small world,
i do alot of shore diving for bottles in Highlands/ water witch / atlantic highlands area, the Keyport pier ruins by the waterfront park plus Lawrence Harbor inlet by Al Catafulmos old dive shop that had the light tower from the Wal 505 lightship that sank in ambrose channel
i dove shark river a couple times off the bulkhead by the little boat launch behind the bar/ resturant on the northern channel west of the 35 bridge , last time there were 100s of dead american eels everywhere, mustve been after the spawn, i dove the inlet and L jetty a couple times. i also dove the rusland and adonis many, many, many times. i have a set of brass ships spikes i pulled off the adonis with roman numurals, they start at 1 and i have up to 20 something with only a few missing in the series. i have all kinds of brass goodies from the rusland, like a set of machine keys still wired together and numbered 1 to 4, an pump oil can, 2 oil lamps, and lots lots more brass and copper stuff. i also recovered a bronze half prop shaft bearing (top one) for the main shaft (abt 18in diameter and abt that long) and one of the quarters that would have been slid under the bottom of the shaft. i dove the Pliny, the Antioch, western world, lizzie brayton and a bunch more of the nameless wrecks along the coast and the Long Branch pier (yes i found sinker heaven,"the old tackle shop" and brought back 50 plus pounds plus of sinkers that were laying on a steel beam , i also recovered props and parts off the 2 boats that wrecked in the pier wreckage. one was called the "Dulciana", i have the bow stem with the nose cleat plate still attached to it and one of the props with the stantion mount, i cant remember what the second one was called and i got a few pieces off that one too
i dove on the Seeker (johns boat) a couple times and dove the Doria once back in 1990 on it on Trimix ( i have a small plate with the Italia logo and a small wine glass engraved with the Italia logo with a piece of the next one stacked with it plus the original packing that was between them and a few wine bottles (nothing on them but i know where they came from) , there was a scientist there with a doppler scanner and when we would come up and ungear, he would hook us up to the machine and listen to the bubbles in our bloodstream for his research.
the trimix we used on the Doria, Choapa , Aryuroca and others in that area was only 10% Oxygen so we went down on Air to 100ft, switched to bottom mix, did the dive and ran the stops up till 90ft (deco started at 120ft on Doria) if i remember right and then switched to Nitrox for deco . 26 minuted on the Doria cost 2 1/2hrs of deco and a couple games of checkers (i had a magnetic set that kids play in the cars with) and my buddy Chris would take a paperback book and read it, when he was done with a page, he tore it out and went to the next one. it stayed in his toolbag till the next dive
