Ziray Studio Labs

In the afternoon, we did our third dive of the day on a place called Captain Tom’s Ledge. This was a bit of a deeper dive at 59 feet max, so the top of the surface was a beautiful 86 degrees, while the bottom was a relatively frigid 70 degrees. There is actually a layer of water that you pass through where you can immediately feel the difference in temperature. This is called a thermocline. After coming up from below the thermocline, the water feels like hot tub water. It’s really refreshing since you can start to get chilled wearing such thin layers. The total bottom time was 52 minutes.

Scott worked to get Juanca finished up on his scuba certification while Ana, Laszlo and I explored the ledge. The reef stands along a ledge that drops of to several hundred feet into the abyss. On the other side is a flat sandy surface nearly devoid of life. We stopped to get a photo shoot of ourselves as you can see from the photos below.

Laszlo had to surface due to constant condensation in his mask. But when we got back down, we were treated to a lot of Caribean lobster, moray eels and fish all over the place. We didn’t quite make it to the ledge because the reef was so wide. No bother though, not much to see but black ocean below you.

Captain Tom’s Ledge

Ana and me in front of the reef near the sandy bottom of the ocean.

 

Ana sees something interesting

Maybe it was this Caribbean lobster

 

 

 

An eel poking his head out to see what was going on

Lobsters were everywhere on this reef. Wish they were in season!

Looks like this was taken in a fish tank.

 

 

Can you see it?

On our fourth dive of the day, Laszlo and I performed our underwater navigation tests for our Advanced Open Water Certification (AOW). This was Juanca’s first dive as a certified diver, so he, Elena and Ana went off with my camera and took some pictures of themselves. We met back up after the test so some of the latter photos are mine as well.

If you are curious, it takes me 18 kick cycles to travel 50 feet underwater. We stayed under water for 45 minutes and even though we were only 24 feet deep at the max, we used a lot of our air performing the AOW tests, down from 3000 PSI to 850 PSI in the end.

Check out the photos below:

Continue reading

After our deep dive on the USCGC Bibb, we used our second tank of nitrox (31% oxygen) for this very shallow dive to a max depth of 34 feet on Molasses Reef. The nitrox helped with fatigue and with a strong current. The current during our stay, we were told, was very unusual for Florida. Even so, it was a beautiful dive amongst beautiful animals and other ocean life.

Even though this was a pleasure dive, Laszlo and I practiced kick cycles and compass navigation in anticipation of our navigation dive for our Advanced Open Water certification.

Total bottom time was 52 minutes and I went from 3400 PSI in my tank to only 1800 PSI. Breathing nitrox definitely helped us consume less air, though the shallow depth also helps.

Continue reading

After learning to scuba dive, I put diving the Bibb on my list of things to do in my life. The U.S.C.G.C. Bibb was the ship my grandfather served on in the Pacific theater during World War 2. I was very young when I learned that the Bibb was sunk off the coast of Florida as an artificial reef. It never occurred to me that I would ever get to see it in person. I had heard a number of stories about the Bibb and was told that during its service in WWII, it was the ship that carried the Admiral of the fleet since the Bibb, being a Coast Guard ship, was one of the smallest of the U.S. Navy fleet.

I brought one of my camera so I got some photos and video of the experience.

A Little Visual History

The United States Coast Guard has a page on the history of the Bibb with a bunch of photos of its early history, so be sure to check that out. Below are some photos my aunt sent me.

The picture above actually has my grandfather in it. He’s standing on the deck of the ship looking at the camera, to the left of another sailor in white, just to the left of the deck gun that’s in the center of the photograph. It’s hard to see in the photo of this size, but it’s him.

Continue reading

So I figured it was time for the Scuba Club at Virginia Tech to do some scuba diving and luckily I wasn’t the only one who thought the idea wasn’t crazy. With 54F (13C) degree water, but low 70s in the sun, we jumped in.

The first dive lasted for only 12 minutes as we quickly lost the other two divers in the murky water. We came back up to look for them and got caught in the current that carried us under the bridge. In 53F water, it really wears you out. We continued that dive to about 45 feet for 24 more minutes before surfacing. The only thing to note on this dive was that I found two bottles of Vitamin Water at the bottom of the river, unopened. Visibility was only a meter or two, if you had a light.

The second dive was a lot better as we stayed down for 41 minutes to a max depth of 46 feet. It might as well have been a night dive since it was almost pitch black. There was an eery green glow from above as the sun shown through the water, but I lost my dive buddy several times since he only had to swim 2 meters away for me to lose him. However we quickly found each other by shining our lights like a light house until we saw each other’s lights.

We ran into at least three catfish of varying sizes. One was a about 150cm (~5ft) in length and that’s not exaggerating. He literally scared me as he came right at me appearing within arms length from my face out of the darkness after my dive buddy flushed him out from the other side of a large entanglement of tree roots on the bottom. He swam right by me until I tried to grab him and then he disappeared faster than I knew he was gone. We saw two other smaller, but at least a meter long, cat fish who we stumbled upon. If you want to catch those catfish, I hope you have a lurer that glows in the dark, because otherwise, they’d never see it.

Near the end of this dive I was starting to get cold from fatigue, but that 7mm wet suit from K2 Scuba was definitely worth the investment.

Everyone definitely had a lot of fun, despite the cold, but we all love diving so no one complained about the cold. We’re putting together classes for the summer in Blacksburg if anyone is interested in learning to dive. More details will follow as we hash out those details, but if you’re interested, let me know so I know how many people to expect. You know how to find me.

New River Dive

Scott setting up his side mounts.

Scott in his dry suit walking on our clean tarp.

Kevin also stepping on our tarp.

We weren't the only crazy ones. This team was practicing with their open face masks with coms.

 

Believe it or not, it actually gets as deep as 60 feet in the middle.