Quarry Diving?

[MNJoe]

Where I live the quarries we dive in are abandoned iron ore mines. While they were being worked they went below the water table, but pumped water out while they worked the quarry. When there was not enough iron ore left to make it worth working the quarry, they stopped pumping the water out, so the quarry filled up. The diving is pretty mediocre, but it is great for training, practice, testing equipment or just to keep your skills current. And yes they are deep, so they work well for tech dive training and practice also.

 

[iluvtheocean]

When a quarry is in use, the company can employ pumps to keep water out. Nobody fills them with a garden hose like a backyard pool. The one here in VA was seeded with zebra mussels and the g ame wardens found out and **** all over the local LDS. Visibility was great until the state killed off the mussels with potassium in fhe water.

Zebra mussels are considered an invasive species in the US per federal law National Invasive Species Act (1996).


i'm very leery of trying quarry diving down here... not sure if any gators have decided to make them their homes.

 

[00wabbit]

I dive in the local quarries when we can't dive in the Great Lakes.

Here are some pics and videos of our local playgrounds.

[video=youtube;gTvUkJ-kiDE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTvUkJ-kiDE[/video]

[video=youtube;SUX6dqxVBsQ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUX6dqxVBsQ[/video]

Haigh Quarry 11-9-13 - a set on Flickr

Phillips Quarry - a set on Flickr

Gilboa 11-3-13 - a set on Flickr

Great Lakes Wrecking Crew Meet and Greet - a set on Flickr

People use the quarries to get out and have fun and keep their skills sharp. We don't have oceans near us, the only option for diving is the Great lakes, but they are a couple hours away and can't dive them in the winter.

 

[Barrod]

You can google them to see pics of the damage zebra mussels cause to infrastructure and wildlife. Ive seen pics of lobsters completely covered in them.

The LDS that put them in there is very short sighted.

 

[NAM001]

You are very much correct. They are abandoned clay rock and other reaource quarries. perhaps about 10 acres to 55 acres in size. Look like a peacefull lake or a giant swimming pool. folks have boiught them and put like you said busses planes, cars, boats, culvert ( burried and non buried), platforms ect. They may be anywhere from 20 to 70 ft in depth. Some in my area are Athens scuba park, Mammoth Scuba park CSSP (Clear springs scuba park), and Blue Lagoon. Although many do not concider these real diving, those who use them like myself do. They provide areas for formal training. Many have facilities for camping RVing ect. They have no boating unles it is paddle powered. Full public services available. When you cant make the 5-700 mile trip to REAL diving locations, these places are as good as it gets. Divers by the handfulls use these parks. Granted there are vast differences between these parks and an open ocean environment, but they serve thier purpose. Perhaps these places are the basis for my belief that one should have a min of an aow to do the ocean boat dives. Of the places i listed near me (within 250 miles). Blue lagoon rock quarrie alkaline with clay sediment vis 50 ft. Athens vis 10-20 ft disneyland with all the stuff on the bottom 25 ft max depth water 80 ish. CSSP rock and more natural bottom 20-70 feet spring fed and cold with multiple thermaclines. Great dry suit location. And then the mother load Mammoth. 55 acres of manmade diving joy. Built from a dry quarrie. burried culvert c130 plane fire trucks buses the list go's on and on. could take you a week to do it all. on site camping. You will need to look thees up on the net to get the full appreciation of it. One can spend a week of diving in these for the cost of one day on a local boat. probably a thousand dives for every ocean dive are done in facilities like these. I got my intro to night diving and caving at Athens and persued frog kicks till i could navigate the culverts with minimal silting. I am still not good at it. For more of real world diving there is Lake travis 5-6 hours away when it has water in it to dive in. Drought has hurt that area severly in the past few years. The only downside to these facilities is that for training purposes many courses are geared for this kind of primary diving and do not cover open ocean or depth related skills mastering.

I've been reading that a lot of people have been diving in a quarries. Now where I'm from a quarry is like a mine, you know a big hole dug in the ground to get rocks and stuff out of. So I'm imagining someone has filled an old quarry with water and you guys dive in it? (I'm Australian, sorry)

does that sound right? Cos it seems a lot of you guys have quarry dived and it's confusing me. Sounds pretty cool though. Are these quarries just for diving? Or is there all manner of water sports going on?

I'm imagining like Disney land for diving... Like they have thrown fish in and sunk old boats and stuff in it.

 

[Phil_C]

Here's my nearest organised quarry - we have a few others closer, but which are not dedicated to diving.

This open has a dive shop, bar, air fill station, indoor pool and so on -



There are a couple of sunken boats, a submarine, a couple of planes, and numerous vehicles that have been put into the quarry. - Weekends the site gets 100's of divers - but if I go weekdays then there are a lot less - maybe 20 or so, and you can dive without bumping into anyone else.

P

 

[Phil_C]

Max depth 35 metres -but lots of shallower areas for training and inexperienced divers.

 

[drrich2]

I live near the town where the quarry tstormdiver referred to is located. They've got a good website, Pennyroyal Blue Springs Resort, and it's located in southwestern Kentucky, a land-locked state. A whole lot of the region's scuba training is done here. For me, it offers a number of advantages:

1.) I can dive periodically and keep in practice, even in a land-locked state far from the ocean.

2.) I can test out different weighting or gear configurations in a no-current environment with no concerns about over-head boats, or being 'lost at sea' far from shore.

3.) I can drop down through the thermoclines and see whether I experience perceptible nitrogen narcosis at decent depths (I'm aware you can be quite narced without knowing it), and how well I tolerate cold temp.s with a given outfit (I know that I can dive 45 degree water in a 5 mm wet suit, 5 mm gloves and a 7 mm hood as a result).

4.) I can take courses, since this site is a big draw for regional dive shops.

5.) Diving is fun, even in a quarry.

Richard.

 

[Stampsalot]

I find this really amazing. I never knew such things existed. There is a huge open cut mine out in Kalgoorlie called the superpit. It's something like 4 km wide and 1.5 km deep. ... .. If I had enough evian.

your IP addresses have been logged. One day i may show up at your door and sleep on your couch, hopefully you can show me diving disneys. ;P

 

[clownfishsydney]

As far as I know there is only one quarry in Australia that can be dived (quarries are called open cut mines here if big, quarries if small) and that is the old uranium mine in NT south of Darwin. As far as I know, there are no proper mines (that is shaft mines) that can be dived.

I suggest looking for a better dive shop in Melbourne to dive with. The diving there is quite good.