Underwater Photos: http://tiswango.com/photos/031227watertw/

Dive 1: Watertower Barge

Conditions:

Seas 4-6ft and sloppy

Sky: Partly Cloudy

Current: Slight North

Visibility: 80ft, blue water with whale snot

Air Temp: 74

Water Temp: 72

S: Jody (lead), Matt (lift bag, grapple), Robert (grapple line)

A: 21/35 Backgas, 50% Stage

D: 160ft plan, 173 max

D: 20 minutes

D: Around the barge, drift deco

D: 120/1 (deep) 70/5 60/3 50/1 40/1 30/2 20/8 10/5

On the boat was a new arrival, a grapple with 3ft of chain, 200ft of rope, and a big orange ball on top. After the misdrop on this site 4 weeks ago we made come changes to our dive procedures. Jody drove over the site and we dropped the grapple. There wasn’t any current so it was hard to tell if it caught. Its still valuable as a shot line and a point of reference to swim from if we couldn’t see the wreck.

We kitted up and Mike backed up to the float ball. We couldn’t see how close we were to the ball when we were told to dive. I tried spinning a 180, then making my stride, but the platform was a foot underwater and my fins wouldn’t move so I ended up doing a world class bellyflop into the water. My mask flooded, but stayed on my face. I made a couple of kicks to the surface, cleared it, to find the boat right next to me. The seas were pushing the boat on top of us. I dove hard to find Jody at 10ft on the line. I looked up to find Robert getting the ball line out from under the boat. After freeing the line, he joined us and we began our descent. The clear blue water was beautiful. The grapple was in the sand, but only 20-30 ft from the wall of the barge.

The 100 plus foot hopper barge sits upright in the sand with concrete culverts on the East side. The West side is barron, empty space. As we approached a large Black Grouper became startled at our pressence and shot inside a stress fracture. There were several Blacks and Scamp inside the culverts. Just past the barge on the East side is the water reserviour of an old water tower. Jody told me the bowl was attached to the top of the barge when it sunk, but fell off when it was put down.

We swam South to the other side of the barge where several Mutton snapper were swimming off in the sand. Blue Tang were all over the place. Turning East we headed around the tower. Seeing something so large and round underwater is unique. There Gray and Blackfin Snapper sprinkeled all over the sturcture.

Halfway around the bowl we swam into one of the many large holes in the resourviour. This inside felt like a monsterious cavern, the insides were coated with sediment which began to rain down on us after a couple of minutes of bubbles. While inside I was thinking of the circus performance where motorcycles ride in 360 degree loops inside a steel cage or the movie “Mad Max beyound Thunderdome”. Maybe I just need to up the HE content of my mix?

Directly in the center of the bowl at the floor was a square hole housing a Green Moray Eel. The morey was sticking up 2 ft out of the hole watching us swim around on the inside. I looked up and found a beautiful pattern in the top of the bowl. There was a large circle with 6 square holes cut around it. The deep blue light was pooring in. It reminded me of the sky light from the great cruise ships, Brittanic or the Doria.

We exited another hole heading West back over the barge. We followed the South side to the other end. There wasn’t much there. At the West end I peaked over the side of the barge to see if anything large was sleeping in the narrow area where the sloping barge meets the sand. Nothing there, so we dropped back inside the barge and swam up the North side to the culverts. I observed several schools of juvenile Purple and Yellowtail Reeffish. Striped Grunts and Tomtates were also present.

At 15 mintues into the dive, we swam over North wall to the outside of the barge to inspect the large fracture. There were large Gray Snapper living in the area. At 18 minutes we swam back over to the grapple and Robert showed us a new technique for retriveing the 200ft of 1/2 inch anchor line. Making a series of simple knots he reduced the size of the line and tied it off at 70ft when we began our deco. The grapple and ball floated free as we switched to our deco gas.

The 70ft stop was blissfully meditative. We all hovered in line perfectly with nobody moving. When it was time to move up, Jody had only to flinch and we would move up as we were very atune to what was going on. Besides the “whale snot” in the water (1 inch diameter little balls of goo) there are all kinds of jelly creatures floating around, especially at the 20ft stop. While hovering for the long 20ft stop a group of about 6 King Mackeral swam by at a distance.

Debrief:

1. Throw the grapple, line, and ball all out at once. The minute for the line to spool out pulled the grapple off the site while the boat was still moving.
2. Instead of backing us up to the ball in heavy seas, we should make a run heading into the seas and jump off as we pass the ball.
3. On the ascent, I didn’t need to pick up the grapple, just start wrapping the rope up the way Robert taught us. Instead of inflating my wing, I could have pulled the grapple up off the bottom with the rope, if I let go of the rope or grapple, I would be close to neutral bouyancy with my wing.
4. Jody ran deco and wasn’t clear on the deep stop or starting the stop watch. I just started mine and let it run. Robert suggested restarting the stop watch at the next stop to synch back up.

Team 2: Andrea, Jim V. and Mike W.

Dive 1: Miami Wall

The “Three Amigos” had a good time drifting the wall. The visibity wasn’t as good, but 50ft or so is still nice. In fact it was so nice all three of them “forgot” to run the practice drills they spoke about in their plan.