Deployment of Christ of the Gulf and the Manta on January 15,2023

On January 15, 2023, The Research Vessel Manta was deployed off Destin Florida. On it's deck was Christ of the Gulf, created by Glenn Camplejohn, a member of the Dive Club DeepWater Mafia of Mississippi. He constructed this Statue in 2018 after a failed deployment of a purchased Statue on September 22, 2017. The original Statue crumbled when it was hoisted up to put it in the water off Mississippi in Fish Haven FH-13. Glenn felt a calling to replace it and being the artistic guy he is, he made one himself out of concrete and reinforced this one significantly better. He attempted to have it deployed off Mississippi and also approached different city officials about putting it somewhere where people could see if from the mainland, like the Deer Island Jetty. But it consistently met resistance for things like separation of Church and State. But now, the State of Florida and Particularly Alex Fogg agreed to put it on the deck of their deployment of the Manta. On March 1, 2022, the Okaloosa Board of County Commissioners approved a 5-year plan to make Destin-Fort Walton Beach the dive capital of Florida, and allocated $2 million toward a pair of large research vessels as part of the first phase. This was the first phase, deploying the Manta at 30 07.650'N 86 24.164'W in 122' of water. Below are two videos. The first was my video of my dive directly after the sinking. The second is my compilation of the video I was privy to. Most of it is mine but I also got some from Alex Fogg which shows a closer high resolution view as well as some Drone Footage and some GoPro footage from on the vessel itself as she went down. I cut out a bunch of the time as it just showed lots of bubbles and commotion. We also made a dive about 15 miles to the East on the Miss Joann/Brannon/Dylan.


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