DIVER NEWS
divErNEt.com 9 divEr
A 70M-LONG BOEING 747has been
sunk in Bahrain to claim the title of
“world’s biggest aircraft/artificial reef ”.
The announcement by the Bahrain
Tourism & Exhibitions Authority
(BTEA) on 20 June came just six days
after a 65m Airbus A330 had been
scuttled off Turkey’s Aegean coast to
briefly claim the same title.
Bahrain’s Boeing jumbo jet,
intended as the centrepiece to what
BTEA describes as the world’s largest
underwater theme park, was sunk in
the Persian Gulf at a depth of around
20m. The site off the island kingdom’s
north coast was soon reported by
divers to be drawing in fish.
Further diving attractions are set
to be submerged alongside the plane
on the 10-hectare Dive Bahrain site,
including a 900sq m traditional
Bahraini pearl merchant’s house.
Diving oyster beds in the hope
of finding pearls is the other main
attraction Bahrain offers to visiting
divers. The plan for the theme park
was originally outlined indivEr
News in March.The decommissioned aircraft
was bought from the United Arab
Emirates for US $100,000. Preparation
for the sinking included dismantling
and reassembling its wings, removing
wires, hydraulic, aerial and fuel
systems and all plastics, rubber and
toxic substances, said the BTEA.
After being lowered to the seabed
the plane was anchored to prevent it
shifting in sometimes strong currents.
The Dive Bahrain park is set toopen in August, although extreme
heat, with air temperatures around
40°, is expected to deter many leisure
divers from visiting at that time of
year. From October, temperatures start
dropping into the lower 30s.Training agency
PADI has announced
that Dive Bahrain is to
offer a site-specific
speciality course.
On 14 June,
meanwhile, an Airbus A330 was
scuttled for divers at a depth of 30m
off north-western Turkey. It took four
hours to sink, a mile off the port of
Ibrice in Edirne province, with the first
dives taking place the following day.
Decommissioned last year after
23 years in service, the A330 was
prepared for life as an artificial reef in
the southern resort of Antalya, and
transported to Ibrice on six trucks
before reassembly.
The sinking was designed to attract
marine life and boost tourism, said the
local authorities, which claimed that
while an “ordinary tourist” generates
less than US $500-600 in income,
a scuba diver generates $2000-3000.
The sinking was organised by thetourist board ESTAB and sponsored
by the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas
Pipeline Project.
A considerably older 54m-long
Airbus A330 was sunk 25m down off
Turkey’s Aegean coast almost exactly
three years earlier near the resort of
Kusadası in Aydin province.
And in March 2018, Jordan scuttled
a decommissioned 30m Lockheed
Hercules C-130 transport aircraft as
a Gulf of Aqaba diving attraction.
However, the idea of sinking
large planes as artificial reefs goes
back to North America in the 1990s,
when surplus Boeing jets were the
wreck of choice.
A 40m 727 known as Spirit of Miami
was sunk in Florida in 1993, although
a hurricane later broke it in half.
Another 727, from the film
US Marshals, was left as a diving
attraction in Mermet Springs, Illinois,
while in 2006 a 30m 737 was sunk off
Chemainus on Canada’s west coast. nTwo airliners scuttled in
a week in artificial-reef
race to the bottom
BTEADivers explore the
Bahrain Boeing
inside and out.The sinking of the Airbus A330 near Ibrice in Turkey.DIVERS ID HISTORIC SLAVE SHIPWRECK IN ALABAMA
THE SCHOONERClotilda, the last-
known ship to bring slaves from Africa
to the USA, has been discovered in
Alabama’s Mobile River.
The 26m two-masted ship with
copper-plated hull was deliberately
sunk after a transatlantic voyage in
- The wreck was found at a depth
of about 3m, in zero-visibility
conditions described as “treacherous”.
“You’re among wreckage that you
cannot see,” said Kamau Sadiki, one of
the dive-team that identified the
wreck. “There’s a whole host of
possibilities to being injured, from
being impaled to getting snagged.”
The historic wreck-site was wrongly
thought found in 2018, but the reports
renewed interest in the story. Alabama
Historical Commission engaged
Search Inc, a group of archaeologists
and divers, and the Smithsonian
National Museum of African American
History & Culture became involved
through its Slave Wrecks Project.
“We are cautious about placing
names on shipwrecks that no longer
bear a name or something like a bell
with the ship’s name on it, but the
physical and forensic evidence
powerfully suggests that this is
Clotilda,” reported Search maritimearchaeologist James Delgado.
The African slave-trade had been
banned in the USA for more than 50
years when in 1860, shortly before the
outbreak of the Civil War, Alabama
shipyard-owner Timothy Meaher bet
Northern businessmen that he could
smuggle slaves into the country.
He engaged Captain William Foster
to sail his ship Clotildato Benin (then
Dahomey). Foster shipped back 110
men, women and children, sneaking
into Mobile Bay by night.
After taking off the slaves, Clotilda
was taken upstream, burnt and sunk.
The federal government chargedMeaher and Foster with slave-trading
the following year, but failed to convict
for lack of evidence.
After the war, the freed Clotilda
slaves formed a settlement in the area
called Africatown. Their descendants
still live there, and the Smithsonian
acted to involve them in the wreck-
finding and authentication project.
Diver Sadiki is also lead instructor
for Diving With A Purpose, a black
scuba-diving group. “I knew what that
ship represents, the story and the pain
of the descendant community,” he
said, adding that its voyage was
“pivotal to the American story”. n