Keeping dive sites a secret

[oldschoolto]

The research to me is 90% of the fun of wreck diving.. To me a lot like having a dive Master pointing out everything.. I want to find that frogfish...

Jim..

 

[C Dub]

I have noticed that the divers who keep sites secret so they won't get pillaged are the very ones doing the pillaging. Too often I dive with brass collectors who pull portholes, instruments and anything green they can find and tell me to keep the site a secret until they have removed as much as they can.
I lost a friend over my sharing the coordinates of the UB88, a WWI German submarine off Los Angeles Harbor. I heard all the talk about divers being killed, others stripping the wreck, fishermen taking it over, etc. Six years later none of that has happened. I enjoy promoting local diving. I would love to see anyone who wants to enjoy a site getting the same enjoyment I do. It's not my ocean.

I've dove UB88 twice recently with one of the guys who found it. It has a lot of damage, which mostly appears to be from knuckleheads dropping anchors right on top of it. Way after the fact, but I tend to think your sharing of the numbers was a bad call.

 

[MaxBottomtime]

Karim Hamza's video shows the collapsed forward section. There is no indication that this is anything but the natural collapse of rusty iron.

It looks identical in the March 2017 video as it does in Johnny Walker's video.

 

[swimmer_spe]

I've dove UB88 twice recently with one of the guys who found it. It has a lot of damage, which mostly appears to be from knuckleheads dropping anchors right on top of it. Way after the fact, but I tend to think your sharing of the numbers was a bad call.

What if there was a mooring buoy and a No Anchorage within a certain distance of the buoy?

 

[C Dub]

Your video (the first one?) has good footage of the collapsed areas. Johnny's video has only very short glimpses of the exterior. I'm not seeing enough to compare at all, let alone say "identical".

I would be quite happy to see it hasn't been damaged, if that is the case. Thanks for sharing the video.

 

[KeithG]

Maybe it really depends upon your perspective? As a vacation diver we mostly dive in marine parks. So we have been preached too from the beginning. Take nothing, leave nothing. Just like a real above ground park back home here in the GWN.

I would never think of taking an artifact I saw on a dive. I saw it, it was interesting. It is still there for the next person to enjoy.

I am not saying taking is right or wrong. Taking is not something I even consider. Just a personal perspective. YMMV.

 

[MaxBottomtime]

What if there was a mooring buoy and a No Anchorage within a certain distance of the buoy?

The wreck lies in the precautionary zone between shipping lanes into and out of LA/Long Beach Harbors. It's tough enough to watch for container ships in the area. There is no way the Coast Guard would allow a buoy there.

 

[MaxBottomtime]

Your video (the first one?) has good footage of the collapsed areas. Johnny's video has only very short glimpses of the exterior. I'm not seeing enough to compare at all, let alone say "identical".

I would be quite happy to see it hasn't been damaged, if that is the case. Thanks for sharing the video.

Ashley Hauck has some great photos from the wreck from four years ago.
Diving a WWI U-Boat Wreck: UB-88 - Blog – Ashley Hauck Photography

Collapsed hull at the torpedo tubes. The wreck is 100 years old and made from thin sheets of iron. It won't last forever. If I hadn't shared the numbers only a handful of greedy divers would have ever seen the immense amount of life on it.

 

[84CJ7]

I was always a little baffled by stripping wrecks.
Once it's taken out of context all you have is a little piece of metal or crusty garbage that looks like it came from our scrap bin or trash at work.
You would be better off taking a picture of it in place where it makes sense seeing it and putting text with the photo so you know the date and placement of it.
Rummaging in something like an old underwater dump site I would consider ok though as that's more akin to metal detecting for coins to me.

 

[CuzzA]

I would never think of taking an artifact I saw on a dive. I saw it, it was interesting. It is still there for the next person to enjoy.

Gold and silver are coming up. I'll make no apologies to the next person.