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Happy Birthday, Charlie Brown! Statia's most famous wreck turns 10

By Scuba Diving Partner | Published On July 12, 2013
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Happy Birthday, Charlie Brown! Statia's most famous wreck turns 10

Panoramic view of 10-year-old Charlie Brown

Mike Harterink

The Caribbean island Saint Eustatius — commonly referred to as Statia — purchased the 320-foot Charles L. Brown, a former cable-laying ship, for a symbolic $1. This past spring, Charlie Brown — on its side in 95 feet of water off the island’s southwest coast — celebrated its 10th anniversary on the bottom as a purpose-sunk wreck.

“Nearly the whole island helped to clean the vessel before it was sunk in 2003,” says Mike Harterink, who created the panoramic photograph to celebrate its sinking 10 years ago. “Thousands of divers have witnessed the transformation from a white steel vessel into a living reef in the past 10 years. Like a good bottle of wine, it’s getting better and better every day.”

To get the photo, Harterink dived to about 30 feet, “pushing the shutter about every 30 feet while swimming over the wreck.”

To achieve the final image, Harterink “stitched” together the images in Photoshop. scubaqua.com