Dive· Virgin Gorda· Virgin Islands (BVI, USVI and Spanish Virgins)

The Kraken (Kodiak Queen Wreck)

18° 29.8′ N · 64° 24.8′ W · approximate

A Pearl Harbor survivor turned underwater art: the former US Navy fuel barge YO-44 was sunk off Long Bay in March 2017 as 'The Kracken' underwater art installation, now an artificial reef thick with grunts, jacks and mackerel.

British Virgin IslandsUS Virgin IslandsSpanish Virgins

Practical

Coordinate approximate: Dive BVI says only that it was sunk 'just off the shore of Long Bay'; placed about 230 m off the bay. Depth 40 to 60 ft (Sunchaser); Dive BVI gives a maximum of 57 ft. Launched 1940 as YO-44, one of five ships to survive the Pearl Harbor attack, later a fishing boat; found rusting in a Road Town junkyard in 2012 and sunk as part of the BVI Art Reef after Owen Buggy, photographer for Richard Branson, proposed it as an artificial reef. Dive with an operator (Dive BVI, Sunchaser Scuba) who uses the site moorings. After the Navy, the vessel worked out of Kodiak, Alaska, as a king crab boat and salmon tender until retired under the crab buyback programme in the early 2000s; it was found in Road Town in 2012 by historian Mike Cochran (Dive BVI). Hurricane Irma in 2017 significantly damaged the Kraken sculpture on the wreck, though the wreck itself was not damaged and the mesh still hosts corals and sponges.

Best for

Wreck and art-reef dive

Nearby