WRECK HUNTERS

The Storm Petrel motored from Shinnecock Inlet out to a location 30 miles south of New York’s Montauk Point, reaching a stretch of water Capt. John Noonan had learned about a dozen years earlier. When the anchor was set, the first pair of divers donned dry suits and rebreathers and descended 220 feet to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. The group’s goal on September 22, 2016, was to explore an unidentified shipwreck.

Andrew Favata and John Bricker spent a half hour looking around on the bottom, where the water temperature was 40 degrees and the visibility negligible. Fishing nets engulfed the remnants of the ship, making it difficult to even make out its shape. “It looked like a rock pile,” Favata says. As they began their two-hour ascent along the anchor line for decompression, they felt the whole exercise was a waste of time. When they resurfaced, Favata says, “we gave it two thumbs down.” They told the rest of the crew that they should go somewhere else to dive.

But since they were there, Noonan and the fourth diver on the boat, Jim DiSciullo, decided to go down and take a look. When they reached the bottom, DiSciullo says, “I swam 15 feet and saw an ink bottle