9 Eylül Vapuru Batığı

About 9 Eylül Vapuru Batığı

The 9 Eylül Vapuru Batığı is the wreck of a former İzmir city ferry, deliberately sunk off the island of Küçükada near Karaburun on 30 April 2016 to create an artificial reef and a new destination for dive tourism. It is one of the best-known wreck dives in the İzmir area. History: the 9 Eylül was built in 1977 at İzmir's Alaybey shipyard as a motor passenger ferry, with two Dutch-built diesel engines and twin propellers, and was the sister ship of the Alaybey. It carried passengers across the Gulf of İzmir for close to 40 years before being retired in 2012. When no buyer was found, İzmir Metropolitan Municipality handed it to Karaburun Municipality, which sank it under the Karaburun Artificial Reef and Tourism Wreck Project, together with the Alaybey. The dive: the hull is around 50 metres long and lies at about 25 to 35 metres, so it is a dive for experienced, suitably certified divers. In 2021 a large abandoned purse-seine net (a ghost net) that had covered the ship was removed by divers in a four-hour clean-up operation. Dives here are made by boat with the Karaburun dive centres; the Karaburun District Governorship describes the two ferry wrecks as part of the area's dive sites.