Title: Area diver discusses exploring the Sound
Author: STEVEN ANDREWS
Date: February 9, 2005

Some people hesitate to venture into Long Island Sound, others make a career out of it. Noel Voroba estimates he has explored its murky depths at least 5,000 times.

His dives have retrieved a plethora of objects from wrecks in the Sound, some of them lost in the briny deep for more than a century.

"We get all sorts of things down there," he said, which rest somewhere between 48 to 85 feet below the water. "We find china, bottles, jugs. We even found a nice telescope."

It's taken Voroba decades to gather his collection.

"I started diving down there in 1963, in my teens," he said.

On Thursday, Voroba will share his experiences exploring the wrecks of Long Island Sound during a lecture at the Regional Vocational Aquaculture School in Bridgeport.

His love of scuba diving and undersea exploration led him to open Orbit Marine in 1973, a dive shop in Bridgeport that specializes in renting and selling equipment, as well as teaching people how to use it.

The shop organizes expeditions for people once they learn how to dive and use the gear. It operates two boats out of Captain's Cove Marina in the Black Rock section of Bridgeport, offering diving trips to sites off the Connecticut coast from May through October. Orbit Marine also sets up more ambitious trips to places like Florida, the Bahamas and Mexico.

On the trips closer to home, divers can explore the sunken ships beneath the Sound.

"The two wrecks we dive at mostly seem to date back to the 1850s or so," Voroba said.

While his trips have not uncovered any massive treasures, he said, "The possibility is always there to find something valuable."

"One of the wrecks off Westport is carrying barrels and barrels of nails," he said. "I always joke with people and say that, you never know, one of them could be full of silver or gold from people trying to fund the Civil War."

The good news for anyone who goes diving in the Sound is that objects down there are mostly free game.

"A few of the wrecks have now been deemed historic sites," Voroba said. "On most of the sites we go to, though, people can just keep the stuff they find down there."

There are some distinct differences between diving in Long Island Sound locations that Voroba frequents and those such as the Caribbean.

"There's not a lot of visibility in this area because of all the plankton in the water," he said, "which is the opposite of the Caribbean, which is almost crystal clear."

The low visibility, which ranges from just one foot up to 15, actually makes the Sound a good place to learn how to dive.

"If you can dive in Long Island Sound, you can dive anywhere," Voroba said. "It's a great training place."

Even though the ocean floor is peppered with these hulks of former vessels, they're barely noticeable unless one goes underwater to look for them.

During his lecture, Voroba will narrate a slide show detailing his dives in the Sound and showcasing some of the more interesting artifacts found there.

(c) 2005 The Connecticut Post. All rights reserved. Reproduced with the permission of Media NewsGroup, Inc. by NewsBank, Inc.