it is….