Josh, Bill and I did a couple of dives at Burro Island. The lake is high enough now that the outer reaches of the island are only accessable by wading tummy deep across to the far east end of the island which is still, for now, above water.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. We drove out on Burro Island as far as we could without getting our tires wet and set up our base camp. On our first dive we descended and swam south to 40 feet then turned east for a while. We followed the counture around to the south again and let it lead us down. At around 60 feet we came to the edge of the good vis. Literally.
We had 30+ foot vis until then. Below us we could see the bottom conture descend into a heavy haze. Any feature that went into the haze disappeared almost immediately. We HAD to see what was there. I don't recall feeling a thermocline but there was certainly some differance between here and 8 to 10 feet above us. From here the vis was limited to how far our lights penetrated into the void. We found a wall with a deep undercut area. We explored in and around the undercut and at some point along the way I saw a hole big enough and deep enough to fit my arm into. Peeking deep inside my divelight revealed a set of pinchers roughly the width of my hand. Yikes! At 89 feet the temp was 62 degrees.
We turned again to the east and went up the wall to 40 feet before truning back to the north. We did a swimming deep stop maintaining 40 feet for several minutes before slipping up to 20 feet again. Bill clipped a dive flag a few feet up from the anchor of his dive bouy. This served as a dandy visual referance to help us navigate back to the beginning.
The surface interval was pretty chilly. The wind blew right off the lake and right square into our base. We kept our 7mms on and wrapped up in our towels. I kicked myself for not bringing my boatcoat. I had a couple of sweatshirts though so after the initial shock of the wind hitting my wetsuit I started to warm up a bit. Not the coldest surface interval I've had but definately in the top ten.
We finally gave up being cold and geared up for dive two. We decided to see what was on the far east side of the island. This necessated the tummy deep wading and a 100 yard walk up and over. Somebody had set up a fire ring at the crest of the hill. I wondered how many small fry would use it for a hiding place after the spring spawn.
The wading and walking was worth it. We had some of the best vis yet. We didn't come across any walls on this dive though. Just a few hats and a plastic bag that had at one time held anchovies. I thought of J. Giles's "No Anchovies, Please". We found a chain that I thought (dare I say hoped) had an anchor on the other end. It was wrapped around a tree stump. Endlessly so. After I fiddled with it for a bit I looked up to see Bill and Josh standing with their arms crossed. Okay. I can take a hint. We were on our way back anyhow.
The wind had died down by the time we got back to the camp. All in all two great dives with two great dive buddies. Looking forward to next Saturday where I will be, hopefully, trying out my drysuit.
Steve.
Awesome Halloween night dive last night with the Scubateers. We went to Tec Island and the Dam. Tec Island was a twilight dive in brilliant conditions. Calm water and a warm evening. We traversed the wall to the south at around 60 feet. On the return I missed my landmark and was treated to the most remarkable silhouette of fish swimming along the rocks at about 20 feet. Very cool.
