Eclectic Echoes

Yesterday I was really jazzed to get in to the dive locker. I had emailed my normal dive buddy, Joe, an ex-navy undergraduate who seriously loves to be underwater, over the weekend and invited him to do a fish count and proficiency dive. I need more time in doubles to get really familiar with them. Naturally he said yes, so we were on. We set 11:30am as the time to meet at the dive locker.

After working a bit from home, I got ready to bike in to campus and walked out the door at 10:40am for a 45 minute commute, taking the cyclocross route along the coast that I like best. I felt well rested and my legs were ticking over really well, but as I got down to Noank, which is about 5km in, I had a sinking feeling. Had I remembered my dive computer? A quick check of the panniers confirmed that I had not.

I decided I really wanted the computer, so I turned around and added an extra 15 minutes to the commute. Now I would, at best, be 10-15 minutes late. The rest of the commute was great, with a new personal best for the route, minus the false start. It was a bit late to see much wildlife on the route, but I did see several herons and one scrambling woodchuck.

Joe was waiting in the dive locker when I arrived 10 minutes late. The tanks were already filled, so as I verified the blend and fill of my tank, we talked about the amazing women’s world cup game from the day before. Before heading off to get some lunch, we went up to see our dive safety officer (DSO) who had just gotten back from vacation. While he was away we had several dives and on one of them I flooded one of the locker’s canister lights. I wanted to tell him in person and find out what needed to be done to get it fixed.

Unfortunately, it was not just any light. It was his favorite light from Salvo (now Light Monkey) with a custom made cable so it would fit his rebreather rig perfectly. Ouch.

What’s more, I knew he had a buoy maintenance dive in the Western Long Island Sound (WLIS) on Wednesday. Diving in Western Long Island Sound is a bit like diving in a giant cup of dark tea. Pea soup plankton blooms this time of the year, plus lots of tannins, particulate matter, and other crap in the water make it the ultimate low vis dive. At the surface vis can be as low as 1′ and at depth it gets so dark, you can’t see your hand 5 inches from your face without a GOOD light. Considering we have instruments at depth on the buoys, Western Long Island Sound is the ultimate testing ground for our dive lights. Salvo’s and Light Monkey lights are the dive locker’s favorites out there. Spendy, but they really cut through it all and deliver a lot of light, plus Light Monkey has a great reputation for service.

After taking my ass-chewing for flooding the light, I called Light Monkey, who set up a repair for us. They told me they could turn the lights around in one day. No way we could get them back in time for the WLIS dive, but we should still have them back by the end of the week. I boxed up the flooded light and a second light with a shorter cable that also needed some routine attention. Dive lockers are notoriously hard on gear! After almost 3 hours we managed to get everything taken care of and the lights off to Florida with express service.

Finally, we could get back to the dive. Instead of our original noon start time, we crawled over the seawall by the dive locker (that’s a real joy in doubles, mind you!) and into the water at 3:04pm. It was a great dive too. Visibility in the cove was about 5′ and filamentous algae covered the bottom. But as soon as we got out of the shallows, vis opened up to maybe 10′ and the filamentous algae disappeared, revealing a thick carpet of macro algae and sea grasses. It seems to be an especially good year for the sea grasses and kelp, denser and much larger patches than I remember any year before.

Our original plan was to go all the way around the campus from the dive locker beach to the boat launch beach on the opposite side (a swim of a little over a half mile). I had 200 cubic feet of air at 3500psi and Joe was on a rebreather, so we had plenty of air. Unfortunately, the tides were not really with us. By the time we reached the halfway point, the tidal currents had turned, so that the second half of the dive would be straight into them. We decided to turn around and let the currents give us an easier swim back to the dive locker.

The fish count went great. We saw fluke (a.k.a. summer flounder) (Paralichthys dentatus), cunner (Tautogolabrus adspersus), grubby sculpin (Myoxocephalus aeneus) and tautog (Tautoga onitis), as well as blue crabs (Callinectes sapidus), spider crabs (Libinia emarginata), and three horseshoe crabs (Limulus polyphemus), including a very large male. There were many young of the year winter flounder (Pseudopleuronectes americanus), from a half an inch to 2 inches long.

As we were finishing our surface swim into the beach (too shallow to dive with the surge, too deep and rocky to walk), we noticed the DSO’s pickup truck parked right at the sea wall. As it was a bit late, we knew he was waiting for us. As we climbed up on the beach, he asked after the dive, what we saw etc., then casually asked who the lead diver was. Joe and I had never really settled who the lead diver was. He has ten times my experience, but I had suggested doing the dive, so I took the responsibility (knowing the other shoe was about to drop, most likely on my gluteus maximus). Sure enough, in all the confusion about the lights, I had forgotten to fill out the dive plan log on the marine operations bulletin board. We had fully briefed the DSO, but someone asked the marine operations manager if the divers off the Point were university divers. He didn’t know, but went down to the marine operations bulletin board to see. Ooops! Lesson learned and reinforced well.

Ass-chewings, by the way, do obey the laws of gravity, picking up momentum as they go downhill.

Still, all in all, it was a great day. I got some good news about a potential discount on some equipment I need for my research and I got in a 2 hour and 14 minute dive!