# I've not done one of these for a while! ***IMAGE INTENSIVE***



## TeeJF (May 9, 2013)

As regular visitors to the forum will know, from time to time we have thrown in a report on an underwater urbex. We've covered variously the wrecks in Bikini Atoll, some Japanese navy ships caught by the Americans in Palawan, a roll on roll off ferry in Cyprus and a Bristol Blenheim and a tug boat in Malta. 

This report is on a former East German navy mine sweeper - yes, apparently they didn't just goose step up and down on the wrong side of that ugly wall in Berlin! Malta has long been a popular destination for scuba divers but due to the steepness of the continental shelf off shore many of the wrecks that sank there, especially in World War II, are way too deep for divers - typically wrecks sit in 100 + metres which is almost double the safe limit for compressed air diving and approaching the limit for technical divers using rebreathers. We have been lucky enough to dive HMS Stubborn, a WW2 submarine sunk intact in 85 metres, and the Bristol Blenheim previously mentioned, but otherwise there is really little else worthy of a look because HMS Maori, a WW2 destroyer sunk just inside Grand Harbour, is a skeletal mess now, and the "Beetle" - an ex-Gallipolli Great War infantry landing craft - are the only other "real wreck" alternatives.

The Med has suffered a lot from over fishing and pollution - when I first dived in Malta the sea was teeming with fish life, crustaceans and invertebrates, particularly sea urchins and small, highly coloured wrasse, however the last time I dived there after a break of some 17 years or more I was appalled at how lifeless it had become - Cyprus was much the same with little in the way of fish life apart from on the wrecks. As a result of the paucity of genuine ship wrecks in shallower waters, the Maltese authorities have sunk several small wrecks close in shore to add attraction to what has now sadly become rather barren waters. 

I can find little in the way of information on this particular ship however, and to be perfectly honest even its east German provenance is in some doubt however one must rely on the word of the locals and it is they who told us it was east German in origin. It is one of two near identical ships sunk in 2007 and we were lucky enough to dive her only a couple of weeks after she had gone down. It is a long swim out and rather difficult to find however well worth the effort. On our first visit we found little life had appeared as yet however a second visit about twelve months later showed the beginnings of colonisation by a variety of creatures and many more small fish, the precursors to an ever swelling eco system.

The process of sinking these ships for divers is in itself of interest. The ship is sanitised first by the removal of all pollutants such as oil and fuel. In Britain and America the same kind of thing happens however with typical British respect for Elfen safety we have a propensity for cutting huge access holes throughout the superstructure leaving a wreck which has more in common with a pre-fab kit garage than a ship. Not so the Malts who just seem to clean it and then pull the plug. I am sure you will realise that a Maltese diver's wreck is therefore much more interesting!

*The piccies...​*









*First sight of the wreck appearing through the gloom almost 100 feet down.*









* TJ descends into the stern of the wreck where the engines used to be. *









*Looking through the engine room to the forward hold. Note the absence of any colonising life forms. *









*Part of the rudder mechanism. The cam seen here was turned by a steel cable attached to a large electric motor controlled by electronics linked to the bridge. *









*'er indoors  We are both using rebreathers on this dive, a type of technical diving system which recirculates the 
gas mix we are breathing, prolonging our time at depth and dramatically reducing our decompression time. *









* Although the rebo is amazing it is also rather cumbersome, especially because you have to carry a bail out scuba 
cylinder on your hip in case of emergency. It makes swimming through tight corridors rather interesting  *









* Emerging behind the bridge superstructure. *









* It was really amusing to find the Tasmanian Devil from Warner Bros' Looney Toons cartoons painted beneath the mast  *









*You can clearly see the amount of extra tech kit TJ is wearing on this shot. *









* Entering the bridge lower deck area now and it will be a tight squeeze. *









*An urbexer's self portrait of sorts  except it's still 'er indoors, not me. *









* Easy does it is the order of the day to avoid snagging hoses etc. *









*What's she looking at  *









*Ahhh... part of the fire fighting system. *









*Much of the appeal of this wreck was the sheer amount of opportunity to twiddle things! I expect it's all corroded solid by now though. *










*Fiddle fiddle fiddle  *









*The bridge as seen from the bow decks. *










*Both of the clear view screens survived the sinking intact, not so the adjacent plain 
windows which both shattered with the force of the water surge as she went under. *










*Both of the plain glass windows had shattered into crystalline shards reminiscent of the old Duralex drinking glasses we had for school dinners in the 70s... *










*You can see the bridge compass (middle bottom) with it's weather proof glass cover still intact on this shot. *










*Wrecks rapidly become artificial reefs for sub-aquatic wildlife. Already after just a couple of weeks a few small fish have begun to appear on the upper superstructure. *










*Ascending the radar mast. The plume of bubbles to the right are coming from TJ who is venting her buoyancy control system. 
The rebreather does not make any exhaust bubbles unlike scuba so it is rare to see a bubble plume except during ascent. *










*And then quite suddenly we realised we were no longer alone  Believe it or not we noticed these scuba divers first by the sound of their bubbles  Their dive duration would be roughly half 
ours and yet they would still incur upwards of 40 minutes deco penalty requiring them to wait at about 10 metres to avoid the bends. We on the other hand enjoyed over an hour at 100 + feet and swam straight back with no penalty what so ever. 

Ahhh those rebos  *










*Time to leave the ship now, gently ascending all the way. The release of 
dissolved gas from our tissues is safely accelerated by the constantly changing
gas mix we are breathing, all controlled automatically by the rebo. *



*And that's yer lot  I hope you enjoyed it. Thanks for looking...*​


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## krela (May 9, 2013)

Great stuff, made even better by the explanations.


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## night crawler (May 9, 2013)

So do you hire the rebos or do you own them Seeing TJ with the spare bottle brigs to mind cave diveing. A great report was superb photos as ever.


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## TeeJF (May 9, 2013)

night crawler said:


> So do you hire the rebos or do you own them?



We hire the sidey bail out cylinders, the O2 cylinders and the diluent cylinders (1 of each for each diver) plus our lead weights. We buy the sofnalime co2 scrubbing chemical in resort and refill the cylinders in resort. All the rest of the kit we take with us because it's not wise to trust hire kit when doing technical diving. It's just too indifferent too often and you can't just pop up to the surface when you are so gassed up if something goes wrong. The comparison to cave diving is not far off the mark but not in the way you might expect - whilst the rebreather ensures a long bottom time coupled with a low deco penalty the gas loading in your tissues is no different to using scuba whilst actually on the dive - in fact you saturate faster if using helium in your dil cylinder. Where you win is the speed at which you safely off gas. The reason is down to the fact that your proportion of O2 in the mix is constantly at the safest highest amount which means the gradient between nitrogen in your tissues and in your blood is so high it pours out of your tissues on ascent compared with a relative trickle when using scuba. Thus during the dive you can regard yourself as having a virtual roof above your heads which you cannot cross to come up. 

Hope that makes sense? 

Thanks guys for the thumbs up!


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## UEP-Wales (May 9, 2013)

I absolutely love reading these reports, they are so fascinating! Could never do it myself so cheers for sharing them


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## Harry (May 9, 2013)

Urbex-SW said:


> I absolutely love reading these reports, they are so fascinating! Could never do it myself so cheers for sharing them



Seconded!


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## Neverwillchange (May 9, 2013)

Brilliant stuff !!


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## gingrove (May 9, 2013)

Fantastic report Wish that I could learn to do it myself but I'm too old and fat - If I put on a wetsuit every Jap "Reasearch Ship" in the sea would be chasing me with harpoons! I'll just have to wait for my 15 year old son to finish his scuba training then buy him a rebreather and a camera and send him to the places I want to see.  Seriously I am most impressed with how clear the water is and how light it is, you've got some great shots as usual in your reports. Thanks for posting can't get enough of this.


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## HughieD (May 9, 2013)

Awesome! Really enjoyed that one...


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## stuki (May 9, 2013)

wow that was fantastic, would love to go down and nosey, the write up was excellent, really enjoyed it, well done


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## chris (May 9, 2013)

Fantastic  Must have been really strange seeing a Tasmanian devil on a DDR minesweeper, but I imagine with wrecks nothing's quite normal


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## ZerO81 (May 9, 2013)

Somewhat different in a great way!


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## peterc4 (May 9, 2013)

good stuff


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## shatners (May 9, 2013)

Superb... now thats what you call tricky access 

Really enjoyed that one.


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## flyboys90 (May 9, 2013)

Really enjoyed this report so interesting,thanks for sharing.


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## sonyes (May 9, 2013)

Excellent. Loved the report and explanations, and the pics are top notch as usual bud


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## Bones out (May 9, 2013)

I love it!!! Fannytastic.


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## Grim_up_North (May 9, 2013)

*P29 patrol boat* bought by the Maltese government in 1992 from the GDR, decommissioned in 2004 and scuttled as an artificial dive site in 2007 (hence it having little floral/faunal growth yet). Guess the giveaway that it didn't sink accidently is that the engines are missing and there's areas where a gas cutter has been used to remove bits.

Info:

h**p://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P29_Patrol_Boat

and:

h**p://www.techwise.com.mt/DiveSites/tabid/59/Default.aspx


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## TeeJF (May 10, 2013)

Some lovely comments there folks, thanks ever so much for those and the info hit too. I may have the odd one left yet, not sure. 

Cheers fellas.


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## UrbanX (May 10, 2013)

I'm not into diving at all. I hate being underwater. The things I find facinating about this splore are the sensations when you were exploring it. I mean what does it feel like to be stood on the deck holding onto the hand rail being almost weightless? How does it feel to use that ladder to pull yourself DOWN headfirst to the level below? 
Must be so weird. 
Thanks for sharing, although its totally not my thing, your underwater explores are so different they're so architectural - we can relate to them! Hats off to ya both! Thank for sharing something I will DEFINITELY not ever see!


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## TeeJF (May 10, 2013)

UrbanX said:


> I mean what does it feel like to be stood on the deck holding onto the hand rail being almost weightless? How does it feel to use that ladder to pull yourself DOWN headfirst to the level below?



Well... simply being there on this particular wreck wasn't a consideration feelings wise because it was a deliberate sinking for tourism and it has so little history. But being inside for example the Imperial Japanese Navy Ship Akitsushima is very different. I remember swimming along a corridor in Akitsu and noticing that the deck of the corridor was ruptured upwards. That of course made me think. Given that the wreck lies on her starboard side the "floor" was actually now the wall and the significance of the rupture wasn't immediately obvious. Then the penny dropped - I was looking at the result of an explosion beneath the deck and the blast had ripped the steel plate upwards like paper. Clearly the bomb had penetrated the hull from the side, run in under this part of the corridor and exploded there because there was no entry hole close by - I spotted that, and many others whilst swimming along the port side of the hull later. My thoughts turned to the hell that must have erupted in that corridor and the effect it would have had on anyone there. Then I began to consider the fact that I was literally swimming through history and I found that I could visualise incredibly clearly what had happened. 

Sometimes though the loss of life in a wreck can make one feel quite edgy or sad - in Truk Lagoon the local Micronesian dive guides have gathered up sailor's bones and put them on to an operating table and here my feelings verged on revulsion that they could stoop so low as to create a tourist "attraction" from dead sailor's bones.

I also remember much the same sorts of situational visualisation running through my head whilst swimming inside one of the Scapa Flow's German WW1 scuttled warship wrecks - I could almost see the waters surging up the corridors as the mighty ship slipped slowly beneath the water.

That's the kinds of thoughts I experience on wrecks with any history. 

As to the orientation thing... that gets a bit weird sometimes. You have to think out of the box a bit to navigate your way through a wreck and using ladders or catwalks to pull oneself down, up, sideways even, is very common so after a short while it just becomes second nature and not anything unusual.







*The right orientation...*






*...and the wrong orientation!*​
It makes it fun basically but it can also get incredibly confusing too!

And being weightless is simply sublime. It's not something you take for granted when using a rebreather because you ignore it at your peril then but when diving on scuba the whole buoyancy thing can be fun. I love dropping like a stone and then "putting the breaks on" with my buoyancy compensation device whilst trying not to impact with the seabed. Then other times you can simply hover over something completely motionless - then the clearer the water the better because you get a definite impression of flying. We swam along the flight deck of the USS Saratoga *(BELOW)* and experienced "take off" as we swam off the end, only to find sharks directly below us... woop woop! 









Absolutely accurate buoyancy control was a major consideration inside the Irako because any contact with the deck resulted in an instant "Brown out" - basically all light dissapeared ina second or two to be replaced with what I can only imagine would be the sensation of swimming in Oxtail soup. Very dangerous and very unpleasant. Buoyancy though is a major part of what you learn as a diver - becoming positively buoyant is one of the quickest ways to end your diving career and probably your life - so we all pay close attention to being absolutely neutral at all times apart from during descent where we aim to be just slightly negative until we are close to target depth.


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## Stealthstar79 (May 10, 2013)

Now that's impressive!
You wouldn't get me doing it, I find the thought terrifying.
Great report and fab pics..
Thanks!


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## Mars Lander (May 10, 2013)

now that is something a bit different ,make that a LOT different, very interesting , thanks for the share


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## Sshhhh... (May 11, 2013)

Fantastic report! Thoroughly enjoyed the pics and the write up


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## Tizzme (Jul 9, 2013)

BLOODY FANTASTIC !!! Brilliant pictures and right up, Thank you.


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## TeeJF (Jul 11, 2013)

Blimey, are these still attracting interest? I'll do you another shortly if so. Thanks guys.


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## Dirus_Strictus (Jul 11, 2013)

TeeJF said:


> Blimey, are these still attracting interest? I'll do you another shortly if so. Thanks guys.



Your reports on this subject will always attract interest because they are well written, well photographed and the technical stuff is pitched at just the right level for those who keep their bodies above water. As somebody who did all their diving in the 1960's/70's I find your modern equipment very interesting. Not sure where I stand on your comments re access holes being cut for safety reasons - I know the Scapa Flow wrecks are not what you were talking about, but during a dive on SMS Dresden in the early 70's a diver who had joined us for the dive died after becoming trapped/lost. Sadly nobody was able to reach him in time, so my views are somewhat coloured by this event. Do post some more of your dives, they make a very refreshing change from pictures of decaying chairs and paintwork!


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## TeeJF (Jul 11, 2013)

Dirus_Strictus said:


> As somebody who did all their diving in the 1960's/70's I find your modern equipment very interesting. Not sure where I stand on your comments re access holes being cut for safety reasons - I know the Scapa Flow wrecks are not what you were talking about, but during a dive on SMS Dresden in the early 70's a diver who had joined us for the dive died after becoming trapped/lost.



Wow... thanks. Erm... with respect to the "modern equipment" we use, I was actually taught to dive in 1979 and back then we still used twin hose regs, BCs and had to do an A Test, many of those attempting would fail repeatedly. I then taught my wife TJ as her instructor during the early months of the 1990 and the only real difference for her was a top of the range single hose reg! We had a lay off for several years due to circumstances and then resumed falling head long into technology which we had to learn from scratch, and intensively - for example we had come into the use of dive computers long after they'd been accepted and were second nature to most divers whilst we still relied on a watch and table set!!! But the technology has allowed us to build on our existing skills, enhancing them and in some cases rendering them redundant. Increasingly though modern kit is relying more and more on sophisticated electronics and delicate sensors, many of which I have yet to convince myself totally are up to such a robust set of environmental considerations! As a result of our scepticism we do tend rather to carry belt, braces, string AND chewing gum!

The access hole issue pertains to the HMS Scylla in the sea off Plymouth, sanitised and sunk specifically for divers. A sterile, boring "tin can" frankly. There is also a great degree of this phenomenon apparent in Maltese waters having appeared relatively recently. Now having once been hung up in a sand induced brown out in the dark (a night dive) not once but twice on the same dive, I can attest that the very few "original wrecks" around Malta were not particularly safe! The other "original wreck" there is the submarine HMS Stubborn - she has been untouched until relatively recently, and then only because mixed gas diving - banned totally in my first years as a diver - has become a lot more common place. Sadly, even using big twin sets we only had a few minutes on the wreck and had to deco for nearly 3/4 hour on a line with a special high o2 ratio deco mix in a slung rig! But narcs alone would have rendered that wreck impossible until very much my most recent diving years.

As with all things, technology moves on... and I'm right thankful for that!


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## echo. (Aug 3, 2013)

This is such a good post! 
I really want to get into diving, top post!


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## TeeJF (Aug 3, 2013)

echo. said:


> This is such a good post!
> I really want to get into diving, top post!



Cheers dude! Perhaps it's a bout time I dug out some more of the wet urbex back catalogue then! 

And yeah... you really should get into diving, come on, what's stopping you??? You know it makes sense Rodney!   

My earliest memory of scuba was a really deep dive on the stairs at our terraced in Bury using a washing up liquid bottle strapped to my back and some PVC tube in my mouth as my aqualung - oh the power of the imagination of a 7 year old!


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## AgentTintin (Aug 4, 2013)

Nice to see something completely different from the usual. Great pictures as well!


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## gingrove (Aug 4, 2013)

TeeJF
My earliest memory of scuba was a really deep dive on the stairs at our terraced in Bury using a washing up liquid bottle strapped to my back and some PVC tube in my mouth as my aqualung - oh the power of the imagination of a 7 year old! :lol:[/QUOTE said:


> Yes and I'll bet it was after watching "Sea hunt" with Lloyd Bridges or Hans and Lotti Hass on the telly  Me Too! (you can still see Seahunt on Youtube!)


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