Barrel Barge

[Admin]

County Decription: Steel barge surrounded by steel storage tanks
Deployed: 29 Jun 92
Depth: 76'
Relief: 20'

[BQ]

7 June 2007 - Did a dive on the barge, its still intact, no openings to penetrate. Lots of soft coral on the barge have been destroyed by the fisherman's lines, which just slice the soft corals off the wreck. A big basketball size soft coral was laying off the side of the wreck with fishing line through it. Lots of small fish but nothing big enough to keep.

[Capt Rick]

Dove the Barrel Barge 6-14-07.
This barge is just offshore of the Fort Walton Fishing Pier.
The Barge is now sitting upright (after Ivan) with scattered fuel tanks around it. Deepest point of dive recorded by my computer was 69 feet under the bow of barge. Saw a few under-sized Red Snapper, small Black Snapper, but mainly just Tropicals.
Vis was 25 to 30 feet.
A good, safe dive for newly certified divers.
Capt Rick

[HuntersDad]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Barrel Barge: another nice dive in the 75 ft. range. barge is oriented north and south with tanks scattered mostly on the west side. i managed to get 83ft. as i was sticking my head in and under everything i could find looking for the elusive shovelnose. lots of small jacks, spadefish, small tropicals and one more flounder. did see a nice goliath (jewfish) as he headed under the south side of the barge and into a hole in the east side. fun dive. 25 minutes and one lead weight for fishing. it's time to hit some smaller(private) spots for the lobster. great to be back in the water and thanks to Nancy, carla and chase for a good time. the folks at ScubaTech have always treated me nice and they run a good easy trip. time to jump on the mako and step up the adventure.

[jonesrw]

fished barrel barge on 1 march w/o much luck, nothing but a few tomates

[Mikey]

Our second dive of the day was on the Barrel Barge, an 80’ x 30’ standard barge, sitting upright in 75 feet of water, running north/south, with a number of what appear to be propane tanks lying on the sand around the sides. The barge is in pretty good shape with only a few holes on top and along the sides. Visibility here dropped off to about 20 feet because we were inside the tide line. Water temperature was 73 degrees on the bottom and 75 degrees at the safety stop. The barge was covered with fish including Atlantic Spadefish, Amberjack, Gag Grouper, Red Snapper, Triggerfish, White Grunts, and Mother-In-Law Fish, but nothing was of legal size. There was also a Trident cone on top in one corner and a Goliath Grouper who made numerous vocal protestations at our presence.

[Bayesj]

18 Jul 08,
We had a long surface interval and moved in to the Barrel barge looking for flounder. There was much more whale snot and green goop with vis at about 10' and a temp of 69, let me tell you, that is cold for late Jul. I was chilled and went up early but saw about a 150# GG just fearlessly roaming on the top of the barge at the south end.