Sea
Sabres Scuba Diving club, Southern California, Fullerton
Sea Sabres
Dive Spots
NOSC Tower
Facts about dive:
It
looked like an oil platform, but NOSC Tower was a research station built by the
Naval Ocean Systems Center until it collapsed in a storm in 1988. Today, it's a
tangle of girders and beams from 30 to 60 feet, a more open structure than a
ship's hull. "It's like a jungle gym," says Jay Ferland, a Mission
Bay dive boat operator. On the other hand, because the tower is a
"natural" wreck, it has more entanglement hazards in the form of
dangling cables and tight corners. Broken beams jut out, a collision hazard
especially when surge is high.
With
10 years on the bottom, the tower is thickly covered with filter feeders like
strawberry and yellow anemones, purple and brown gorgonians, hydrocorals,
mussels, sponges and urchins. Here too are many schooling fish like jacks and
anchovies.
Access
to the dive: By boat
Experience
grade: Everyone
Average
visibility : 8 m.
Average
water temperature : 54 F.
Average
depth : 30 Ft.
Maximum
depth : 55 Ft.
Getting
there : By boat and from shore.
Back to Dive Spots & Dive Boats
Updated September 15, 2003
(Home) (Boat Dives) (Buddy List) (Campouts) (Diving Links) (Dive Spots & Dive Boats) (Diving Time Line) (Email) (Meetings) (Membership) (Recipes) (Safety & Education) (News Letters AKA Snorkel Talk) (Non Sequitur) (Updates)