Pulley Ridge

Hi Friends,

Mike and Casey goofing around on decompression.

I'm now safely back in Miami after a fortnight's adventure at sea was cut short by 3 days due to the impending tropical storm/hurricane Isaac that was coming in from the Caribbean.  Overall it was a successful trip and it is the first of about 5 trips that I will be taking for this project.  As I might have said before, the capacity to which I was a part of the team was as the support diver for the rebreather dives.  The way I work as a support diver is by getting the team in their gear which includes a rebreather, lift bags, reels of line, clips, hoses, 3 extra stage deco bottles they clip onto their left sides (see the photo from the last post), and collection tools.  Each of the four divers has the configuration slightly different so although the beginning phase was slow, I was setting them all up in a flash by the end of it.

Rebreather team

I honestly don't really know much about the science that was going on during this research cruise.  I do know that the rebreather team, other than the three dives it took to set up the instruments on the moorings as mentioned a couple posts back, were diving to collect samples of specific fish, corals, sponges, and algae.

Me on deco, photo credit Casey

Yes, the cruise was a success all things considered.  Sure we had to go home 3 days early and cut our productivity, but for the time we were out there we were working very hard and very well together.

I got home Saturday evening and spent that night and all day Sunday with Christina at home taking shelter from Tropical Storm Isaac as we were hit with rain.  She had work today but when she got there they told everyone to go home after an hour or two because it was too rough to take any boats out and a little too dicey to be taking down all the hurricane shutters yet.  So... she came back home to me and we're spending time together by finishing a movie we started yesterday, making dinner, learning more salsa moves, and now reading.  Well, she's reading while I'm posting this update.

We had up to 10 silky sharks at a time.

Work is going to kick off tomorrow in full swing.  As I've mentioned, we're teaching two classes this semester (same course but 2 different sections) so it will be much more demanding than ever before.  Tomorrow the students are not having their pool session tomorrow since we need to go over a few lecture sessions before we can get them in the water so the whole day will be spent getting everything situated for the semester ahead such as packing everything away from the cruise and figuring out space for all of the new gear that we had to purchase to accommodate the double enrollment.

Sharks all around us!

The semester ahead will be busy so I hope I find time here and there to keep everyone updated!

Quick Update

Casey and the shark.

I'm really tired so this is going to be short.  On the dive today (which remember, I'm only a support diver so I'm not seeing the bottom) we saw a 6-7ft silky shark and a pair of adult dolphins.  They came and went throughout the decompression, never seeing the shark and dolphins at the same time.  It was the first time I ever heard dolphins communicating underwater.  A very cool experience.  Things are going well and I'm having a great experience.

Out to Sea

Research Vessel F. G. Walton Smith

I’m back out to sea for work yet again, for the last time for many months to come.  We came on board Tuesday the 14^th at 6:30am.  The Walton Smith was under way less than an hour later.  Tuesday was spent getting familiar with the boat, watching a required UNOLS video, going through a boat orientation, having science meetings, and setting up our gear.  It was a slow day and I was very tired for most of it.  Yesterday was the first diving operation.  I’ll spare the details but a couple enormous weights are dropped and 2 rebreather divers descend to 180ft (50+m) to attach some instruments to them and connect a line between the two weights.  They will send up a buoy when they are on decompression which is the cue for me to descend and meet them at 100ft (30m).  I take information from the divers about their well-being and the decompression schedule, ascend and relay the information to the boat, then drop back down to be with the divers for the remainder of their ascent.  The dive I completed yesterday was to 98ft for 61 minutes.

By the end of the day yesterday we set up the second site with the two massive weights and the plan was to complete the dives on them this morning.  Everything was set and the divers entered the water on time.  Within 5 minutes, they surfaced with a current that was unbeatable even with torpedo-like scooters with which to fight it.

We are now in transit to Pulley ridge where we will set up the third and final mooring site and do a dive there.  By sunset, another part of the project will start up that involves me to dive to about 30ft (10m) to set up what is called a light trap.  It’s an apparatus that involves a net and a flashlight that will be set up at sunset and retrieved at sunrise to trap larval fish.

Hopefully we will be able to make everything happen according to plans from here on out!