Crawl79
Contributor
This past weekend while waiting dockside in Araial do Cabo I had the chance to meet an ex Brasil Marinha Officer who was giving training for underwater explosives search to a group of Marinha divers called the DAE. I invited him to dinner on the ship and gave him a tour of our AUV. After he invited me to dive with them the next morning. That night they would be doing a trianing dive under our ship but the next morning they were going offshore for some fun dives. I excepted since I was waiting for a part that would not be in for a few days.
The next morning I arrived to the best day weather wise in a week. I boarded the Navy boat and we were off, we ended up about a mile from dock and I could still see my survey ship so I felt good. Was a tough dive for me since I was diving with Navy divers. Instead of taking the Zodiak we went for a 150m swim before going down in strong current but as soon as was down I was greeted with large schools of big fish. We were diving next to rock wall from the island near the sands edge. Depths were 30 to 55ft. I saw for the first time 3 different flying gunards while swimming into the swift current. A total of 5 different small turtles. And many other fishes that I have and have not seen diving in the GOM and the Carribean. After the dive we surfaced blew a whiltle and were picked up by Zodiac for transport back to the ship. This was a trip of a lifetime and I thank all the crew and my new friends who in their best English and my worst Portuguese became my friends, diving is definetly a family sport.
Eric Quirk
AUV Field Project Manager
The next morning I arrived to the best day weather wise in a week. I boarded the Navy boat and we were off, we ended up about a mile from dock and I could still see my survey ship so I felt good. Was a tough dive for me since I was diving with Navy divers. Instead of taking the Zodiak we went for a 150m swim before going down in strong current but as soon as was down I was greeted with large schools of big fish. We were diving next to rock wall from the island near the sands edge. Depths were 30 to 55ft. I saw for the first time 3 different flying gunards while swimming into the swift current. A total of 5 different small turtles. And many other fishes that I have and have not seen diving in the GOM and the Carribean. After the dive we surfaced blew a whiltle and were picked up by Zodiac for transport back to the ship. This was a trip of a lifetime and I thank all the crew and my new friends who in their best English and my worst Portuguese became my friends, diving is definetly a family sport.
Eric Quirk
AUV Field Project Manager
