The mothballed U.S.S. Spiegle Grove is slated to become the largest intentionally sunk man made reef. After almost fifty years service, she will soon lie in a hundred or so feet of water off Key Largo.
The Grove is a Landing Ship Dock, LSD 32. LSDs are flat bottomed ships that carry several hundreds of Marine troops to the beaches. LSD 32 has a well about as wide as a soccer field and as much as five stories deep running 3/4 of her 500' length. At the stern she has a massive door that lowers like the back of a pickup. Only when this door goes down most times a huge front of diesel smoke rolls out as the ocean pours in. The smoke comes from the dozens of military equipment crouched down in the well in the shadow of the helideck waiting to disgorge at the enemy.
The starboard anchor of the Grove is at least one and a half times my height as I found out by crawling down the chain onto it with a can of battleship gray paint in Port of Rota harbor, Spain.