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Post by duckbill on Nov 3, 2006 17:53:22 GMT -8
John - thats a great photo! Killer range of highlights and darks. Yep! John has some great vintage diving photos. They look like they are right out of scenes from "Sea Hunt"!
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Post by antique diver on Nov 3, 2006 19:00:33 GMT -8
Date: 1965 Place: Jacob's Well Cave in Texas
Chris and I were newly certified 18 year old college students, and heard about the clear water in this cave near San Marcos. We had our own equipment consisting of steel 72 cylinders with J-valves, double hose regulators ... mine a used Aquamaster of unknown vintage, his a Voit... both proud acquisitions from a pawn shop. Our lights were regular flashlights with vaseline heavily smeared on the batteries and contacts, which by the way worked pretty good, sometimes lasting a whole dive.
We were overjoyed at the beautiful water, a rarity in Texas, and had a great dive in the limestone cavern. That first dive there hooked me forever on cave diving. At one point about 75' deep we encountered a restriction, and being bulletproof at that age, calmly removed our tanks and pushed them ahead of us into the next room.... nothing to it, we had done this in our pool class. We looked around that room, went a little deeper, then came back out the same way and slowly made our way back to the surface, following the beautiful azure blue glow of daylight streaming through the clear water.
It was an exciting dive for us, and I still remember the adrenaline high as we removed our gear and laid our tanks on the rocks. As Chris removed his tank, his arm caught lightly on one of his hoses, and the hose just slid easily off the regulator body. The clamp was nowhere to be seen. Wow, suddenly the gravity of cave diving came home to us... what if this had happened during the passage through the restriction?
No, I really don't remember whether it was his right or left hose, but I will never forget the look on his face!
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Post by SeaRat on Nov 3, 2006 19:01:12 GMT -8
Well, the film that Bruce used was probably Tri-X black and white film, at ASA 400 (now ISO 400). The last few nights, I've been busy scanning my photos from May 28 and June 3, 1984 for a group interested in fresh water mussels. We in Oregon have a Oregon Public Broadcasting station which aired a program last Thursday called Oregon Field Guide. There, they had a 10 minute segment about a group of reseachers who are now studying the freshwater mussels, as they have growth rings like trees. In good years, they grow faster than in bad years, again like trees. When I found out that they were doing research in my old stomping grounds, the North Umpqua River, I really got interested, and got the name of one of the researchers. I put his name and the word "mussels" and the word "Umpqua" into Google, and had enough hits that I found his e-mail address. I sent him the following photo: Photo Copyright 1984, John C. Ratliff Here is what my dive log for the day said in 1984: "After (photo) #10, noticed that mussels were secreting white milky substance (sperm?). Rest of photos of them." Well, they weren't sperm, but glochidia, which are the larval forms of the mussel. I have held onto these photos, knowing that they were pretty unique but not knowing who might be interested in them. The last few nights I've been taking the two rolls I have of photos (about 30 all together) and scanning some to send to him. I told them that I'm not interested in making money with the photos, but in sharing them. I did put my copyright on all but this first one (which is pretty low-res). I went back to the water on June 3, 1984, and this is what my dive log says about that dive: Dive Location: North Umpqua River, Head of Winchester Reservoir. Date 6-3-84, Depth 17', Dive #84- Participating divers: solo Entrance time: ~4:15 P Exit time: ~5:00 P Bottom Time 45" Dive Plan:[/U] Look at clam beds, photograph clams spawning if poss., look at spawning area of red-sided minnows for poss. that they are again spawning, attempt to photograph their eggs. Water Conditions: Water in high 50s, vis 4-6', weather raining. Observations: [/U] Had a good photo session with spawning clams. Used ASA 100 Kodacolor, 100 WSec, F-16 & F-11. At one point I set up a spawning clam with a lure beside it for size comparison. Got some good photos. Atfer using !30 photos on clams, I headed downstream to look at minnow spawning area. No minnows or squawfish were observed. I also could find no eggs. It appears that the gravel & rocks have shifted somewhat in the corrent & covered the areas where the eggs were layed. This may be in the scheme of things. Questions--are the spawning of clams temperature dependent? (only noted in late afternoon). Have the fish all spawned? Or will they begin again when the wate.r tem. rises? Why did many of the fish have bruised heads? Special Problems and Ideas: [/U] 1. Had a jet boat of fishermen (2) park over my head in the current. Had no prob. with them. 2. Had probs with the Magnum Blizzard regulator mouthpiece. Hard to keep it in mouth. 3. Had light (Farrallon) which I didn't need. 4. Used full suit on dive and was comfortable (with gloves). ________________ It's been kinda an exciting week, and I thought I would share it with you. It pays to keep all those old photos around. Here's the one of the mussel with the lure. I've been diving that river, the North Umpqua, and other rivers (namely the Clackamas in the last five years), and have never seen these mussels spawning since that one-week period in 1984. John
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Post by OystrPir8 on Nov 3, 2006 22:31:38 GMT -8
The idea of pulling a hose in a cave at depth sends chills - - good writing too!
Jon - I like the detailed logs! I should keep mine more like that - and your objectives are pretty darned intersting too!
Terry - What's hapenin? Havent heard much from you lately.
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Post by duckbill on Nov 3, 2006 23:09:39 GMT -8
Hi Robb, Well, my only potentially dangerous situation story pales in comparison.
Basically, I had a J-valve go bad on me. I suspected the problem before I pulled the rod. The air had been bleeding past it into the other cylinder and I really had NO reserve. The only dangerous thing about it was that I was in the branches of a sunken oak tree at the time but was able to surface the whole 12 feet without getting tangled up. Yep, J-valves on doubles- know your rig, what pressure your pressure gauge is reading (reserve pressure or yoke pressure- I learned to ALWAYS use a gauge with doubles), and allow for a malfunction due to cross bleeding.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 4, 2006 7:00:57 GMT -8
Welp this here string is mighty interesting.........so I have an oldie for ya......
Back in 71 a Marine dive buddy, Jim Underwood, and me were making a dive at Monza bay in Okinawa. All we had were steel 72's, weight belts, wet suits (I remember mine was a borrowed Turtle Skin, practicaly brand new) jet fins, I was using a vedo corrected lens mask, horrible thing).....USD DA's and watches on our wrists........
It was a dark and cloudy day.......wind blowing and all the good stuff for a murder mystery.....the tide had just ran out, or so we thought, so from the dock we suited up and stepped off.
Water was clear as I remember it, have some photos somewhere but they are fading bw.........we swam down and into what appeared to be a canyon.......Jim picked up a star fish which I photographed and other photos of him and we poked around looking at stuff........I looked up at the surrounding rocks and thought to myself all we needed was Godzilla to showup.......the area looked just like that old late 1950s movie. Sharp pointed rocks towering all around us, whch created this underwater valley. Really spooky......................
Anyway, Jim pointed to his watch and I checked mine, we'd been down for a good 35 minutes, depth about 50 to 60 feet......time to go...............
When we exited the canyon and into the shallow slope back to the dock the tide was running quite strong......going out!!!!!
Jim lead and I followed, taking my last photo of his fins in front of me, dead staghorn coral below us. The surge got even stronger in the more shallower water, pulling us backward like so much drift wood. We's grab hold of the coral, some of which broke off, and we'd have to regrab (thank God for Marine issue leather gloves) and hang on until the surge stopped and a wave rolled in which stilled the waters long enough for about 10 fast kicks.then we did it all over again......I knew my air was getting low, but how much I didn't know.........finally, after it seemed like forever, the legs of the dock appeared and we got out...............
Being Marines we joked about the current and what a thrill it was, guessing it at over 4 knots.......realizing one was not to enter the water if the current was above that speed.........(island Provost Marshall rules).......all in all it was a great dive...........no real danger we couldn't handle.....but I always remember it as the dive into the Valley of Godzilla............
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Post by pearldiver on Nov 4, 2006 9:52:47 GMT -8
Gees, I don't feel so bad now. What great stories. I haven't had a whole lot of trouble. Just trouble with others. I have rescued 7 people from drowning, and I am an old woman now and tired and probably couldn't do it anymore if I had to. Here's one of my stories. So.... It was about 1981 or so. Using an O'Neal drysuit with oral inflation, no BC, jetfins, AMF single hose w/ octo of USD Aquarius, Farallon pressure guage, Princeton Techtonics bottom timer, no snorkle (I have not used a snorkel in years, only to skin dive with) and a knife attached to my weight belt. (We never wore knives on our legs on wreck dives) Ok, the time was late summer and we were diving on the O'Connor. If I remember right, the depth is about 85 feet or so. I was diving with a person who is still alive in fact, and is very active in the diving industry. I won't say any names. Anyway. The weather was nice, but as you know, Lake Michigan can become ugly in a very short time. Speaking of water spouts, yes those occur on Lake Michigan but not this day. The waves of course turned from 1 footers to 5 footers in about 15 minutes. My dive buddy and I were surfacing and I could see the 38 foot Chris Craft bobbing up and down on the waves that weren't there when we started. The boat was a 14 foot wide twin screw. There was only a ladder off the back end, no dive platform. My dive buddy was wearing a Poseidon Unisuit. At about 20 feet down, his suit began to inflate, and blew up to immense proportions and off he sailed towards the surface. The bad thing was, he was under the boat and promptly got caught underneath and wedged in between the prop shaft and the boat hull where there is a dip in the hull for the shaft. I watched him as I was surfacing to help him, and could see him struggling to free himself. For some reason, the dump valve didn't work, or he was panicking. I sure don't know, but I do know he couldn't move and was stuck fast. As I approached, his eyes were as big as saucers, and he was panting using up air, along with air coming out of the suit. The inflator was malfunctioning. I grabbed hold of his arm, and couldn't budge him away from being stuck under the boat hull to the side and then to the surface because of all the air in his suit. He was pinned there and I had no leverage being neuteral bouyant. So after trying a bit, I began to watch him start to panic from a no air situation. I was tempted to pop the suit with my knife, but thought better of it. He might sink. Remember, the Poseidon unisuit was relativaly new then. Instead, I held his arm, flipped myself upside down under the boat, put my flippered feet on the boat hull, and used my legs to pull him out from under that boat by his arm. It was a pretty hard feat and he felt like a ton of rocks, but he budged, and finally slid over the hull and popped to the surface. He had a hard time getting on the boat, and he sure didn't look so good. What a time that was.
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Post by OystrPir8 on Nov 4, 2006 23:01:31 GMT -8
popping his suit. lol. I am imagining him whizzing around the ocean like a balloon, skimming across the surface. Fast thinking, though.
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Post by OystrPir8 on Nov 9, 2006 22:46:00 GMT -8
that's it? Boy - threads sure are dying out quickly these days...
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