The drive down to North Carolina in Lee Livingston’s suburban was mostly uneventful. We arrived in Moorehead city around noon, one day after we departed Connecticut. We hung out at the Olympus dive shop for several hours getting our c-cards checked out and everyone payed up for the upcoming week in diving. We also had…
The third and fourth days of my Optiquatics trip went by quickly, though I only did three dives over the two days since I had come down with a stomach bug. I did one dive on the last day since I had to fly out the following morning. This dive was probably my favorite out…
On the second dive of my second day on the Peace, I saw a fish the size of a sedan. It was a black sea bass. It was huge. I encountered the bass hanging out under some kelp at a depth of about forty feet. He was wary of my dive buddy Steve and I,…
I was awoken on day two of my Optiquatics adventure by the sound of the engines turning off. Fighting the desire to roll over and return to sleep, I made my way above decks. It was bright, sunny and beautiful again just like yesterday. The boat was anchored about fifty feet away from the San…
On July 15th I boarded the Peace dive boat at 9 o’clock p.m. ready for my Optiquatics adventure. Optiquatics is a underwater photography training operation and DUI affiliate run by Joe Wysoki. This means, they let you dive with borrowed cameras and drysuits to your hearts content. Bunks were assigned to all the divers, and…
On the 14th, I got up bright and early and drove myself to Sea World to meet with Kevin Lewis, the dive safety officer there. He is in charge of all the divers at Sea World. He showed me the exhibits that the divers are responsible for cleaning which include all of the Shamu pools,…
The following day it was off to the San Diego Ocean’s Foundation to help out Noelle and her two interns. In the morning we drove all over San Diego picking up items for the garage sale. The garage sale is an annual fundraiser that the Ocean’s Foundation holds to raise money for their various programs….
The College of Oceaneering is a commercial diving training facility which certifies its students in commercial diving. Commercial diving is fundamentally different from recreational SCUBA (and technical SCUBA for that matter) in many ways. The most glaring difference is the absence of a SCUBA system. Commercial divers get their are from the surface, though they…
I arrived in San Diego, late as usual (I have good luck with planes) and Joe Wysocki picked me up. We made the drive over to Faith’s house which is about half an hour from the airport. Once at Faith’s we ate dinner and hung out with her other guests who included Susan, the president…
On Monday, a small portion of the team returned to Rock Springs. The trip was purely for survey work, so only Renee, Andy, George, Kris and I came. Kris and I were there to provide support for the divers. This pretty much means helping to hall any of the three steel tanks that each diver…
DeLeon springs is about an hours drive from Renee’s house so we had to wake up bright and early to arrive their on time. Even so, Renee, Andy, George and I were the last to arrive. The gate attendant did not seem too keen on letting anyone from the project into the springs, however, after…
Friday found the team sampling at Rock Springs, another beautiful and spectacularly buggy public swimming hole. Today, there were to be seven divers going in the cave in addition to Tom and I, who would be shooting video outside the cave. At Rock, the flow is tremendous even outside of the cave wear swimmers jump…
Thursday’s location was Wekiwa Springs, where our mission was two-fold. The first goal of our mission was to collect and analyze water samples from five different stations in the cave at Wekiwa as well as samples from the mouth of the cave. Our second goal was to collect bacterial mats from several pre-existing biomass sample…
I departed on July 5th for my five day internship with the Cambrian Foundation. When I arrived at the Orlando airport, Ricky drove me over to Renee Power’s house, where I would be staying for the next few days. That night, a portion on the team arrived for a project briefing. Basically, Renee and Rima…
On Friday, I started the day helping Jaime with food prep again. This time I got to prepare food for the sharks and needlefish and Puffy and Fugu as well as several others. One of responsibilities was “squid tentacles” where one pulls off a frozen squids head, rips out the beak, then cuts off the…
For my second day at the aquarium, I was sent up to Divers to help Jaime and Amy with food prep. It consisted of pulling out and preparing many, many pounds of fish, squid, krill, plankton, and shrimp for the various animals in the GOT. I was shocked by how picky some of the fish…
I arrived at the New England Aquarium at 8 o’clock on Tuesday the 27th, ready for my week to start. I met up with Paul and he gave me a brief tour of the Giant Ocean Tank (from the outside) and brought me up to the Dive office to meet with John who would be…
On Wednesday we departed at about 8 o’clock for the National Archives Northeast Reagion, which is located in Waltham. This is about an hour’s drive from Farihaven, so on the ride over, Eric described our objective. The plan was to search for evidence supporting the tentative naming of an unidentified shipwreck. The steam lighter that…
This past week, from Tuesday to Thursday I went up to Fairhaven, Massachusetts to visit Eric Takakjian and his wife Lori. I arrived around 10 o’clock on Tuesday and Eric gave me the grand tour of his house, which is chock full of artifacts recovered from shipwrecks. Eric does all the restoration himself, which takes…
After several weekends of miserable weather and cancelled plans, the conditions were finally good enough to go diving (sort of). It was still a little rainy and choppy, but there was less wind predicted than usuall. So I headed up to Dave and Heather’s house in Beverly Mass. on Friday so that we could get…
Well the plan for this weekend was to head up to Dave and Heather Caldwell’s in Massachusetts for a weekend of crewing and boat diving in my brand new drysuit. But because plans don’t always work out and New England weather has been less than desirable lately (the NOAA forecast said something about 5-8 foot…
This past week, from Wednesday the 24th to Saturday the 27th I was working up in Beverly, Massachusets at Undersea Divers, a dive shop owned by Bob Boyle. Upon arrival I was treated to a tour of the shop from Heather, an Undersea employee. I got to see its office and back area which is…
This Sunday, I met Lee Livingston bright and early (5 am) at the Guilford commuter lot for what would be an exciting day. Our destination was Dutch Springs Pennsylvania, playing host for the weekend to the DUI DOG Rally and Demo Days. We arrived just before 8 am and I quickly realized that Dutch Springs…
This past month, on the weekend of March 3-6, I had the pleasure of experiencing the Boston Sea Rovers 52nd annual clinic as the 2006 Frank Scalli intern. It was an experience like no other and has had my head spinning for some time now. The weekend began on Friday March 3rd, bright and early…