From: Vol. 1, Issue 5, March 7-13, 2008



By Nathan Wright

Dana Point Times



Mayor Joel Bishop is spearheading a plan to sink a warship off the Dana Point coast, a plan he says could bring in millions to the business community



Dana Point is home to million-dollar yachts, a three-mast tall ship and the Ocean Institute’s Sea Explorer research vessel. The next big addition might be a ship that doesn’t even float.



The plan: sink a warship off Salt Creek to create an underwater playground for divers—and a financial tsunami for the city. The project would cost at minimum $1.5 million, but similar sinkings in San Diego have left the local economy awash in diver spending to the tune of $4.5 million a year.

 

“When divers go down, they also eat lunch, they visit the local diving shop, they buy air, they use cameras and they stay at hotels,” said Mayor Joel Bishop, a diving enthusiast. “When San Diego sunk the Yukon, the project paid for itself in the first year.”



A sunken ship is a diver’s Disneyland of sorts, an exotic destination of metal and sea life ideal for diving tourism. Bishop’s hopes of providing Dana Point with such

an attraction stems from his own experiences diving the HMCS Yukon, a 366-foot Canadian destroyer escort sunk off the San Diego coast that has attracted divers since 2000.



“It’s like Christmas, like a rainbow,” said Bishop. “You go inside and you find all the fish hiding. In one room you’ll find writing on the walls in the engine room. In another room you can sit in the head chair. It’s just really surreal, exploring in the weightless environment.”



Bishop isn’t alone in his fascination of the sunken ships. Beach Cities Scuba Center owner Hosam Elshenawi says many serious divers in Orange County travel all over the world to find exciting places to dive. “Divers are fascinated by shipwrecks,” he said. “I’ve traveled myself to explore wrecks in the Great Barrier Reef and the Red Sea.”



Elshenawi believes that Southern California—including Dana Point—could become a new global destination for divers, especially if more ships are sunk along the state’s 800 miles of coastline. He also predicts that Dana Point will become home to new businesses, including a new venture of his own. “If we were to make a shipwreck I’d personally open up [a diving touring business], and I know others would, too,” he said.



But there’s work to be done before all the tourism and tax dollars start rolling in.



The catalyst for the plan is the California Ships to Reefs Foundation, a nonprofit that emerged from the success of the Yukon and is looking to sink many more ships. California Ships to Reefs needs money to get started—a minimum of $1.5 million to get the $3 million to $5 million project off the ground—and they say they’ll handle the rest. The rest is no easy task.



First, they need to find a ship. California Ships to Reefs advisor Dick Long said the government owns more than 300 out-of-commission vessels (including many Navy warships), but they need to be cleaned of toxic materials before being sent to their grave. This is expensive—$1.5 million or more, depending on the size of the ship—but the foundation is preparing for talks with the federal government later this month to ask them to do the cleaning.



Second, they need to pull a dozen permits or more from government agencies including the Army Corps of Engineers, the Coast Guard and the Coastal Commission. This is a lengthy process, but Long said it can be done. He pulled these same permits for the Yukon and said the process is repeatable in other coastal communities, taking an estimated six to nine months.



Third, they’ll need to raise the rest of the money for the project from grants and corporate sponsorships. Many corporations, including Southern California Edison, are already required by law to mitigate environmental impacts through habitat-building projects, including the creation of artificial reefs. Sunken ships like the Yukon are magnets for sea life, providing a hard surface instead of a seafloor of sand and mud.   



Finally, they need to prepare the ship for divers, tow it to Dana Point and sink it. Preparing ships, called diverising, requires a crew to cut large holes along the vessel’s hull to provide divers with access to the entire ship while minimizing the risk of exploring. Areas considered unsafe are welded shut or sealed off with grates that allow divers to look in but not enter.



Bishop has already seen firsthand the result of diverising on the Yukon. “It’s cut open so you can almost always see the way out,” he said. “There are some rooms you can go into, but it’s really hard to get lost.”



There have been accidents aboard sunken ships. In 2006, experienced diver Steven Donathan drowned inside the Yukon when he entered an off-limits area that had been sealed. In 2007 three men drowned while exploring the USS Spiegel Grove, an aircraft carrier sunk off the coast of Florida. Reports of the incident say the men ventured too far and could not return before running out of air.



While accidents can happen on any dive, California Ships to Reefs Executive Director Eleanore Rewerts said it would be unlikely that Dana Point would be liable for accidental deaths. “California law states that people participating in inherently dangerous sports can’t hold the state liable,” she said, citing governmental code 831.7. “When you hit the dive boat you sign a waiver releasing the dive operation of liability. There’s no way from stopping people from doing something dumb.”



Even without legal issues and the need to pull the necessary permits, the Dana Point community still needs to find a way to raise the money to begin the project. This, according to Bishop, must be done through private fund-raising and not by city government funds. The mayor expects a fund-raising group to form later this year and plans to be a part of that effort.



“You need to have the whole community behind it,” said Rewerts. “We usually go out to meet with all the dive clubs, the fishermen, the social clubs and all the businesses that will be impacted.”



In Dana Point, California Ships to Reefs found an easy ally with the mayor, who held a community meeting last October to introduce the organization to the community. Bishop is waiting to hear back from California Ships to Reefs on its efforts to get a warship and expects the entire process to take around three years.



While the project’s completion may be far off, Bishop is already envisioning the ending to this story. “Imagine if we had the Pilgrim and the Spirit of Dana Point go out for a cannon fight, and at the end, they sink the battleship,” he said. “Now wouldn’t that be fun?”