Visiting Scuttled Ships: An Examination of the Important Elements of the Wreck Diving Experience

Abstract

Scuba diving is an increasingly popular recreational and tourist pastime. Diving enthusiasts are recognized for their dedication to the sport and willingness to both travel to and spend money on new and unique experiences. Subsequently dive tourism has become a multibillion dollar industry. In turn, many coastal (and other diveable) destinations are investing in the development of local dive sites. However, many popular dive attractions such as naturally occurring coral reefs and historic wrecks are fragile, easily damaged, and/or adversely impacted by visitors. Artificial reefs, or structures purposely sunk to create habitats for marine life and infrastructure for unique diving experiences (often stripped-down large scale pieces of machinery), can draw tourists away from fragile natural ecosystems. Ideally, artificial reefs could also be utilized as underwater cultural heritage management tools similarly drawing visitors away from aging, delicate historic wrecks. However, little is known about wreck divers and/or the wreck diving experience. Thus, the purpose of this study was to examine the specific aspects of the popular purposely scuttled wreck, the USS Spiegel Grove (off the coast of Key Largo) that contributed to visitors’ dive experiences. A total of 100 TripAdvisor reviews about the Spiegel Grove were collected and analyzed as data. The majority of reviews were positive and revealed that the size of the ship, the challenge of the dive, the ability to penetrate the ship, the chance to check the dive off a bucket list, and the opportunity to see marine life contributed to divers’ experiences. Historic ties were surprisingly of little importance. Although more research is needed, these findings should help destinations to better plan for and design artificial reefs aimed at attracting wreck divers.