Long Island Wreck Valley

Every wreck here is a boat charter into open Atlantic water, and the boat decides more than the diver does. Crews hook the wreck and drop a line, and the shot is the only fixed reference once you are down: current, tide and the state of the Atlantic swell decide whether a trip runs at all, let alone what gets dived once it does. Nothing here is walked to from a beach, and nothing is a liveaboard; it is day-boat diving, sometimes with an overnight steam built into the schedule, out of Long Island's South Shore ports and Montauk.

The Andrea Doria sits apart from everything else on this ground. She is roughly 100 nautical miles offshore, a ten-hour-plus run each way, and every diver going down is on trimix with staged decompression planned before the boat leaves the dock. Currents of two to three knots are routine, sediment can drop visibility to nothing without warning, and old fishing net still drapes sections of the hull. At least 22 divers have died working this wreck since 1956; it is treated as an expedition, not an outing.

USS San Diego and SS Oregon are a different proposition. Both sit within recreational trimix range rather than expedition depth, both are reached on a single-day charter, and both reward divers with real wreck experience rather than years of technical training. San Diego lies inverted with her highest structure at 20 metres; Oregon's engine and boilers stand clear of the collapsed hull at a similar depth. Neither is a first open-water dive, but either is a reasonable next step for a diver who has handled deep, current-swept water before.

None of this ground forgives poor planning. Cold water, real current and gear left behind three hours from the dock have ended more trips here than weather has. Divers who want a guaranteed, scheduled week are in the wrong place: charters here are cancelled for sea state as often as they run, especially early and late in the season, and the paperwork for some of the wrecks has to be sorted before anyone gets wet.