Today the first few dives occurred at the same location, off of the coast of Salt Island in a shipwreck from the late 1800’s of luxurious steam liner named The Rhone. This 300 foot behemoth of the time has a tragic story, starting with a sudden drop of bariatric pressure in area while the Rhone traveled through the bay. While preparing to leave the storm started, and the Rhone attempted to make a break for the ocean. Despite valiant attempts at rescuing the ship, the only survivors were an Italian passenger who knew how to swim due to his regions’ geography and the entirety of the crew due to the force of an explosion losing all of them onto nearby debris belonging to the 400 other ships sunk that night. The explosion broke the ship into two pieces, the bow and the stern sections, and the precious cargo washed ashore salt island. All in all the wreck was a disaster at the time, but in the present day it has formed a large artificial reef on a previously barren sand bar. When we took our first dive down to it, we first realized unlike nearly all our other dives this one had a current that would lead you off course if you were not careful. The wild marine life we examined while there was pretty standard for the majority of the time except when attempting to enter the bow of the ship where we spotted a medium sized sting ray floating by. Our first dive was very special considering it was my first wreck dive and the feeling while passing through the slim corridors was intense in my opinion. After a 45 minute interval and a light snack, we set out again to check the area. This time we dived past the boilers’ condenser, a monolithic cube that condensed steam for the ship’s power. Our journey continued with us going to the stern of the ship and checking out the gargantuan four-prop propellor and ended while fighting the even stronger current to board the ship.
The afternoon was wonderful, due to our lunch at the luxurious Cooper Island where we ate incredible fish and chips before checking out the fantastic gelato and coffee that was sold next door. Our trip was short but memorable, and we headed back to the marina and our huts to relax for a little while before dinner. We ate some seriously good steak and chicken wraps, but the dancing some of us had to do because of leaving various items at places honestly was the memorable part. After all of this had gone down and the sun finally left the horizon in a blaze of glory we packed on all of our scuba gear for the special night snorkel. We each got insanely bright water torch flashlights and each group waddled into the nearby shallow reef. The goal was to find bioluminescent creatures, but that didn’t work all that well however I managed to locate two big massive lobsters that you could have eat for a few days. The greatest bit was probably seeing an octopus scuttling across the ocean floor and attacking a mollusk. The day altogether was fantastic and the history of the Rhone intrigued the majority of us as a whole.
