SPIEGEL GROVE, NOW UPRIGHT COURTESY OF DENNIS, REOPENS TO DIVERS

KEY LARGO, Florida Keys - Hurricane Dennis' gift to sport divers, an upright Spiegel Grove, is welcoming sport divers off Key Largo.

After more than three years resting on its starboard side, waves from Dennis pushed the 510-foot U.S. Navy ship Spiegel Grove into an upright position, before the hurricane brushed the Florida Keys July 9.

It's a position artificial reef project organizers have dreamed of since the retired 510-foot Navy Landing Ship Dock prematurely sunk and rolled over May 17, 2002, leaving the ship's upside-down bow protruding above the surface of the water.

Three weeks later, a salvage team managed to fully sink the vessel and it came to rest on its starboard side.

For more than three years, the Spiegel Grove has been the most popular artificial wreck in the Florida Keys and home to more than 160 different aquatic species, according to Lad Akins, executive director of the Reef Environmental Education Foundation.

According to Matt Strahan, meteorologist in charge at the National Weather Service Office in Key West, waves in the vicinity of the Spiegel Grove wreck site could have been has high as 20 feet by the afternoon of Friday, July 8.

"While we don't have the equipment in the Keys to accurately measure wave height, when Dennis was southeast of Cuba it would have produced very high waves that computer models project could have reached Key Largo," said Strahan. "Waves that high in close proximity to the reef can produce unusually strong currents with tremendous force."

Officials of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary performed a stability analysis and installed new mooring buoys.

"For the past three years, a northeast current flow has resulted in a dredging effect that dug a trench underneath and behind the starboard side of the ship," said Rob Bleser, project manager for the sinking. "The ship was anxious to roll.

"The ship is still positioned where it was, except it's now in an upright position, exactly how we originally planned it," Bleser said. "In its upright orientation, one is overwhelmed by a feeling of its history, massive size and the ship's ability to continue making history."

The Spiegel Grove, the largest vessel intentionally sunk to make an artificial reef, is positioned in 130 feet of water about six miles off Key Largo. The ship was designed to carry cargo and craft for amphibious landings, and was retired by the Navy in 1989.

And even after, encounters with Hurricanes Rita and Wilma, the Spiegel Grove hasn't budged an inch and is still upright, exactly where she is suppose to be.

For complete info on the Spiegel Grove project click here.