Awesome Dive....Indoors

[darylm74]

I just dove at the Pittsburgh zoo today and it was awesome. It felt good to be able to give back to the community and also to a place my son visits several times (20-30) times a year. I am not sure if anyone else on this board has had the chance to help in this type of manner but I would greatly encourage it. I am totally exhausted after the day but feel like I really made things great for other people by helping to keep the tanks pristine.

I have to say, only being a 90,000 gallon tank (and 28 feet deep), it was one of my most difficult dives. We were not allowed to use fins, a pretty constant current pushing you to the middle of the tank, and holding onto a pressure washer while staying still is not the easiest.

Can't wait until next month when it is my time again. Hopefully I will be able to dive the penguin tank next time.

 

[Tamas]

What was it that you had to do in the tank?

 

[The Chairman]

That sounds cool!

 

[darylm74]

What was it that you had to do in the tank?

We had to scrub down the rocks and fake coral as well as clean out the crushed coral on the bottom. We also had to scrub the glass on the tank, without scratching the acrylic. We had 4 members in our team, with my partner and I working an adjacent tank in the beginning that was only 12 feet deep. We just had to be very aware of each other with respect to the pressure washers as well as aware of the fish and eels in that tank (which the zoo staff forgot to warn us about the small eels in that tank). We just had to be very aware.

We then switched to the big tank where the sharks were. It was almost like rock climbing as there was constant current pushing us to the center of the tank as well as the pressure from the pressure washer or general thrust from scrubbing hard. The hard part was that it didn't have a clean entry point and you had to watch the reef tip sharks on the top and the big moray's on the bottom. This all had to be done without fins....which was a huge learning experience.

 

[XJae]

sounds like a fun dive. we've talked about possibly doing this in the nj aquarium.
why no fins? are they worried about the "fragile environment"?
also, are they afraid of contamination from your gear?
i know some places won't let you use your own equipment.

 

[darylm74]

The issue with the fins is as you said, fragile environment. Another issue is that something on your fin could scratch the acrylic glass of the aquarium if you hit it. We were warned to check our boots if we had touched bottom to make sure there was no crushed coral. They have us use our own gear, except weights and tanks. He told us that as long as our gear was dry, and not washed with any soap, that it would kill 99.99% of all bacteria that would cause a problem with their tanks and said it was not even a worry. He just warned agains using soaps (and of course no peeing in the tanks, but there is a bathroom right outside the tank if need be). The one thing I liked most is, they left us alone. They got us started, as we were one of the new teams added to the lineup, and they watched us for maybe 2 minutes and then off they went. My understanding is that good help has been hard to find at times there, so they're not going to complain as long as you don't screw up something.