Thinking of diving the Oriskany

[Ben_ca]

We are going in May. Just finished our deco procedures and Triox courses.

Bring back lots of pictures ... better yet Video

 

[Diesel298]

Until he comes back with names that can be verified or refuted, I'd take it with a grain of salt. I've been with or personally know groups who've used 3 of the major charters going out there and none imposed such a ridiculous limit. MBT did mention the flight deck is 137' and the recreational limit is 130', that said it's your call.

yeah hes probally just making it up to get attention........
gimme a break

 

[2905luvsbubbles]

My wife and I dove her in May and it was an awesome dive. It didn't have life on it yet, so it will be much more interesting next year. On MBT dive shop's forum, there was a discussion about a group that dove it and saw whale sharks on their safety stop. There were a couple of pictures posted that were awesome. It is definitley worth diving.

 

[evensplit]

There's no way to describe how big Oriskany is...you just gotta see for yourself. You can easily spend several dives just on the Island, and still not see everything.

 

[JahJahwarrior]

recreational limit is 120 but you can spend, what, 5 minutes at 130 or 140 before having to do deco? An old Dacor dive table I have says I'd only need an extra five minutes at 10' if I stayed as long as 10 minutes. I think by only having OW, I'm supposed to be limited to 60', but there are no scuba police. Granted, I could die, but I've already been to 75' and I survived. I'd like to dive the Oriskany someday. I'd like to get more deep dives under my belt and I'd like to dive more in the ocean before I dove on her though, so maybe not this summer, but the next. It's a serious dive, I'm sure, and I know I don't have the experience to do it yet. Even if Icould stay for 10 minutes without any problems

I thought the deck was at 135', but it's a huge ship and to be 2' lower at one point wouldn't concern me

 

[MarkUK]

I dived it seven times in three days a couple of months ago to write a piece/get pics for the mag and get some Brit divers over to see the wreck. I dived with three different ops and none of them imposed a depth limit, though a couple did the same as MBT - stated the rec limit is 130, but it is up to the diver. The flight deck around the bottom of the island is 42m, and for the most part, rec divers will remain on the island. It is huge in itself, with plenty of penetration opportunities from flight deck level right up to the upper levels.

Serious techies will be able to explore below the flight deck, but even they aren't going to want to head too far away from the island (unless they have scooters), unless they want to do blue-water deco with bugger all to look at once you leave the flight deck at 42m. There were a few techies out there and they were nipping straight down under the island, having a good poke about in depths down to 50m plus, then working their way through their deco on the island, rather than float around in open water. As others have said, it is a long way out, and you want to see as much as you can.

That's the problem with an aircraft carrier, particularly in this depth. The main focus is the island, as the rest is just a huge, flat expanse. A nice, big, fat battleship with lots of guns, etc, would be better, if not quite as huge.

Having said that, quite a lot of life already when I dived it, and it is worth seeing. Make sure you go into the island at flight deck level and find the escalator!

Mark

 

[TheFoggyMask]

You have absolutely no bussiness at 137 feet on a single alu80. I'm glad you were trained so bloody well that you understood that.

 

[TheFoggyMask]

Until he comes back with names that can be verified or refuted, I'd take it with a grain of salt. I've been with or personally know groups who've used 3 of the major charters going out there and none imposed such a ridiculous limit. MBT did mention the flight deck is 137' and the recreational limit is 130', that said it's your call.

If a dive charter is allowing people to dive to that depth on a single tank, the owners are irresponsible.

 

[AstroDad]

Has anyone caught the Oriskany article in the current issue of Smithsonian? It's worth a read...

 

[rhyz]

I dove the "O" in Sept. and it was well worth the trip there. I plan on dong her atleast 4 more times come spring. The dive itself was awesome, I did bounce off the deck at 135fsw on an 95 steel but spent the rest of the time above 105fsw. There was alot of life there then for the amount of time it's been under. Arrow crabs, blue claw, schools of jacks, a nice size 'cuda has taken up residency there, lots of mirco life, bennies and numerous others. The tower is impressive to say the least and as alot have said before it is huge! If the vis is good, in my case it was over 80 foot a swim off the bow side of the tower give a very impressive view of the whole tower, just stunning.

I did some research on the ship before I went but never did truely appreciate her size until I saw the show "The sinking of an aircraft carrier". Just seeing the ship in perspective of the people working on her floored me. Huge..absolutely huge, but for us rec divers we won't get to see but a 10th of her.

A definite dive if you like diving wrecks and seeing a part of history up close.