North Carolina Wreck Diving, August 2000
Author: Ilan Ben-Tov

In the weekend of the 26-27 of August I joined a group of divers to dive the North Carolina wrecks with Pelican divers During the weekend we dove in 3 off shore wrecks and in 1 in shore wreck the visibility in the offshore wrecks was medium at best and in the inshore it was bad. The marine life was awesome even thought we haven't seen the famous sand tiger sharks we saw huge shoals of fish big and small and lots of other critters.

Dive-1 26 AUG 2000

U352

A German Submarine that was sunk by the USCG cutter Icarus on May 9, 1942. She was the first German U boat casualty of the war off the NC coast and lies in 115'(38 meters) of water 28 miles from the Beaufort inlet. it lies on a sandy bottom with all her hatches open covered with Soft coral and sponges. We arrived in some what rough sea anchored escorted with a group of small dolphins (I didn't recognize the type), We went down to the wreck and swam against the current the submarine is laid down covered with small fish that gave it a dark shadow all the hatches were opened and the sub was full of small fish.

Dive-2 26 AUG 2000

AEOLUS

The USS Aeolus was sunk in August of 1988 as part of the North Carolina artificial reef program. The 408' US Navy Ocean going cable layer lies in 107'(35 meters) of water approximately 22 miles from the Beaufort inlet. When she was sunk she rested on her starboard side at 90 degrees before hurricane Fran tore her in half righting her stern and mid sections so that she now looks like a completely different wreck. The site is covered with soft corals and sponges like most North Carolinian Wrecks. Like described the ship is laid completely disassembled on the ground it is huge so we didn't covered it all the ship is surrounded with shoals of small fish that looks like clouds and bunches of Tunas and Giant Barracudas are swimming into them and feeding on them.

Dive-3 27 AUG 2000

SCHURZ

An unprotected cruiser at 295' that was built in 1884 as a German escort vessel and later commissioned in 1917 to the U.S. Navy. It was June 1918 in a dense fog off Cape Lookout, the American tanker Florida, running without lights accidentally rammed into the Schurz and sank her in 110' (36 meters) of water 28 miles from the Beaufort inlet. like the Aeolus this site is covered with soft corals and sponges lots of small fish shoals, tunas and large groupers.

Dive-4 27 AUG 2000

INDRA This 338' LST repair ship was sunk in 65' (21 meters) of water about eleven miles from the Beaufort inlet, August 1992. It is intact and sits on its keel, the uppermost deck is approximately 35' from the surface. Since this is a relatively shallow wreck we had more time to explore it and thought the visibility was bad the amount of sea life was a good compensation lots of shoals of small fish giant barracudas, tunas and Spanish Mackerels swam around the wreck the rocks around the ship was full of small arrow crabs and some octopuses that hide among them, on the way up we were accompanied by a really big Giant barracuda that swam around us.

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