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Wow, what a long boat ride. Saturday I woke up at 4am to be on the boat in Panama City at 7am, at which point we started on the 4 hour trek to the Empire Mica, 30 miles off Cape San Blas, FL, and 60 miles from Panama City by boat. We ran into some bad weather on the way, which didnt make it any quicker. Once on site though, we were all excited to be diving this famous wreck. For those unfamiliar, the Empire Mica was a British Tanker torpedoed in WW2. We were pretty uncertain of how it looked today, as over the years it has been quickly deteriorating. Joe, our faithful divemaster on the Fintastic (Dive Locker's boat) would be the first to find out. After anchoring us in, he reported no intact structure, a moderate current and great visibility. Heres a generic drawing:
As we still werent sure where on the ship we were, we all excitedly geared up and headed in. Heading down to the 103ft bottom, we transited a thermocline from 86f on the surface to 71f on the bottom, through packs of 40 barracuda, some 6ft long! Visibility on the bottom was 50ft or better, making for a nice dive, and we found out we were anchored nearby 3 massive boilers. We headed north past the boilers, around and then back south, where the current picked up considerably and we found what we assumed was the stern of the wreck. There is definetly nothing left but wreckage, almost no freestanding structure, or anything left to penetrate. We explored for 25mins then headed up, ever followed by the massive barracuda.
Dive 2 came quickly and we headed back in to attempt to find the spare prop, which had been reportedly lashed to the deck back when there was one. We swam farther north of the boilers to find the last freestanding wall and some resident jewfish. The wall rises 30 ft off the bottom, but stands alone, and apparently this is where the prop is, although I couldnt find it. Other did. We explored the wreckage further north, and then made our way back to the boilers where we did some fish observation before heading back up. Unforunately a 4 hour boat ride was in our near future, and most of us got a nap in on the way back. This was definetly a unique and rare dive, which is worth doing.
