This image is of a very shallow barge located in Lake Washington.  This small barge is located on the West shoreline south of the 520 bridge and is listed on the NOAA AWOIS database.  This wreck is one of more that 50 that Scott Boyd of Emerald Sea Photography has imaged and confirmed the location of in just the last month.

The Houghton Bay area of Lake Washington is a literal junk yard from the old Lake Washington Ship Yards.  This area is the site of several burned wrecks and scuttled vessels.  It was originally thought that is area was reasonably well described but recent forays into the area have consistently turned up more wrecks.

Our team has scanned the entire area and has identified more than 30 wrecks for eventual exploration.  This last week Scott Boyd of Emerald Sea Photography worked in the area and obtained images of two wrecks tucked into some of the natural geography that were previously unidentified.  This solid work by Scott demonstrates the exceptional capabilities of his sidescan unit for shallow area survey.

Side Scan Image taken by Scott Boyd

Our team was recently conducting a series of dives on the PB4Y and PV2 Harpoon and during surface intervals imaged two low priority targets described as planes on NOAA Charts.  The Northern most target was originally thought to be a small barge on long range side scan imagery and this assessment was confirmed by Scott Boyd, co-author of Northwest Wreck Dives.

Initial imagery attempts of the Southern most wreck site showed returns that were difficult to interpret from long range and transom mount sidescan.  This weekend Puget Sound Divers imaged this site using a high resolution towfish from Scott Christopher's boat.  Two two seperate areas of interest were evaluated.  The first was the Scorption site and a target just 130' North.  The Northern target orginally gave an interesting return (see below) but more detailed imagery shows what appears to be a tight configuration of clay an rocks (also below).

North site - Inverse Grayscale with increased sensitivity Same target from different angle shows rocks and clay. 

Target #185 Lake Washington BargeTarget #185 is located North of the the Seattle NOAA offices in 154' of fresh water and is in the same area in which the PV2 Harpoon is located.  The exploration of this site has been a joint effort between Puget Sound Divers and Scott Boyd of Emerald Sea Photography and a co-author of Northwest Wreck Dives.  The image on the right is a sidescan image taken by Scott Boyd.

This is one of several barges in the area and while it is the second largest it may be the most intact.  Addtionally, since this wreck is listed in AWOIS it is possible that this site is one that is well described by another exploration team.  In the next few weeks we will reach out to that team to see if this indeed the site that they have already well described.