Photos from the dive:http://www.flickr.com/photos/tiswango/sets/72157621230282011/
We had two divers not show at the dock. Luckily, we three experienced divers we can accomplish all the core goals of our quarterly monitoring.
The Seahorse is a 46ft Louisiana shrimp boat that has been modified into a recreational dive boat for archeology and other projects. Its slow, but with a full kitchen, bbq grill, AC, and French onion chip dip, the day flys by!
We left at 9 AM and headed to the borrow pit. Team leader David Kaplan and I jumped in to find the sediment bottles in the sand. We hit the bottom, and I thought I was on the reef ledge until my depth gauge broke thru my tunnel vision narcosis that I was up off the sand in 90ft of water. Swimming back to the ledge I didn't recognize the area so I was left with the classic decision of "right or left". When you are not sure of where you are, you don't know where to go?
I bet on a big lead into the drop point and went South with the current. The ledge faded and my cheerleader "You can save this dive" faded back. I started kicking myself when the bottom timer said 10 minutes. I just broke another cardinal rule of research diving.
"If you don't find you site in 5 minutes, surface and drop again." A diver is never going to find a site when lost because you don't know where you are and where you jumped it at.
We surfaced, donned fresh tanks and reviewed the drop with the captain. Jumping in again, my confidence was shot and I was beating myself up for breaking a rule I haven't had to use in years. I've always had great drops! As we went down my internal map said, "yeah, this is the place" and I swam right to the bottles. One sediment bottle was broken, the rest were intact. We changed them, took a visibility reading and surfaced in 15 minutes. I had more gas left over than after the first dive!
The second dive was on Jeff's Ledge, the 55ft 3rd reef line off Commercial Pier. The current was ripping so the three of us made a quick decent. David found the bottles as I was getting dragged to the reef by the dive flag. I hit bottom and grabbed some rock with my hands. Andrea was ahead and fine. I pulled and glided my way back to the site and tied the flag off. The current wasn't bad on the bottom. Andrea did her fish count while David and I changed the bottles. Then we shot the 20 frame photo Mosaic on the bottom. 35 minutes we drifted off and ascend with the mission accomplished.
We had lunch and planned the 3rd dive on the shallow reef in 40ft of water. David borrowed a tank from the boat. Andrea volunteered to take the AL80 with 2200 psi for the fish count and I took her third tank. I use more gas taking pictures making constant buoyancy adjustments. Again I usually bring a stage AL80 just in case, but all our trips have gone so well I just haven't needed it.
The current was moving again and this time I left the flag on the boat. We jump in and hit the bottles. Made the switch and shot our photos. After packing up I shot a lift bag. Andrea was down to 800 psi so we shared gas as we drifted down the reef for 10 minutes and then ascended.
After showering and cleaning up, I down loaded the photos and made a copy on a USB drive for David Kaplan to take home and process. It was a great day on the water with many good lessons remembered and reinforced!
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