Tarzan Cave is a semi-secret above-water cave in the cliffs around the North point of Old Wives' Beach. It's not visible from shore. You have to swim out around the point and climb out of the water into the cave. There's a rope swing and it seems to be a popular place for young whippersnappers to hang out and eat avocado toast. I wasn't going to visit this cave, but dive the area beneath it. This is a semi-popular boat dive. There is supposed to be lots of discarded junk from the WW2 days in the water under the cliffs. I came here on Mar. 8, 2019. I swam out from Old Wives' Beach on the Navy Base. The coastline North of the beach is a line of cliffs that is inaccessible to shore divers.
It was a fairly long snorkel out to the point. Once away from the shallows near the beach I could see a few black tip reef sharks and a turtle below me on the bottom. The sharks were too far away to take photos of them.
I reached the point near the cave. There was a dive boat anchored here.
I descended under the cave. The cliffs didn't drop down as deep as I expected underwater. They ended maybe 20' deep and then there was a field of large boulders stretching out from shore. Like at nearby Turtle Island, there was hardly any hard coral. Unlike at Turtle Island, I didn't see any soft corals or gorgonians. Scattered around the boulders, there were piles of old metal junk such as vehicle parts (axles, etc.), engines, a bulldozer bucket, a large anchor and pieces of unrecognizable steel objects. Some of the boulders seemed to be made up of a compacted mass of corroded metal. The largest sunken object was some kind of tracked bulldozer-like vehicle with a spool of cable on it. All of this was between 20-40' deep. I saw a couple of groups of divers from the dive boat. The dive guides seemed confused to see a diver out here by myself and tried to direct me back to their boat. I just shrugged and carried on with my dive (later, after my dive, I saw a couple of military police boats arrive and search the area around the point. Maybe the dive boat thought I was lost or something.).
Out at my maximum depth of around 50', there was some kind of old piping system. I'm not sure what it would have been used for. It didn't reach all the way to shore. I saw a few more black tip reef sharks in the distance. Like before, they were too far away for photos.
I swam back up to the shallows near the point and started the swim back to the beach. I had to struggle against a current to get back around the point. There were some large chains on the bottom in the bay.
Back on the beach there were lots more old, large vehicle parts and concrete beams. This spot must have been a major disposal site after the war. In general, I wasn't impressed with this dive. The old junk gave it a bit of historical interest, but there was very little marine life. You also have to put up with a long swim and the risk of current.
