PENSACOLA, Fla.  For Thom Dietmeyer, a retired naval officer, standing again on the bridge of his old ship was a dream come true, even if he was 70 feet below the surface of the ocean.

“I knew exactly where I was going as soon as I got down there,” he said, recalling the dive, which took place a year ago last May on the wreck of an aircraft carrier called the Oriskany. The U.S.S. Oriskany, known as the Mighty-O, was commissioned in 1950 and served in Korea and Vietnam. The ship was sunk by the Navy in May 2006 under a pilot program to convert decommissioned vessels into artificial reefs. At 44,000 tons, it is by far the largest vessel ever sunk to make a reef.

The Navy currently holds 59 ships in inactive status, a number it hopes to reduce by as many as 20 over the next decade. Most will be dismantled and turned into scrap, but several will most likely become artificial reefs along the nation’s coastline, and the response to the Oriskany, the Navy says, has been encouraging.

Image The Oriskany being sunk off Pensacola in 2006. Credit... Jeffrey P. Kraus/Associated Press-U.S.Navy

“There’s definitely an enthusiasm for this,” said Glen Clark of the Navy’s Inactive Ships Program. “There’s actually more interest than we have ships.”