Mohawk Chief

[Admin]

County Decription: Tugboat Mohawk Chief
Deployed: 23 Jun 03
Depth: 127'
Relief: 25'

[JoeBagadonuts]

Fished here for 1/2 hour today. There wasn't a very impressive show on the bottom machine, but we boated a nice trigger and had a mystery hit that broke 30-pound test line. Every drop to the bottom with squid resulted in a double hook-up of rubylips (tomtates). There were also numerous small (10" or so) mingo snappers and small red snappers. One mingo came up missing everything behind the pectorals, so there were evidently kingfish or barracuda lurking as well.

[Mikey]

The first dive of the day was a buoy dive on the Mohawk Chief, a 93' tugboat sitting upright on the sand in 130 feet of water 17.8 nautical miles southwest of the Destin Pass. It is lying generally northwest-southeast with the bow to the northwest, rising about 30 feet off the bottom. Divers can get 135 feet if they swim under the stern where currents have hollowed out a roomy area. The roof of the engine room is cutaway allowing easy access to the interior. The inside of the wreck is relatively clean with a small amount of silt and some sand on the floor; the wreck has been cleaned fairly well but there is some monofilament tangled around both inside and outside. There is plenty of room inside the wreck and divers can move relatively unencumbered throughout the interior. The wheelhouse is large and easy to enter from the outside. There is also a way to get to it by swimming up through the interior. One of the best places to see what's going on is on top of the wheelhouse, which is large and flat at a depth of 105 feet. The Mohawk Chief is completely surrounded by the Sand Dollar Reef Complex, a large grouping of concrete pyramids.

We dropped a buoy on the wreck and all splashed in at the same time; I was the first down the line; there was a fair amount of surface current which slackened as depth increased; visibility above the first thermocline, at 30 feet, was only 15-20 feet with water temperature at 84 degrees; below 30 feet, the temperature decreased to 72 degrees at 60 feet and visibility gradually increased to about 30 feet; below 60 feet, the temperature dropped to 69 degrees at the bottom but visibility increased to over 100 feet on the wreck; we could see the entire length of the boat, clearly. The buoy line was draped over the wreck so I landed on the top and pulled the weight up where I could tie it off to a section of the wheelhouse roof. There were large schools of not quite legal Amberjack plus a number of large Grey Triggerfish, which several divers shot for dinner. There were also a number of Red Snapper around, but most were too small to shoot. Shovelnose Lobsters could be found scattered about the wreck, although not in large numbers. There were also a fair number of Bristleworms, Mother-In-Law Fish, and Soapfish, and some Butterflyfish of a type I did not recognize plus Blue Surgeonfish which reflected a bright blue when hit by a light. Since I was on twins, I waited until everyone was off the wreck before untying the buoy line and carrying the weight well away from the wreck. I then started up, performing a 2 minute deep stop at 60 feet and another at 30 feet before completing a 5 minute deco hang at 15 feet. There were a couple of Barracuda hanging around me during the deco stop but none came very close.