Joining the USS Tarpon in the submarine dive portfolio are three German U-boats sunk during WWII: the popular U-352 sub out of Morehead City is accessible to many divers with its resting depth of 115 feet.

Throw into this mix several wars, countless hurricanes, crowded shipping lanes, the vagaries of marine weather and a gradually sloping coastline, and you have a wreck diver’s paradise. The colliding currents head off into the North Atlantic trailing swirling eddies of water treacherous to both ships and divers. Divers are often astonished by 100 feet or more of visibility, water clarity usually expected only in tropical waters.Īs the Gulf Stream approaches Cape Hatteras on the Outer Banks, a lengthy expanse of barrier islands off the Carolina coast, it barrels into the cold Labrador Current flowing from the north. This “ocean river” swerves into the Carolina coast during the spring and summer months, bringing tropical fauna and flora into the shallows and flooding the wrecks and reefs with vivid color and abundant marine life. The southern two-thirds of its beaches are bathed in the warm waters of the Gulf Stream. North Carolina boasts 301 miles of coastline, more than any state on the East Coast except Florida. There are wrecks for every experience level from novice to advanced technical diving. Since that adventure almost 30 years and 2,500 regional wreck dives ago, I have swum alongside hundreds of sharks on a single dive in the waters off North Carolina, a coastline recognized as one of the best locations in the world to dive a seemingly endless variety of shipwrecks in the company of large marine animals.

After a few moments of deep breathing to calm myself, I continued my dive into history on this magnificent war machine, perpetually waiting for divers willing to brace the challenges of open-water shipwreck diving. With a touch of anxiety, I eased past the 10- and 12-foot creatures, girths as big as 50-gallon drums, and touched the cold metal of the hull. Four rather sizable sand tiger sharks impeded my path to the submarine. It couldn’t be! Finally I realized several large, lead-silver shapes were dancing along the darkness of the hull.

Subsmarine dive north carolina