The hull of the <I>Spiegel Grove</I>, once so white that it seemed incandescent in the depths, now glows with a different bounty of undersea hues.<BR><BR>A decade since May 17, 2002, when the 510-foot retired U.S. Navy ship mostly vanished from the surface, the ocean has claimed the <I>Spiegel Grove</I> as its own. A luxuriant coating of corals, both stony and soft, have fastened to the metal hull and bulkheads.</p><p>"It's best to take a flashlight with you," Key Largo dive videographer Frazier Nivens said after surfacing from a 10-year anniversary dive Wednesday. "When you turn on the light, the whole thing just explodes with color," said Nivens, owner of Ocean Imaging. "There are corals and sea fans everywhere you look."</p><p>The gun mounts on the former dock landing ship, a signature location at the <I>Spiegel Grove</I>, have nearly disappeared beneath layers of polychromatic growth. Marine denizens range from hulking barracuda and Goliath grouper to the tiny but fearless damselfish that nip at divers' fingers to protect their nesting brood. Gray snapper form more than schools; they create living clouds.</p><p>Volunteers and staff with the Reef Environmental Education Foundation have logged more than 200 species of fish that either live on the shipwreck or visit occasionally.</p><p><B>Big boon to tourism</B></p><p>Upper Keys dive shops and the Key Largo Chamber of Commerce, which sponsored the effort to acquire and sink the <I>Spiegel Grove</I>, prefer to count dollars. Surveys of boats dropping divers at the Spiegel Grove indicate the wreck lures tens of thousands of people each year.</p><p>That adds up to about $25 million generated into the local economy in vacationers' spending on boat trips, motel rooms and restaurants over the past 10 years, said Russ Yagel, chairman of the Key Largo Chamber of Commerce. "It's a big attraction."</p><p>"The <I>Spiegel Grove</I> has paid for itself 20 times over," Spencer Slate of Capt. Slate's Atlantis Dive Center said while hosting Wednesday's 10-year commemorative dive. "Except for the buoys, we've never put another dollar into it," Slate said. "You can't argue with me about the value of sinking ships."</p><p>"We have some groups that come down every few months just to dive this wreck," said Slate, who headed the project through several years of hurdles. "We dive the <I>Spiegel Grove</I> three to five days a week, conditions permitting. And it's surprising not to see at least one other boat out there."</p><p>A shipwreck-reef committee of the Key Largo chamber labored for eight years to raise the money and win government approval needed to move the <I>Spiegel Grove</I> from its mooring in the mothball fleet in Virginia's James River to a spot beyond the Key Largo reef line, not far from Dixie Shoals.</p><p><B>A disaster early on</B></p><p>Debate raged a decade ago over whether the sinking was worth the $1.3 million cost. That number jumped to nearly $2 million when the scheduled May 2002 scuttling went awry in a major way.</p><p>Water flooded the well deck in the final hours of pre-sinking preparation, forcing a crew of about 40 volunteers to abandon ship. The ship listed to starboard, then rolled over completely.</p><p>The stern hit the bottom 130 feet down, but a pocket of air trapped in the bow kept the ship from sinking completely. The ship stayed that way for three weeks while a marine-salvage firm mapped out a plan to keep the <I>Spiegel Grove</I> from landing upside down on sea floor -- which would virtually destroy its value as a dive site.</p><p>Critics mocked the <I>Spiegel Grove</I> as the ship that would not sink.</p><p>On June 10, 2002, the effort by Resolve Marine of Fort Lauderdale put the ship on the bottom, starboard side down. Since the complex superstructure remained intact, it was hailed as a huge success.</p><p>Then in July 2005, Hurricane Dennis tossed waters in the Florida Straits. The storm had little effect on the Keys but powerful currents pushed the <I>Spiegel Grove</I> upright -- making it a perfect dive.</p><p>"It's so flat, you could play polo on the top deck," Quiescence Dive Shop owner Rob Bleser, who coordinated the final stages of the project, said in 2005.</p><p>Slate recalled the day when he heard the <I>Spiegel Grove</I> had rolled upright. "There were tears in my eyes from the joy," he said.</p><p>"I knew it was going to be a safer dive, and that it wouldn't collapse on itself like ships on their side do," Slate said. "The <I>Spiegel Grove</I> is going to be there forever."</p><p>The remaining amount due on loans taken out to sink the <I>Spiegel Grove</I> has shriveled to about $17,000 due to the successful sale of $10 annual medallions sold at local dive operations offering shipwreck dives. "We're still selling medallions, which is a big indicator of the project's success," Yagel said.