El Aguila | Diving My First Shipwreck Dive going below 100ft

So far, in my short diving career, I’ve had some amazing experiences. From the massive sea turtles in Hawaii to the underwater aquarium that is Richelieu Rock in Thailand. But there was one dive I still haven’t had the opportunity to swim down, and that was a shipwreck, even though Courtney has had many experiences on shipwrecks. The idea of diving on the sunken remains of an engineering marvel that has taken on a new life as an artificial reef was so exciting to me. It was a no-brainer when we reached out to Native Sons dive shop on Roatan when booking and told them we only had 2 requests: a wreck dive and a night dive. The week before we landed at Juan Manuel Gálvez International Airport, they told us that the day after arrived, they already had both dives planned, and we would check both off in 24hrs!

Every week, Native Sons picks out the dives they’re going to do based on their group size, experience levels, and mostly importantly, what the dive masters want to go see. The go-to wreck dive to hit from the West End of Roatan is El Aguila since it’s only a short 10 minute boat ride from the beach in front of the dive shop. On that short ride aboard Uba Isti, our dive master Eddie gave us the shortest, and yet one of the most detailed briefings for the dive ahead. The El Aguila is a 230ft freighter that was sunken by one of the local dive resorts in the 90s to become an artificial reef. The boat sits at deep blue depth of 110ft, a depth that I’d yet to reach on any dive so far. Broken into 3 pieces and sitting partially on its side, we had super exciting dive ahead of us.

Emptying our BCDs, Courtney and I sank to the down into the blue below our fins. As my depth gauge ticked past 40ft, a massive black shadow started to appear. Feathering my inflator button dumping air into my BCD to slow the descent, we hovered 10ft above the stern superstructure laying on it’s starboard side. Collecting the rest of our group, we circled the broken aft section of the boat before Eddie entered the boat. This is what I came here to do, but admittedly, doing all this below 100ft made me quite nervous. Confident in my buoyancy control, but a bit terrified of what could go wrong after I entered the ship. What if I cut myself on a rusted door, what if I get disoriented or stuck inside the boat, the possibilities were stacking on one another. But one by one, the group entered a ceiling hatch and into the boat, and I was committed to follow.

Courtney entered ahead of me, watching her fins kick away from me and into the dark room of El Aguila. Exactly as Eddie explained to us on our briefing, we would enter through the ceiling, technically dropping down a level in the boat, then turn right and swim out the forward portion of the helm. Inside, I did not look around too much as I was focused on not hitting anything or getting caught. Support beams that once connected the floor to ceiling, were now horizontal with the orientation of the ship, and became an obstacle to avoid in order to exit safely. But the idea of being inside of a man-made structure on the ocean floor, with coral growing on the walls, and fish swimming around us, it was other-worldly. But I was relieved to say the least when I came back out to open water.

Looking ahead, towards the bow, the middle cargo hold of the ship had separated from the bow and stern, and sprawled out on the sandy bottom below. We watched a few of our dive group cruise along the bottom and towards the bow while we stayed higher in the water column to help avoid deco. I witnessed one of the divers from Spain not drop deep enough and rammed the top of his tank into one of the crossmembers on the shipwreck before freeing himself and continuing forward. And that lead us to the bow, nearing the end of our dive. 

A brief stop to check out the crabs and shrimp that now call this vessel home, hesitating to follow Eddie through the next door and into another dark cabin. A few of us hung outside the last porthole, but then I saw the air bubbles escaping to the surface from Eddie’s reg as he emmerged from a topside hatch. And that was all I needed to see before following in after him with my flashlight mounted on my camera, turned on and searching the dark room. The large square cabin had tons of ropes and other equipment on the floor and walls that was now covered in colorful corals both hard and soft. But I was quickly focused on trying to find the exit to this room. On the floor, a square beam of light lit up the floor and I realized that was my exit above. With a few kicks, orienting myself diagonally with the opening of the square hatch, one hand on my inflator hose, and the other holding my camera above my head to protect my skull, I finally exited El Aguila for the last time.

A truly unforgettable experience, and one capped off by posing on the bow of the ship like we were in the Titanic. Rather than coming up for a boring safety stop in the middle of the water column, the reef adjacent to the ship gradually slopped up from 110ft to 30ft. This allowed us to keep enjoying the second half of the dive while simultaneously getting the nitrogen out of our systems. And this reef, like the rest of Roatan’s amazing dive sites, was filled with a wonderful amount of marine life that made this trip one of the best dive vacations we’d ever been on! And El Aguila for being my first wreck dive is going to be very, very hard to beat! All I know is, next time I definitely will look around a whole lot more once inside the ship!