Tech Diving Locations

[sunshower]

Hi guys, I am at the beginning of going down the tech path and am curious about how many tech diving opportunities there are around the east coast (primarily SE) and Caribbean. Not cave/cavern, more deep wreck. What awesome sites do tech divers like to visit (besides Andrea Doria)?

I'll have more questions for sure, but figured this is as good as any to start with. Thanks in advance.

 

[DMDavid]

I know of several tech divers that dive out of Key West and Miami.
Primarily deep, trimix and rebreather type diving.
Let me see if they have a website that I can direct you to.

 

[boulderjohn]

There are a number of tech-deep wrecks in South Florida, including the RBJ, the Miller Lite, the Hydro Atlantic, the Lowrance, the Castor, and others.

Grand Cayman offers a lot of tech diving, and Cozumel has tech diving-oriented operators as well.

 

[bamafan]

From my experience the offshore tec diving is very problematic especially if you have to work for a living. There are lots of things that can cause problems with your plans. First the true tec charters are limited in that most divers are only ow certified so this is what most of the dive boats are geared towards. Generally to get a tec charter you have to rent the whole boat unless it is a dive like the Oriskany where they can do a 2 drop dive with ow divers while you do a single long tec dive. Next is the weather. Since you are chartering a boat you have to plan way ahead and if you are like me that includes taking vacation. I can't tell you how many times a trip has been blown out for me for days at a time. The South Florida scene is definitely more active and the East Coast boys are lucky that they don't have to run far offshore for the deeper wrecks. The Gulf Coast and Carolina guys generally don't have this advantage from what I have seen. Deep diving in the Carribean can be costly with the price of helium in most of those spots. A rebreather will help with that but you have a high initial cost. Now cave diving is easier in these regards. There is always something to dive. Some sites are only good in flood stage while others are better in times of low water. There is no chartering of boats unless you want to dive a river cave without land access. The cost for going cave diving is generally significantly less than an offshore tec dive from my experience. I am also not one who enjoys doing a short bottom time followed by a long deco of 2 or 3 times your bottom time. You can go cave diving in Florida and do a 3 hour bottom time with less than a 1/3 rd of that time spent decoing. Now in Mexico generally there is little to no deco. I hope you have better luck than I have finding offshore tec diving opportunities in the Southeast. I mainly cave dive now and never thought I would like it but I am hooked.

 

[PfcAJ]

South Florida has a ton of tech diving opportunity. Lots of boats, lots of divers, lots of wrecks.

 

[kensuf]

Others have mentioned a few locations, South Florida is a big one with the wreck diving, as are Grand Cayman and Cozumel.

One thing you need to understand though is many operators are not accommodating to "tek divers" in some of these destinations, and if you walk into some random operator in a place like Grand Cayman or Cozumel and ask about doing deep or deco dives, they may look at you like you're an alien from another planet. Or worse, you may get thrown off their boat for "bad behavior" (I'm guilty of that one, in Cozumel, myself).

At the very least you need to talk to the operator before you get on their boat to let them know what you want to do and make sure they understand your training and background. Operators that have no / minimal technical diving background do not really understand what we're about, last week I had a divemaster in Ambergris Caye tell me that people cannot possibly survive decompression diving for long, then I showed him my computer dive log (my previous dive was 200 minutes at 100', 5 hours total run-time).

So here's Ken's quick list of dive operators that will let you do these dives in some locations.

This list is just some operators that I have used in the past, and allow technical diving. I encourage others to add to this list.

Florida Keys - Florida Keys Dive Center and Rainbow Reef should be able to hook you up. Talk to them first when booking the charter. There may be others, but those are the two I know.

Pompano / Ft. Lauderdale, FL - Odyssey Charters (in Pompano Dive Center). There should be others here too.

Jupiter Florida - Jupiter Dive Center

Grand Cayman - In-Depth Watersports and Divetech (other operators will look at you like you're an alien)

Cozumel - Rolly @ Dive Cozumel (but when I talked to him about a year ago he mentioned he may be relocating) and Deep Exposure. Other operators will likely throw you off their boat.

Belize - Belize Diving Services in Caye Caulker. Amigos del Mar in Ambergris Caye.

Bahamas - Bahamas Underground (Abacos, and focuses on cave diving not boat charters, and I haven't dove with him, but Brian should be able to help steer you in the right direction).

 

[Carl_F]

Opportunities on the Oriskany off Pensacola and in Lake Jocassee in NW South Carolina.

 

[diversteve]

Windjammer off Bonaire but you won't find any other wreck that deep there afaik.

Bianca C. off Grenada is sitting on the bottom at 165' but its such a big ship (cruise ship) that the top is a rec. dive.

Carrie Lee off Grand Cayman is 150-200' - not sure when/how it's dove since it's near the busy Georgetown harbor/cruise port.

Some deep(er) East Coast options - The Wrecks of Carolina

 

[sheeper]

there are about a million. just here on Florida's treasure coast we have a wealth of tec sites. I have not even hit 10% of them.

check out www.stuartscuba.com they run several tec trips a month

 

[sunshower]

Thanks for the feedback. This was triggered when I saw a shop running a trip to the Monitor; that seems pretty interesting given its historical significance and got me thinking about the opportunity set.