Marlu ~ New Jersey Scuba Diving

Marlu

Type:: artificial reef, trawler
Built:: 1968, Master Marine, Inc., Bayou La Bâtre AL USA
Specs:: ( 72x20 ft ) 131 gross tons
Sunk:: 1999-2000 - Shinnecock Artificial Reef
Depth:
GPS:: 40°48.149' -72°28.501'

New York lists this as simply "70-foot vessel", with no name or date. I have an old note of a vessel Marlu on the Shinnecock reef. On Thanksgiving 1999, the 72-foot trawler Marlu of New Bedford ran aground on the Cape Cod National Seashore after the driver fell asleep at the wheel. This was reported in a New Bedford newspaper, along with several other mishaps.

The vessel Marlu is pictured above on the cover of a 2001 Coast Guard safety bulletin. ( Note: It is never good to end up on the cover of a Coast Guard safety bulletin. ) After that, I was able to find a note on a builder's site that their vessel Master Jim, later renamed Marlu, was scuttled in 1990. The vessel number in this listing is at odds with several others, and the record is incomplete.

These are the only mentions of a fishing vessel Marlu that I can find. Putting it all together, I believe the scuttling date is wrong. It is common to confuse a 9 with a 0, especially with electronically scanned records. There is a partial data match across all available records, but nothing perfect.

In 1999, the vessel would have been 31 years old. If it sustained significant damage in the grounding, any subsequent weather, and the eventual salvage, it would likely not have been worth repairing. It would have been stripped of anything of value, given a cursory cleaning, and disposed of at the nearest available site, which is where it is today.

A high-quality side-scan or dive report could confirm this conclusively. The vessel pictured above is a typical Gulf coast shrimper design, flush-decked with a low pointy bow, low pilothouse, and little freeboard. It is modified with bulwarks added behind the pilothouse for service in the rougher North Atlantic. I would expect at least some of this structure to still be intact.