The Cayman Salgave Master

The Cayman Wreck is very popular with the Key West dive boats that take visitors out on daily excursions for scuba.  It’s just beyond the main reef about six miles out from Oceanside Marina on Stock Island.  It’s only one mile from the Nine Foot Stake, another great dive spot.  It’s eighty five feet deep, so snorkelers won’t see a thing.  But it’s perfect for scuba, which is why it remains of the most popular Key West diving spots, year after year.

The Cayman Salvage Master itself is situated on white sand, and has a layer of sand over it, too.  You will see the remains of the steel hull sitting on the bottom, its ship shape still very much intact.  It was once a Coast Guard bouy tender, built in the 1930s and used in the Muriel Boatlift in the 1970s, carrying Cubans.  It was intended to be an artificial reef but sank on its way out where it is today.    Lucky for divers, it never made it to its intended 300 foot depth, where it would never have been accessible for scuba divers.  There are actually a number of intentionally sunk ships out in very deep water, for fishing.