Category: Los Angeles
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11 Interesting Facts about the USS Moody Destroyer Wreck
In San Pedro Bay, about 140 feet down, rests the wreck of USS Moody (DD-277). Moody, one of 156 Clemson-class destroyers, has a rich and interesting history. Here are 11 fun facts about the ship, its class, and its story.
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Photo of the Week: Cyclosalpa affinis
DID YOU KNOW that the salp, while it looks like a jellyfish, is actually a tunicate, a member of the phylum Chordata, and is more closely related to vertebrates than it is to jellies?
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A Second Dive on the UB-88 Submarine Wreck
In just shy of 200′ of water in San Pedro Bay is the wreck of the German submarine UB-88, the only u-boat shipwreck in California. I dove this wreck for the first time late last year and my post about it made waves, so to speak. Apparently I’m not the only one who’s into the…
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No Wolf Eel Left Behind
On Saturday, I got up at the ungodly hour of 4-something-a.m. and made the pilgrimage up to Long Beach to catch a charter out to dive the UB-88 submarine wreck. Sometimes, I think I’m doing “leisure” wrong.
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Throwback Thursday: Technical Wreck Training and USS Palawan
Wreck diving is the ultimate in underwater exploration. I’m ashamed to admit that I wasn’t into wrecks, at first. I didn’t see the point. They weren’t as pretty as real reefs, and it’s not like I was going to go inside a wreck, like, ever. And then I got some tech diving training, and it…
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Getting Riggy on Eureka
The silence of my rebreather allows me to hear every hydraulic hiss, every crash as steel collides with steel, the sounds of industry happening above the surface. I catch myself wondering whether the fish are anchovy or sardine, realizing that I have been contemplating the question for several minutes, lazily resolving the taxonomical conundrum with…
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Obligatory End-of-Year Post (A Summary of 2013)
Because (a) It’s pretty much in the rules of blogging to make an end-of-year summary post, and (b) 2013 was full of great diving and photo ops. From technical wrecks to nudibranchs: a photographic summary of my underwater exploits in 2013.
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Diving the UB-88 Submarine Wreck
Part of the allure of technical wreck diving is getting the opportunity to experience bits of history that very few others, not even many other divers, get to experience. This is why when I received an invitation to go dive the UB-88, a German WWI U-boat off San Pedro, California, and the only U-boat wreck…
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Diving the Palawan Wreck
Palawan, formerly a Liberty Ship, is an artificial reef off Huntington Beach, California. What is a Liberty Ship? Liberty Ships were WWII-era cargo carriers designed to be built cheaply and quickly, and were mass-produced by the thousands in the later years of the war. These steel-hulled ships were 441 feet long and 56 feet…