In the arid landscape near Santa Rosa, New Mexico lies a handful of artisan springs. A couple of the springs lay on public property, such as the Blue Hole and Perch Lake, while others are on private property, like Rock Lake.
Blue Hole is a popular open water and advanced open water training area for New Mexico, Colorado, and Texas dive shops because it offers a constant water temperature year round of about 62 degrees, visibility that ranges from about 30 - 100'+, and a maximum depth of around 80'. The aquifer pumps out about 3000 gallons of water a minute at Blue Hole, providing very good water conditions, typically. At the surface, Blue Hole has a diameter of about 60' and bells out towards the bottom to about 140'
Rock Lake is about 400' in diameter at the surface, cuts in pretty dramatically at about 100', then bells back out to a maximum depth of about 280'. The aquifer pumps about 6000 gallons of water an hour, most of which is piped to a nearby fish hatchery. With a much larger area, the water temperature doesn't stay as constant as the Blue Hole. During the summer the surface water forms a thermocline, as well as an algae bloom, that warms the water from about 40' to the surface to around 75 degrees. Below the thermocline the water temperature ranges between 55 - 60 degrees. In the winter, the water temperature is top to bottom 55 degrees. Rock Lake is also very unique, compared to the other springs in the region. Various places in the lake have red and white clay banks exposed on the walls. In those clay banks you can generally find clusters of selenite gypsum crystals. It's ecosystem also supports the growth of a rare fresh water sponge, striped bass, perch, western painted turtles, and some other small organisms that I keep finding, but have been unable to identify yet.
Once a month the UTD Rocky Mountains crew gathers from New Mexico, Texas, and Colorado and converge in Santa Rosa to do training dives, fun dives, explore the nooks and crevices in Rock Lake, and just to enjoy the company of friends. Dive 399 was a tech 1 dive with my buddy Justin and Michael. This was going to be Michaels' first post class tech 1 dive. The plan was to drop down the east descent line, swim north to the 130' shelf and look at the crystals for a few minutes. Then swim the circumference of the spring at 130' until we hit 35 minutes, at which point we would do a gentle swimming deco to our entry point. The dive went smoothly. We spent about 10 minutes giving the shelf a nice look through gazing at the crystals and admiring the untouched clay. Above the thermocline the water was green and brown due to the algae bloom, with a visibility of about 20 feet. Past 100' the water was dark with the visibility at about 40 feet feet with fairly large particulate suspended in the water. Looking up you can see the green hue of the surface. After we were satisfied with our crystal gazing we continued our swim. Gently swimming a long the wall looking for other shelves with clay banks. For the most part, the walls very odd. The outer shell of the walls are some sort of sedimentary rock that is crystalline in nature, but it appears that the water has dissolved tiny pores all over the rock. Behind the "shell" appears to be limestone, clay, and possibly some metamorphic rock. We didn't find very many shelves along 130', but there do appear to be some larges shelves below that at around 150'. When it was time to start making our ascent, Michael had gotten some cramps in his legs, which slowed our ascent somewhat. We had already planned to do a few more minutes on O2 at our 20' stop due to my back gas being a little light on O2 (21/25 -- due to my own blending screw up). We were only a couple minutes slow getting to our 20' stop and spent the remainder of the deco doing a gentle swim back to our entry, watching the fish swim out of the hydrilla to take a peak at it's visitors. Very nice dive.
Max Depth: 135'
Average Depth: 130'
Bottom Time: 35 minutes
Run Time: 75 minutes
Gas: 25/25 BG, O2 Deco
Deco: RD 1:1
During our SIT, we went back to the hotel to eat with friends then Justin and I went to do a night dive in Blue Hole. I had my double LP108's still geared with about 1500 PSI of 21/25 and I took a stage of 32% to breath during this dive. We were the only people at the Blue Hole diving Friday night, which was very nice. We had the place to ourselves and the visibility was immaculate. We cruised the bottom looking into the cracks and crevices, day dreaming about what lays beyond them. At one point I had swam under an overhang thats about 3 feet from the bottom of a very silty portion of the floor to look at a room beyond a crack in the wall. When I turned around I pinned myself to the ceiling in my effort to try not to sild up the bottom. I ended up pressing my heals against the ceiling and pushing gently, but still managed to run my belly and the nose of my stage right through the silt. Justin ended up laughing so hard that he fell into the silt as well. At that point, I didn't feel so bad for messing up our perfect visibility.
We swam around for a while longer and spent the majority of our 20' stop taunting crawdads. Very relaxing dive 400.
Maximum Depth: 77
Average Depth: 60
Bottom Time: 56 minutes
Gas: EAN32
Deco: Min. Deco
Blue Hole is a popular open water and advanced open water training area for New Mexico, Colorado, and Texas dive shops because it offers a constant water temperature year round of about 62 degrees, visibility that ranges from about 30 - 100'+, and a maximum depth of around 80'. The aquifer pumps out about 3000 gallons of water a minute at Blue Hole, providing very good water conditions, typically. At the surface, Blue Hole has a diameter of about 60' and bells out towards the bottom to about 140'
Rock Lake is about 400' in diameter at the surface, cuts in pretty dramatically at about 100', then bells back out to a maximum depth of about 280'. The aquifer pumps about 6000 gallons of water an hour, most of which is piped to a nearby fish hatchery. With a much larger area, the water temperature doesn't stay as constant as the Blue Hole. During the summer the surface water forms a thermocline, as well as an algae bloom, that warms the water from about 40' to the surface to around 75 degrees. Below the thermocline the water temperature ranges between 55 - 60 degrees. In the winter, the water temperature is top to bottom 55 degrees. Rock Lake is also very unique, compared to the other springs in the region. Various places in the lake have red and white clay banks exposed on the walls. In those clay banks you can generally find clusters of selenite gypsum crystals. It's ecosystem also supports the growth of a rare fresh water sponge, striped bass, perch, western painted turtles, and some other small organisms that I keep finding, but have been unable to identify yet.
Once a month the UTD Rocky Mountains crew gathers from New Mexico, Texas, and Colorado and converge in Santa Rosa to do training dives, fun dives, explore the nooks and crevices in Rock Lake, and just to enjoy the company of friends. Dive 399 was a tech 1 dive with my buddy Justin and Michael. This was going to be Michaels' first post class tech 1 dive. The plan was to drop down the east descent line, swim north to the 130' shelf and look at the crystals for a few minutes. Then swim the circumference of the spring at 130' until we hit 35 minutes, at which point we would do a gentle swimming deco to our entry point. The dive went smoothly. We spent about 10 minutes giving the shelf a nice look through gazing at the crystals and admiring the untouched clay. Above the thermocline the water was green and brown due to the algae bloom, with a visibility of about 20 feet. Past 100' the water was dark with the visibility at about 40 feet feet with fairly large particulate suspended in the water. Looking up you can see the green hue of the surface. After we were satisfied with our crystal gazing we continued our swim. Gently swimming a long the wall looking for other shelves with clay banks. For the most part, the walls very odd. The outer shell of the walls are some sort of sedimentary rock that is crystalline in nature, but it appears that the water has dissolved tiny pores all over the rock. Behind the "shell" appears to be limestone, clay, and possibly some metamorphic rock. We didn't find very many shelves along 130', but there do appear to be some larges shelves below that at around 150'. When it was time to start making our ascent, Michael had gotten some cramps in his legs, which slowed our ascent somewhat. We had already planned to do a few more minutes on O2 at our 20' stop due to my back gas being a little light on O2 (21/25 -- due to my own blending screw up). We were only a couple minutes slow getting to our 20' stop and spent the remainder of the deco doing a gentle swim back to our entry, watching the fish swim out of the hydrilla to take a peak at it's visitors. Very nice dive.
Max Depth: 135'
Average Depth: 130'
Bottom Time: 35 minutes
Run Time: 75 minutes
Gas: 25/25 BG, O2 Deco
Deco: RD 1:1
During our SIT, we went back to the hotel to eat with friends then Justin and I went to do a night dive in Blue Hole. I had my double LP108's still geared with about 1500 PSI of 21/25 and I took a stage of 32% to breath during this dive. We were the only people at the Blue Hole diving Friday night, which was very nice. We had the place to ourselves and the visibility was immaculate. We cruised the bottom looking into the cracks and crevices, day dreaming about what lays beyond them. At one point I had swam under an overhang thats about 3 feet from the bottom of a very silty portion of the floor to look at a room beyond a crack in the wall. When I turned around I pinned myself to the ceiling in my effort to try not to sild up the bottom. I ended up pressing my heals against the ceiling and pushing gently, but still managed to run my belly and the nose of my stage right through the silt. Justin ended up laughing so hard that he fell into the silt as well. At that point, I didn't feel so bad for messing up our perfect visibility.
We swam around for a while longer and spent the majority of our 20' stop taunting crawdads. Very relaxing dive 400.Maximum Depth: 77
Average Depth: 60
Bottom Time: 56 minutes
Gas: EAN32
Deco: Min. Deco
