Diving to the depths of the YO-257 and San Pedr

When I woke up that morning I had no idea where I would be diving, my only instructions was to meet up with my fellow divers and get to the boat.  We hit the water around 6 am.  The conditions were calm, and we were told it was a great day for the YO-257(YO for short). The YO-257 was a navy yard oiler from world war two that had been sunk off the coast of Oahu intentionally after there its.  Ocean currents there usually make it too dangerous to dive but the water was perfect that day.

We dived down!  We followed the anchor line down to the ship and got to watch as the wreckage eerily faded into view out of the crystal blue deep getting colder as we went down.  We arrived at the ship at roughly 90 feet of depth and started exploring. The wreck was well preserved and teeming with life. with schools of fish gathering in its abandoned hallways and hulls, sea turtles resting throughout, and stingrays passing by.  We slowly made our way down around the wreck to about 105 feet, enjoying the sea life before taking a turn and heading to the San Pedro, a decommissioned Korean Fishing and hospital ship.

We swam along with shifting sands of the sea floor following our compasses to the next wreck.  Overall it was a short jaunt over, as one wreck faded from sight the next appeared.  I kept an eye out for white tip reefsharks, but none of them came out to play that day.  

Upon getting to the next wreck we swam up the coral encrusted hull to the top where an entrance had been cut to dive into the ship.  We dove into the first room to find several resting turtles.  They gave us the side eye as we approached, but they then went back to lounging as nearby reef fish helped clean their shells.  We explored the abandoned room and turtles a bit more but had to start to go up.  We had started to get close to our NDL time limit, which is the time a diver must return up before needing to take a much longer decompression stop.  We swam back to the Y0 one final time and did a final pass over, discovering a lone puffer fish manning what appeared to be the remains of the captains quarters before following the anchor back up to our boat.

We then stopped and relaxed while we did a short decompression stop, practicing blowing air bubble rings to ourselves.

Finally we ascended to the ship, took off our gear and enjoyed a nice cup of coffee while we discussed next possible dive spots!