Mardinian: Come dive a wreck with me!

Once upon a time, a 3222 ton steamer named SS Mardinian - built in 1913 in Middlesbrough by Harkess & Son Ltd - departed from Calcutta with a cargo of hemp, bound for her home port of Liverpool. She was 313 feet long (95.4m), with a 42 foot beam (12.8m wide) and 21 feet deep (6.4m). She had a triple expansion steam engine which could propel her to a speed of up to 10.5 knots. Little did Captain G. Port know that on the 19th of May 1917 a German U-34 submarine would intercept them off the coast of Santa Pola in the Province of Alicante, Spain, and order the crew to abandon ship before sending the Mardinian to the bottom of the Mediterranean, 4 miles SW of the island of Tabarca, by means of a well-aimed torpedo. And there she remains to this day, to the delight of scuba divers who come from near and far to admire this steel skeleton, now home to a myriad of marine critters.

Last month I was looking for a somewhat "different" from my usual dives to celebrate my birthday, so I contacted one of the dive clubs I sometimes go out with and Carlos, the owner, advanced his scheduled wreck by one day so I could join in! I was a bit worried about going down so deep, the deck is at 44m depth (144ft) which is deeper than recreational divers "usually" go. Plus that was the minimum depth as the ship's hull was resting at 57m (187ft) on a bed of sand. My dive log tells me my max was 47.7m (the deepest I've ever been). Because of this depth, those of us going down with regular tanks (as opposed to the two technical divers going down with "trimix"), would have to do a series of decompression stops (to eliminate residual nitrogen in the body). Between that and the fact that at greater depth you use up more air, we had to each take along an extra tank for safety!

Yeah, I know. Looks awkward, doesn't it? Even more so rolling back over the side of the boat and holding it steady so it wouldn't hit me in the face! :p

Once in the water it was simply a mater of following the buoy line down, down, down. With the unpleasant surprise of discovering a piece of fishing line with a hook had twisted itself around the rope and was still actively fishing! :o(

DON'T abandon your fishing gear people!!! >:(

We stopped at 30m depth to check our gear and regroup, our last diver was having a bit of trouble with her ears and was slower getting down.

Looking down we could just make out the silhouette of the Mardinian below us. (I think you'll definitely have to click that one bigger to make it out) There's not much light making it through to those depths!

Swimming around us, thousands of anthias (dunno which species), little fish about 10-15cm long with long yellowish fins.

And then we were on the deck of the Mardinian.

Well, in this case the roof of one of the deck cabins! And definitely happy to be there! (and happy my camera casing -which is only certified to 40m depth- hadn't flooded!) ;o)

Let's make our way through there, shall we?

There were several access points to the lower decks (inside the boat) like this one:

...but for safety's sake we stayed outside where there was still plenty to see!

I love this shot, reaching for the sunlight!

Thousands of fish just swirling around the wreck...

possibly seabreams swirling around us...

quick shot of an anthias swimming away

A wreck is the equivalent of an oasis on the seabed... a place teeming with life compared to the sandy bottom surrounding it.

Some of the photos are in black & white, others colour... I couldn't make up my mind which I preferred! Without a decent exterior flash (which I don't have) I had no way of restoring the correct colours (the deeper you go the less colour you see, red is the first to go). And some of the shots just looked better in B&W with a high contrast. But then sometimes the blue was really cool too! :p

The Mardinian has been down there for almost 100 years, and it has been colonised by all sorts of marine life, particularly many kinds of marine invertebrates and all sorts of algae which need hard surfaces to latch on to.

taken withOUT flash, those are real colours!!!

These in turn allow for the fish to find something to nibble on! ;o)

Small red scorpionfish Scorpaena notata

possible ringneck blenny Parablennius pilicornis

another little black combtooth blenny, dunno species. Parablennius sp.

Let's loop around one more time...

Hiya! :p

Oops... looks like it's time to go...

Say farewell to the fishies...

We did a first deco stop at 30m depth. Waited around there for 7'. The technical divers got to stick around the wreck for a bit longer, lucky guys!

Then it was up, up, up... until we reached 3m where the dive computer said it was time for another stop... 20'!!! That's a long time to be just floating around! :s

Luckily I had photos I could flip through in the camera, a first deletion of the ones that were completely blurry. I tried to get some people to play "rock-scissors-paper" with me but I couldn't seem to make them understand what I wanted (ahhh, if only we all spoke sign language!). So I decided to goof-off a bit in the water column when I got bored of clinging to the rope.

Do you get what I'm trying to do in that shot? It has something to do with the fingers... Here, this should help:

That's what was waiting for me when I got home! YUMMM!!! ;o)

(so basically I was trying to do 3-6 with the fingers... for some reason everyone thinks I'm going for 9! I guess that is closer to my mental age... lol!)

I hope you enjoyed the dive! I thought it was AMAZING! And now I'm wishing I could do more wreck dives! Might have to start looking into doing a technical diving course though, since most wrecks are pretty deep...

Information about the Mardinian from Wrecksite.eu.

I didn't think to shoot video, just photos, but you can check out a lovely video of a recent dive here.