Underwater Exploration

There won’t be a huge write up for this trip as there wasn’t anything different that happened on this trip than any other trip to San Solomon Springs. It was, however, my last open water trip with Scuba Training Center. The owners sold their shop to a greenhorn and because of personal reasons have chosen not to continue working with the new owner. I am now working for a different shop and it should be a very good experience for me.

Anyways, Here are my dive profiles for this trip:

1. 20 feet – 10 minute run time – 78 degree water – objective: set the buoy.
2. 19 feet – 62 minute run time – 78 degree water
3. 19 feet – 35 minute run time – 78 degree water
4. 20 feet – 33 minute run time – 78 degree water
5. 20 feet – 27 minute run time – 78 degree water
6. 20 feet – 21 minute run time – 78 degree water

This is a two part series of my TDI Decompression Procedures class. The reason that this class is broken into two parts is because my check out dives are in two different dates as we can only do two dives per day because of our nitrogen loading. Part 1 covers our classroom and first two dives of the class.

The classroom and first two dives were on July 21, 2006 at the Blue Hole in Santa Rosa, NM. The classroom portion mainly consisted of dive planning and gear configuration. For dive planning we planned our dives to 120 feet based on U.S. Navy Dive Tables. For those who have dove the Blue Hole you know that the maximum depth was 82 feet. (Yes, I know I said “was”. You’ll find out.) So you may be thinking “WTF?!?!?! There is a huge difference between 82 feet and 120 feet!!” The reason that we planned the dive to 120 feet is because we had to take altitude and water temperature into account. We planned the first dive to be at 120 feet for 20 minutes. So going by the U.S. Navy Air Decompression Tables we would have to do a deco stop at 10 feet for two minutes and our ascent rate from our max depth to 10 feet would need to take a minimum of 6 minutes. My instructor informed me that he also practices a deep stop at half the maximum depth for a minute during our ascent. We know had all the information from the dive tables that we needed. We now went through and calculated what our maximum partial pressure of oxygen and nitrogen would be at 120 feet. After we calculated this information and wrote it all down we reviewed all the information again to make sure we didn’t miss anything. Once we started had our plan we then started gearing up where the instructor critiqued my hose routing a bit and then had me do valve drills on while on the surface. After this we donned our drysuits and geared up and walked to the water.

In the water we did a buddy check and bubble check on each other’s gear, and reviewed our dive plan one last time before going underwater. At first I was a little apprehensive about the dive. This was the first time I was going to be on a dive where I had a manditory decompression stop and I didn’t know what to think about it at first. Shortly after the dive started I started to relax and we just swam around looking at all the different features of the Blue Hole. This was the first time that I would really go to the bottom and spend any kind of noticable time looking around at the bottom of the Blue Hole. I looked back behind the grate covering the cave entrance where I found the deepest depth that I have ever found at the Blue Hole. It was 86 feet! Back behind the grate was cool. Part of the cave entrance was exposed and you could see down in it and really get a sense of how much water the aquafer is really pushing through the hole. Soon enough our bottom time was up and my instructor signaled to make our ascent to our deep stop, where we would hang for a minute before making our way to our 10 foot decompression stop.

Once out of the water we took off our gear and the instructor walked over to me and said that he was going to pull my bottom eye lid down and look between the eye lid and the eye for bubbles. If there are bubbles they will be nitrogen bubbles. He informed me that during any dive if a diver has more than three bubbles in any eye then the diver should be placed on oxygen and monitored for signs and symtoms of Decompression Sickness. He checked my eye’s and I checked my instructor’s eye’s. Neither one of us had any bubbles.

Here is the dive profile from dive 1:

Maximum Depth: 86 feet

Bottom Time: 20 minutes

Run Time: 28 minutes

Water Temperature: 62 degrees

Visibility: 30 – 40 feet

After a six hour surface interval we met back at the Blue Hole to get ready for our second dive. For this dive we planned a 25 minute bottom time at 120 feet using the U.S. Navy Air Decompression Tables. This dive would have the same deep stop, but the 10 foot decompression stop would be 6 minutes and the total ascent time would take 10 minutes. Once geared up we walked down to the water and did a buddy check and bubble check on each other and reviewed our dive plan one last time before making our descent. On this dive my instructor wanted me to relax as much as possible and didn’t want me to create a work load for myself. This was because he wanted to go through and calculate my SAC rate for our future dives. This dive was very relaxing and I felt much more comfortable on this dive then I did on the second dive. At 25 minutes we started making our ascent to the deep stop for one minute and then made our way slowly to our 10 foot deco stop. On this stop I really got a sense of what deco stops where all about. I was litterly dusting silt off the side of the hole with my hand waiting for the time to pass. Several minutes later we made our way up and were out of the water.

Here is my dive profile for dive 2:

Maximum Depth: 85 feet

Bottom Time: 25 minutes

Run Time: 39 minutes

Water Temperature: 62 degrees

Visibility: 30 – 40 feet

Later that evening we completed our dive logs and reviewed our dive profiles and talked briefly about our next two dives. I can’t wait for the next two dives and we are planning those dives and working out a location that is deep enough for the next two dives. I’ll write about those dives after they have been completed.

JamesW

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