Search and Recovery dives

Been a slow couple of days in Utila. Taken the last couple days off from diving and just chilled a bit, healing from by bug bites along the way. Most of the other DiveMaster trainees have completed their course and went back to Denmark and one back to San Franciso. Ben from the UK and myself are all that's currently left. We partner well together though, so I don't mind. We did the search and recovery phase over a couple of dives on Saturday. The first was a semi-deep dive to around 110 feet near the "Hailiburton" wreck. The Haliburton was a large cargo trawler ship which is pretty much completely intact and I always like to dive it. After Ben and I finished some compass work on the bottom and Kevin our instructor gaves us the "good job" signal, we all did a little dive tour of the wreck. We glided into the large cargo bay like three ghosts checking out a potential new haunting ground. As I had mentioned on Facebook....over time, so many divers have entered the hold that all of the exhaust bubbles have gathered on the underside of the roof of the area causing trapped air pockets.

Haliburton

Being able to literally place the majority of my head into this air space, pop my Reg out of my mouth and breathe while looking around is a pretty awesome experience! It's something you have seen countless times in adventure type movies but very few people will ever experience. It's moments like those that started my love affair with diving as a little boy and diving in general is full of those moments and never disappoints. After we finished touring the wreck and had some surface interval time we did a shallower dive at Ron's wreck.

Ron's Wreck

This wreck site is home to a much smaller vessel but still wonderful to investigate. The main purpose for our being there though was to continue our search and recovery training and the dive site also is home to a sandy oat bottom about the size of a football field. The field is bordered along its sides by reefs and is the perfect place for Kevin to "lose" and object ....on purpose. The point to the exercise is for Ben and I to locate the object (a weight belt) using a compass to do a specific search pattern along the bottom. After several legs of the search grid we found the weights and connected them to a lift bag. Applying a little air from my second regulator gives the bag enough lift to be neutrally buoyant and easy to ascend with. Of course as you slowly ascend...air expands which makes the lift bag want to race for the surface, so you have to anticipate and release some air as you go up. Sound simple but this particular lift bag only seemed to want to release ALL it's air when prompted. LOL this isn't fun because now your holding on to about a cinderblocks worth of extra weight which of course only knows one direction to go and that's down. So I quickly figured out that by keeping the opening near my regulator I could reinflate the bag by using only the exhaust bubbles from my normal breathing and not have to frantically try to free my second reg which usually just resulted in an overfill anyway. Overall it was an enlightening experience and I believe Ben and I did very well. I love to fun dive and glide about the reefs and canyons it's a peaceful and magical experience. It's truly a completely different world with its own rules and the fish and life is more likely to investigate you as some new strange looking fish rather then swim away. There is something to actually performing tasks on the bottom however that I enjoy. So if you ever lose a fishing pole or a boat anchor on a lake back home...gimme a call!