"Discovery Dives" were a relatively new concept for the Jacksonville Reef Research Team in August of 1992.  A Discovery dive is a one-shot survey dive which is less-intensive than the Reef Research Team's regular monitoring dives.  The Discovery dive is directed more toward verifying the location and nature of a local reef than for providing scientific data for biological tracking.   The intended product is a general map of the reef site with a brief description of the substrate type, condition, orientation, and profile.

The Paul Mains Tug was found during a "Discovery Dive" to locate the sunken tugboat, which is one of the primary artificial reefs in the PM area.  The Paul Mains Tug is an 83-foot wreck with an 18-foot beam.  The wreck is located at LORAN 45170.1 by 61964.7, and  is flanked by a debris field said to be the remains of one or more barges.  On this day, three dives were executed by the two buddy teams from the boat "Easy Diver".

Descending into a moderate current, the survey team found the area to be covered by an endless moving carpet of literally millions of baitfish.  The tiny, one-to-two-inch fish were packed almost gill-to-gill.  They formed a continuous layer constantly varying from a few inches to many feet thick and dense enough in the thicker areas to literally turn mid-day into night. It was almost like swimming in a sea of mercury.

Maintaining diver buddy contact was quite a challenge.  Often the divers had to ascend thru the school to find buddies less than five feet away by spotting their bubbles.   As the school contacted pieces of the reef, globes of hundreds or thousands of fish broke away from the main school and careened about the wreck like giant, crazed billiard balls until they randomly rejoined the school and instantly regained perfect synchronicity.  At times the school enveloped the divers as they were trying to read the measuring tapes until the tapes, at arms length, were no longer visible.  The world would instantly turn into a synchronized mass of silver motion.  This would continue for several seconds, as the constant directional changes by the moving fish tricked the eye into believing that the diver himself was moving.  Then, just as suddenly, the school would rise clear.  A bizarre sensation and definitely not for the claustrophobic!

One of the stranger sights was a large barracuda near the bottom being forced literally down to the sand as the school undulated downward.  Diver and barracuda alike sought to stay in the clear beneath the massive living tide.

The tug itself is almost completely intact.  It is oriented along an axis of 120^o magnetic, and sits upright in a featureless sand flat with a slight list to port.  The main debris field is also to port, ranging from just aft of midships thru the aft port quarter.  The tug depths range from 45 feet atop the wheelhouse to 75 feet under the bow on the sand with the majority of wreck surface in the 55 to 65 foot range.   Pieces of the main decking have disappeared and all doorways are open, but the hull itself is still very solid.  By contrast, the debris field is pretty-well broken up, with few pieces more than several feet high.  The majority of the field ranges from 20 feet to 100 feet out from the tug body.  A 150 foot semi-circular sweep search run from the farthest wreckage at the hundred foot mark turned up no additional debris to port.  Local lore has it that one or more lifeboats are to be found somewhere to starboard, but none were visible from the wreck vicinity.  The time we had available time did not allow a sweep search in that direction.

Fisherman will probably be most interested in the Gray Snapper population, which along with Atlantic Spadefish dominated the wreck's interior.  Divers will enjoy the site, which is well encrusted with a mat of Tunicates and other invertebrates.  But they should be careful to maintain directional references while venturing out into the debris field.  A safety line is recommended since the typical visibility's in the area make the wreck invisible from out in the field and thus complicate returning to the anchor line.

The Paul Mains tug is one of the most commonly used sites for primary training of North Florida's area beginning divers, so recreational boaters should use special care when flags show that divers are down.

The unusual baitfish school forced the team to postpone plans for a photo mosaic of the area, so the accompanying bearings were obtained by sighting along measuring tapes warped by moderate current and may be approximate.  Hopefully the team can return in better conditions to verify the bearings and survey the starboard sand flats.