The Artifical reef, USS Oriskany

About 22 miles off the coast of Pensacola Florida coast, covered by over 200 feet of water lies the USS Oriskany. The USS Oriskany was a aircraft supercarrier used in the Vietnam conflict and the Korean war, seeing over 12,000 combat missions. The carrier suffered a large fire on October 26, 1966 when a flare ignited a weapons bay and took the lives of 44 men. The Oriskany was decommissioned ten years later and was slowly cannibalized for parts until 1995 when it was sold for scrap. After being sold for scrap the supercarrier was towed to the coast of Florida, where the enormous task to clean up the carrier for its future use.

The USS Oriskany was made, in 2006, the largest man-made reef in the world. Now commonly known as "The Mighty O" or "The Great Carrier Reef", the Oriskany is now a tourist site for recreational divers. I would like to go see the remains of the Oriskany in a dive. This is the place that I want to visit the most because of the types of fish that can be seen living in the carrier. I also think that the preparation work required to convert the carrier from war machine to fish habitat is also astounding due to the size of the Oriskany. Below is a video of the sinking of the Oriskany done in 2006. The other is a video of the the Oriskany looked like only after two years of being on the sea floor.

                                                            VIDEOS!!
She sinks http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TNK0GM3OvU
The Great Carrier Reef http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cz8NvE_mi9I

All pictures courtesy of Wikipedia and all video courtesy of youtube