MIT Scuba Club



		Dives 2008 Dives 2007 Dives 2006 Dives 2005 Dives 2004 Dives 2003 Dives 2002 Dives 2001 Dives 2000 Dives 1999:		Wreck of the Chester A. Poling and New Hampshire, Sunday, November 7, 1999 Author: Robert Granetz (granetz@mit.edu) This past Sunday I did the final two dives in the wreck certificaton course that I'm taking. (We were supposed to do them two weeks ago, but they were postponed due to very rough seas.) Our first dive was on the wreck of the Poling, and featured penetration into the crews' quarters. Because of the lateness of the season, I had rented a drysuit for these dives. Considering the biting cold winds on the surface on Sunday, that was definitely a good idea. We also had to use Nitrox, and were required to have a pony bottle (small backup tank and reg for true redundancy), a wreck reel, and two lights. After coming down the mooring at the broken end of the ship (the stern mooring line is missing), my buddy and I, and the instructor, headed for the hatch/stairs near the stern. We tied off the wreck reel at the entrance and took turns leading down the stairs, through a hallway, and into crew quarters on the starboard and port sides, unrolling the reel line as we went. (Max depth here was 95 ft. Water temp was still a balmy 45 F.) Since neither my buddy nor myself had much experience at penetration, our clumsy maneuvering quickly turned the passageway into a opaque cloud of silt. Visibility was better in the large crew quarter's, where we could see the round portholes in the distance. But there's no question in my mind that if it weren't for the reel line, we would not have been able to find our way out. By the time we finished the penetrations and were back on the outside of the ship, we had turned the wreck reel into a knotted rat's nest, even though we had extensively practiced reel handling on earlier (non-penetration) dives as part of the wreck course. I don't know whether this was a sign of being really, really nervous or what. Anyway, the second dive was on the shallow wreck of the New Hampshire, which is very open and very sunny, and therefore we were much more relaxed. Naturally, our wreck reel drills went off without a hitch this time. So now, I'm officially wreck certified! Old Garden Beach, Sunday, September 5, 1999 Author: Darren Obrigkeit (dobrig@mit.edu) Petros Komodromos, Darren Obrigkeit, Win Burleson, and company all went out on a couple of dives at Old Garden Beach on Cape Ann this Sunday, September 5. Conditions were excellent with visibility of at least 30 feet, water temperatures 66 degrees F at the surface (almost that warm at depth) and minimal surf and wind. Old garden beach has a sandy entry out onto a sandy bottom with large boulder fields on both sides of the beach. We explored the rocks on the right side of the beach during the first dive, which reached a maximum depth of 27 feet over a 31 minute dive. The wall harbors a variety of crustaceans and schools of fish and was brilliantly illuminated by the sun. The second dive went along the left side of the beach to a maximum depth of 24 feet over a time of 45 minutes. Here we spotted many lobster and a few large flounder as well, in addition to the customary schools fish living among large (sometimes huge) boulders. Isles of Shoals, Sunday, August 21, 1999 Author: Robert Granetz (granetz@mit.edu) Dive report on 2nd Isles of Shoals club dive. It was a dark and stormy day nearly two weeks ago when we had the second MIT Scuba Club dive at the Isles of Shoals (off NH/Maine coast). Despite the rude weather, Paolo Sodini, Cindy Kiddoo, Thomas Pedersen, and yours truly (Robert Granetz) braved the angry seas and rode the Buccaneer Charters boat out to the shoals, about 6 miles off the coast. (Rumor has it that Cape Ann Divers, in Gloucester, actually cancelled all of their dive boat trips for that weekend!) The conditions at the shoals necessitated anchoring in the leeward side of the islands, and it turned out that the seas here were not too bad, although the visibility was quite limited, partly due to the very dark skies. The seals were nowhere to be seen, apparently scared off by the weather. The first dive was on a predominantly rocky bottom, and we saw plenty of lobster (they somehow seemed to know that our Massachusetts lobster licenses were no good here), and also plenty of small fish sharing the lobsters' quarters. The highlight of the first dive was undoubtedly the sighting of a 5 ft long eel by Cindy and Paolo. Back on the boat, the heavy downpours and thick clouds kept us from overheating during the surface interval. (The first club dive here, 3 weeks earlier, was on a sweltering day. Aren't we lucky to have picked the better weekend!) For the second dive, we moved to an even better protected area with more of a sandy/muddy bottom. I spotted several skates camouflaged on the bottom, as well as a scallop partially buried in the silt. We all got a kick out of watching the scallop open up and peek at us with zillions of blue eyes along the edge of its shell. The boat ride back, although rough and wet, was uneventful (i.e. no one got seasick). The four of us decided to cap off the day by going out to a nice seafood restaurant in Portsmouth. A good time was had by all. Isles of Shoals, Sunday, August 1, 1999 Author: Darren Obrigkeit (dobrig@mit.edu) On Sunday afternoon, Ian Ingram, Scott Rasmussen and Darren Obrigkeit went to the Isles of Shoals with Buccaneer Charters in Portsmouth, New Hampshire (Frederic Bourgault went on morning dives at the same place). The Isle of Shoals is a series of small rocky islands a few miles offshore by the Maine-New Hampshire border and are a popular spot for harbor seals and a variety of other marine life. For our first dive we explored the wall of a channel off Duck Island. Plankton blooms at the surface cut visibility down to 8' or so, but below the plankton visibility improved to 20'. Bottom topology ranged between hard bottom littered with mussel shells to rocky outcroppings. In some spots, large numbers of crabs gathered to feed. Closer to the island, there were seaweed beds of many shapes and colors providing shelter for young fish. Depth ranged between 15' and 44'. The second dive, just off Appledore island offered 30'+ visibility with colder water (how many people would have enjoyed the opportunity to be cold yesterday, with 95 degree weather and high humidity?) The bottom had a number of rocky peaks starting at around 65' and going up to 40' surrounded by hard bottom covered by starfish and mussel beds. Highlights of the dive were a sea raven sleeping on a small ledge on one of the walls and a large white anenome opened up at the top of a wall - almost like an underwater lighthouse at the edge of a cliff. Magnolia Rocks, Sunday, July 10, 1999 Author: Anna Galea (galea@mit.edu) Hello all. On Sunday I joined the New England Aquarium Dive Club for their fish count effort at Folly Cove. Aleks was there too, so I won't bore you with my trip report, but I do want to say that on my second dive (starting on the right wall, crossing the sands and coming back along the left) we saw some amazing life, including about 10 skates, Northern and Windowpane flounders, and the highlights: A beautiful Red-Gilled Nudibranch and a breathtaking SeaRobin. We saw its head sticking out of the sand and when it felt us it displayed its huge orange fins, walked along the bottom with its dedicated "fingers", and reburied itself.. It did this twice as we gawked at it for a few minutes. All of this diversity was actually in less than 20 feet of water, so I went back on snorkel, but unfortunately I had essentially wasted my only roll of film on the first dive (lesson learned Norman's Woe, Sunday-Monday, June 13-14, 1999 Author: Thomas Sunn Pedersen (sunn@psfc.mit.edu) Report on free diving for lobster at Cape Ann. For the last year or so, I have had this idea that it should be possible to snorkel/free dive for lobster. This past weekend I took the opportunity to try it out. There were a bunch of questions I was looking to get an answer to, in particular "Is it even possible?". I haven't met anyone yet who has done it, and most people have been rather skeptical about it. Well, the answer is YES. And it's fun too! I tried it out first on Sunday around noontime at Normans Woe in Gloucester. The place was crawling with scuba divers and anglers. I think there were at least 10 anglers and 15 scuba divers on the rocks when we arrived. So much for the "not many divers bother to walk the 300 m from the parking lot" theory. I was accompanied by my wife and son, but I was on my own for the snorkeling/free diving part. Wearing a full wetsuit with hood, booties and mittens, I opted for 20 lbs on the weight belt, (I usually use 26 with a steel 72'), but it was not enough. At the surface I was floating like a balloon. However, at about 25 ft, the increased pressure of the water acting on both lungs and wetsuit is enough that I was practically neutral so I decided to stick with the 20 lbs and see what happened. The sea was reasonably calm, and the visibility not bad - about 15-20 ft. Several schools of pollock and a few striped bass were circling around close to shore. It took me only 10 minutes to catch the first lobster, but it was too small. I managed to spot another 6 or 7 decent sized ones, and caught and gauged 3, but all were too small, so after an hour, I had to crawl ashore empty handed. (Which, by the way, is really easy when you don't have a tank on your back). On Monday morning I returned to Normans Woe with my friend Torkel, who was working on his free diving skills. We split my 35 lbs between us, so I ended up with 20 lbs and again I was still struggling to get down. The viz. was really quite good, about 20-25ft, and it was also lower tide so I could revisit the same places as Sunday but this time I could sort of see the general topology of the bottom from the surface. After almost an hour of largely unsuccesful attempts, I caught a big (roughly 2 lbs) lobster which of course turned out to be eggbearing, so I let it go. A couple of minutes later, it also decided to let go of me, after having done a decent job of chewing on my mittens with both claws. Luck finally came my way only a few minutes later when I caught a good size keeper (1.4 lbs, no eggs). I tried to find another one to make it two, but gave up as I was getting tired. We had spent roughly an hour and a half in the water at that time, and I was not cold at all. Free diving definitely keeps you warmer than scuba diving. All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed my first (but not last) attempts at free diving for lobster. It is more strenuous and challenging than when you have your scuba gear on, and you definitely have to wave goodbye to a few more lobsters but now I know that it is not impossible! I was generally most succesful at a depth of 20-30 ft, but I might be able to increase the depth range and stay down longer if I use more weights. I would be interested in hearing from anyone else who has experience and/or interest in free diving in New England. PS: You DO need a lobster license in order to free dive for lobster. accesses since July 28, 2000 with per day.