Technical Scuba Diving
Intro The USS Anderson (DD-411) was a Sims-class destroyer. Destroyers come in different "flavors" but the design goals are generally to be fast, maneuverable, long-endurance warships designed to escort larger ships such as aircraft carriers, battleships, etc. There were only 12 Sims-class destroyer built with the first ship laid down in 1937 and the last [...]
Intro The Apogon (SS-308) seemed like a natural first post on the wrecks of Bikini Atoll after my initial overall Bikini Atoll Trip Report. I had recently dove and documented and built a photogrammetry model of another Balao-class submarine : the USS Moray which sunk during torpedo target practice in 1970 off San Clemente Island, [...]
Intro When we asked for permission / sponsorship from the Naval History & Heritage Command (NHHC) to dive the USS Moray, we indicated that our primary goal was to build a photogrammetry model. I knew it would take more than one dive to build a high-resolution model -- but I wasn't sure how many. The [...]
Intro / Background Hot on the heels of my Bikini Atoll trip, Tyler and I had a big adventure planned closer to home and this one was a long time in the making as well. A long time ago, I had read the first dive report on the USS Moray (SS-300) from 2012 and knew [...]
Intro This trip has been a long time coming. A really long time. A brief history of my journey to dive the historic wrecks in Bikini Atoll: Approx 2014/2015 : Read about the wrecks in Bikini Atoll and commit to myself to dive them Jan 2017 - Booked a trip to Bikini for Jul 2018 [...]
Background I've got a few posts about local dives that have been on hold for a while as I was preparing for and going on my trip to Bikini Atoll (more posts on that coming up)! This one is about something that is very weird that we dove as the first dive on the morning [...]
I recently gave a presentation about some of the new wrecks that Tyler Stalter and I have located and identified. I also discuss how we find them and how we identify them along with some of the tools like photogrammetry. Below is a PDF of the presentation (I've removed two slides that were animations of [...]
Background We initially were doing some "round robin" diving on targets back in late October 2022 based upon a long list of targets that Tyler had. We found an upside down aircraft that we believed to be a TBM, but we were not sure if it was a dumped airplane -- of which there are [...]
I will be presenting at the Long Beach Scuba Show about some of the new wrecks that Tyler Stalter and I have discovered and identified over the past three years in Southern California. The show is on 3-4 June (Sat / Sun) and takes place at the Long Beach Convention Center. My presentation is at [...]
Intro I first wrote about the P-38 in Torrey Pines back in mid-2020. It is a well known wreck that was discovered a number of years ago and has been deteriorating due to multiple factors. After our dive on the deeper P-38 in Solana Beach, we were headed to this wreck. Since I started building [...]