New Jersey Scuba Diving

Type:

artificial reef, scallop dredge

Built:

1977, Halter Marine, Lockport LA USA, as Southern Prince

Specs:

( 156 x 39 ft ) 269 gross tons

Sunk:

Wednesday, June 29, 2022 - Delaware #11 Artificial Reef

GPS:

38°40.494' -74°43.868'

Depth:

85 ft

The Texas Star was built in 1977 on a multi-purpose supply ship hull, probably to service offshore oil platforms. The vessel was refitted as a floating casino in 1986, originally named Millionaire’s Casino, out of Savannah Georgia, but later moved to Texas and renamed Texas Star Casino. "The 12,000 square-foot vessel featured games such as craps, blackjack, roulette, poker and slot machines, with a bingo parlor situated on the nearby dock."

As a casino, the vessel had its share of troubles, first chased out of Savannah, bankruptcies, fires, and impounded by Federal Marshals in 2006. Well, bad news travels fast, there might have been a lot of good times too. After years of sitting on blocks, the Daniels family bought the Texas Star Casino and drove it up the Intercoastal Waterway on one working engine, to Mann’s Harbor North Carolina, where it sat for several more months before it made its way to Wanchese.

There she was refitted as an unusually large scallop boat with on-board processing, and renamed Texas Star. The conversion was completed in 2014. Claimed to be the only fully-automated scallop processing boat in the world, on her third fishing trip, Texas Star netted (or dredged) a 92,000 lbs. of scallops, about half of what she can actually carry. A successful trip could bring in excess of one million dollars.

Texas Star contained an onboard scallop processing plant which was patented by the Daniels family. The scallops were harvested from the ocean floor, washed, and flash steamed to open the shells. The fresh scallop meat went onto a conveyor belt which took it to a cleaning bed, then sorting, and finally flash freezing. ( Typically, scallops are cleaned by hand with a scallop knife, which is actually more of a spoon than a knife, otherwise the cleaners would cut all their fingers off ! )

Apparently this went on for several years. I suppose the extra strain of scalloping eventually wore out her engines, and at 40 years, the old girl wasn't worth fixing.

Previous names:

• Texas Star Casino
• Millionaire's Casino
• Stardancer V
• Europa Star
• Walter M
• Southern Prince

I actually spotted this one several years ago and had a sneaking suspicion it was being reefed, and I was right. Coleen Marine does much of Delaware's artificial reef work, including the USS Radford.