Dear Patrick,
Thanks for your input. That sheds some different light on the background of the wreck. We had surmised by the style of the canons that it came from the early 1700s but that was as far as we have researched it. It was very curious for us to find the wreck in 2006 as we had been over the same area (towing my partner Memo Mendoza like trolling for sharks) and seen nothing in 2004 and early 2005. Of course we had also been searching for wall dives using our hand held sonar. Unfortunately for wall diving enthusiasts it turned out that "the wall" on the eastside starts at 200 ft so recreational wall diving was out.
But as you know, the shallow 20-60 ft dives over there are among the most pristine in the world and we hope to do all we can to keep it that way.
In that effort we have taken the Marine Park director and others over to dive those sites and we are trying to get some sort of legal protection for at least the marine areas of the east side. As you may know, the tour company Wild Tours used to take atv and dune buggy groups out there for kayak and snorkel tours when the road was passable. That meant cruise ship weenies who have been seen walking on the micro atolls, and doing untold damage to the inshore reefs. So in a major way, the road being destroyed, and the police keeping people out may have helped preserve the place better than politics might have. But we have to make sure stuff like that can never happen again. We will be doing our best to focus attention on that when we can, but a better informed dive community could surely help.
As for the wreck suddenly appearing to us after hurricane Wilma, it must have been by wave action blowing away the sand that may have covered most of the wreck and anchors for centuries. Now we think that there must have been more than one wreck as just last week we found another site with a totally different style of anchor, and much larger canon balls. That may be true of other wrecks that surely must exist north of where we have focused so far, so we do plan on some more exploration dives. That is pretty easy for us now that we have two boats on the beach at Chen Rio and all we need is light wind or a "good" norte.
As you might know, the logistics of bringing a boat over from Caleta is pretty tough and in our opinion-- it is not safe to have only one boat out in such a remote area. If you want to see how we go about it, and some photos of the anchors that you missed you can find them on our web page
Aldora Divers of Cozumel. If I knew how to attach a photo to this post I would have.
Dave Dillehay
Aldora Divers