I am amazed by how much the wreck of the Duane has improved since I last dived it. I had first dived this 105 metre long US Coastguard Cutter in 1987, soon after it was sunk as an artificial reef, then again in 1990. Both times it was an enjoyable dive, but still a bare ship with grey paint showing.
Now it is covered in clumps of cup corals with fans hanging from the mast and railings. Huge shoals of grunt swirl tight about the intact superstructure and hundreds of big barracuda hover in formation above the wreck. It used to be good. Now the Duane is absolutely magnificent.
Perhaps the term "cutter" is misleading - it conveys the image of something the size of an offshore lifeboat. When the Duane was built in 1936 it was as big as a destroyer. During World War Two the Duane served with the US Navy on anti-submarine patrols, convoy escort and even as the flagship of an amphibious assault group. After the war it was transferred back to the Coastguard and was the longest serving ship in service at the time of its decommissioning in 1985.
I pause to admire the shoals of grunts tight in against the superstructure. An open doorway is inviting and I can't resist having a quick swim through a few compartments.
When the Duane and its sister ship the Bibb were sunk as artificial reefs, the philosophy was to make sure divers couldn't get too far in by welding up hatches and welding grills where hatches couldn't be closed. In 1990 I can remember being particularly frustrated by this.
Now I praise the crowbar and lump hammer brigade. They were not supposed to do it, but constraints on where a diver can go have been levered aside and the interiors of both wrecks are now fully accessible.
The minus side is that with large numbers of divers visiting these wrecks there will always be some who venture further than either their training or equipment is suited to go, leading to a fatality on the slightly deeper Bibb. The Bibb lies in 40 metres on its port side, making it less intuitive to navigate. Some dive operators consequently shy clear of this wreck.
The philosophy of artificial reefs has now changed. The latest project, the Spiegal Grove, an absolutely huge landing ship dock, was opened up so that when divers venture inside there will always be an easy route out again. Unfortunately the sinking did no go as planned and the wreck landed upside down.
Back on the Duane, by reputation you could have expected me to spend the rest of the dive inside the wreck, but my eye had been caught by a big barracuda hovering in a back eddy above the bridge wing. Back outside I get his evil toothy grin as close to my lens as he will let me.
A nice thing about Key Largo is that fish are so used to divers I can get much closer than in other less dived destinations. The barracuda is curious and his nose is almost touching my dome port before he gently circles round and takes up station further along the railing. I move on to the next of many barracuda, all nicely posing against interesting pieces of superstructure.
On the nearby wreck of the Bibb there are plenty of fish, but not the huge shoals of grunt and barracuda found on the Duane. This is more than made up for by the profusion of delicate fans. Being less dived than the Duane, diver erosion of such marine life is considerably less noticeable.
Highlights of the dive for me are the port propeller sticking up into the current and the mast stretched out across the seabed. There is supposed to be a jewfish that lives on the stern of the Bibb, but he was not home when I dived the wreck.
I do get to meet a pair of enormous jewfish at "The Dump", a section of deeper reef a half mile or so off the popular shallow site of Carysfort reef.
The Dump is not a mainstream site, it's a rather scrappy reef with habitually poor visibility. Any more than a few very quiet divers and the big fish are scared off making the dive a waste of time. Rather than jump we slither into the water so as to make less noise. The reef is below us and Bob points to an outline against the coral. I have to look twice before I can make out the jewfish; partly because of camouflage and visibility and partly because my mind was just not looking for something that big.
We stay quietly above for a few minutes and let the fish get used to us before I descend and work closer. The Jewfish stays just too far away for an easy photograph and eventually it retreats into a cave. I get close to the sandy seabed and enter at the opposite side of the cave. Fish this big have been known to attack divers and I have no doubt that if it felt boxed in it is big enough to do me considerable damage.
Across the cave the Jewfish is being cleaned by some minute gobies. Perhaps the best indication of scale are the remora clinging beneath its chin.
Looking round a corner I spot a pair of sharks resting on the sandy floor. I settle down and let them get used to me before inching closer. The visibility is deteriorating and it is hard to tell just what kind of shark I am rubbing noses with. Bob had mentioned before the dive that there were bull sharks living on the reef. This pair are certainly stouter than the artificial perspective of my wide angle lens, so I am inclined to think of them as bull sharks, but it could just be my wishful thinking.
The closer shark spooks and swims out. I am creeping towards the second shark even more slowly when the fist shark swims back in and settles down beside me. It seems my patience has paid off and I am now accepted as a co-resident of the cave. Trouble is, the visibility is now shot to hell with the shark settling in and my bubbles knocking debris from the roof.
Fishing within the national park has been restricted for years, then in 1996 the whole of the Keys were brought under a single management plan as the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. The plan is based on zones with Pennekamp being one of the "Sanctuary Preservation Areas" (SPA), more easily described as no-take no-touch no-anchor zones.
North of Molasses Reef we dive the shallow wreck of the Benwood, a 3,931 ton freighter sunk in a collisison on 6 April 1942.
More wrecks can be found further north at Elbow Reef. Best known is the City of Washington, originally launched as a steamship with schooner rigging in 1877, subsequently converted to a pure steamship with more powerful engine in 1889 and eventually converted to a coal barge in 1911 before striking Elbow Reef in 1917.
Prettiest of Elbow Reef's wrecks is the wooden "Civil War Wreck", most likely the remains of the Towanda. All that remains are a partial skeleton of the thickest beams linked with heavy copper pins. Its the sort of dive that 50% of divers will love for the masses of marine life concentrated about the wreck and its photogenic qualities, while the other 50% will be bored in 5 minutes because they could swim round it twice in that amount of time. I dived the Civil War Wreck late in the afternoon and the lighting was beautiful.
An unidentified steel wreck in a similar state of destruction to the City of Washington is usually referred to as Mike's wreck and sometimes mistakenly called the Towanda, which is the most likely candidate for the Civil War Wreck. Mike's wreck lies across two ridges of coral with the bow and stern grown into the reef.