This is the 300'-or-so-long wreck of a catamaran ferry that sunk after hitting a nearby reef in 1997. Everybody got off safely. The running joke around here is that the captain was paid to wreck the ship by the local dive shops, who had been campaigning unsuccessfully for an artificial reef. When we jumped in, visibility seemed a promising 50 feet, but this quickly decreased as we descended to the wreck. Once on the top deck of the ship (maybe 60 feet deep), visibility was around 20 feet which made it difficult to get a feel for where we were in relation to the whole ship. There were lots of lion fish out in the open on the top of the wreck. A ripped-open area on one side had a row of toilets ready for photo ops. The dive guide recommended that we didn't sit on them since they are usually home to moray eels. We swam through a large, cavern-like area of the ship with rows of large openings on each side. I assume this was a car deck or maybe a passenger seating area (although I didn't see any chairs). This interior part of the ship was full of large schools of small fish. We exited up through a collapsed part of the ceiling in the middle and were back on the top of the wreck. A school of barracuda drifted above us and some perch-like fish chased a jellyfish around. The surfaces of the wreck were pretty bare. The invertebrate life here reminded me of the Gulf of Oman, with those black-spined urchins, purple whip coral and razor-sharp oysters. We never made it to the sand at the bottom (around 100 feet deep). Our maximum depth was around 85 feet. We re-entered the wreck and swam through another "cave" with shafts of light giving a bit of illumination. A group of large silvery fish hid in a corner, only becoming visible when the angle of their bodies reflected a stray bit of sunlight. We exited again through more swirling clouds of fish and swam back to the anchor line past the wheelhouse and a stone fish lying on the ceiling of the wreck. Then we got to experience one of the joys of tropical diving: An anchor line packed with divers desperately hanging on (because if you let go on your safety stop, you'll get the bends), kicking each other's masks off and grabbing each other's hoses to steady themselves. We tempted fate and hung on the rope of neutral buoyancy about 10 feet away watching the show.
