ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. — New images from an old shipwreck show the wreck is bubbling over with life.
Last year, researchers determined that a shipwreck off of St. Augustine was indeed the Cotopaxi, a cargo ship that disappeared in 1925.
"This dive definitely goes in the record books," Joe Kistel of Jacksonville said. He is an advocate for artificial reefs in Florida.
"Our goal was to see it and scout it out," he said, speaking about a recent dive that he and some colleagues conducted on the Cotopaxi wreck, commonly referred to by locals at the Bear wreck. He went to the wreck, equipped with a video camera.
When the Cotopaxi disappeared almost 100 years ago, "everyone thought it was a Bermuda Triangle mystery," Kistel said.
Now that historians confirmed its real location, about 37 miles off the St. Augustine Inlet, Kistel wanted to see it for himself.
He expected to see a ship.
He got so much more.
"The sea turtle was the first thing that greeted us when we got down there," he said. In the video of the dive, you can see a sea turtle swim right up to the camera, take a look at it, and swim off.
There were schools of fish, several sharks that were 7-8 feet long, and lots of Goliath grouper.
"We had more Goliath Grouper on this wreck than I have seen on any north Florida reef site in my diving experience," Kistels said.
He said some of the Goliath groupers were a few hundred pounds.
"I’m guessing we saw ten to fifteen of them," he said. "And up here, that’s a good amount. That is not typical, at least diving off northeast Florida."
By the 1990s, Goliath grouper had been overfished and few of them were left in the wild.
"So they were shut down from harvesting" by 1990, Kistel said.
However, Goliath grouper have made a comeback. Researchers thought most Goliath grouper breeding grounds were in waters off southern Florida, but all of these big fish on this shipwreck makes Kistel wonder.
"I’m questioning if this site has become a spawning aggregation site," he told First Coast News.
Some fishermen say the Goliath grouper are so abundant now, that they’re a nuisance. But researchers say they still need protection.
Either way, a dive -- 100 feet down to a shipwreck -- revealed more than a boat.
"It's now this thriving reef off the coast of St. Augustine," Kistel said.
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