juls64
September 17th, 2005, 06:04 PM
Today is International Beach Clean Up Day! The Illinois Council of Skin and Scuba Divers participated by holding a cleanup dive at Crystal Lake Beach in northern Illinois. This is a smaller sized lake primarily frequented by boaters with a few sailboats, some jet skis, and a swimming beach (which is closed for the season). It is located in a residental suburb.
We had about 12 people show up. We all just did one dive and found a collection of garbage, a few boat anchors and miscellaneous stuff. The miscellaneous included a high school ID from 1978-79, a belt, a toy truck, lots of bottles, an old mask, what remained of a 50 gallon steel drum, a small tractor tire, etc. The vis was about a foot. This was the first time I dove where I was required to use a dive flag. There was very little boat traffic though, so basically it was good practice for 1) using a dive flag 2) working in a buddy team with a dive flag in poor vis and 3) using lift bags and working with a buddy in zero vis (because when you found something and pulled it out of the black muck, you could not see and operated the lift bag and tied the knots by feel only.
I thought it was fun. My husband thought it totally sucked. The water was a little icky and smelled bad, but not enough that we felt it was a hazard.
It was about a 45 minute dive to about 8 feet. (Don't tell PADI, but I'm logging it;)!)
After the dive, our wonderful Illinois Council officers had burgers and dogs waiting for us and everyone won a prize. I won a new SeaVision mask!
Woo Hoo!
Julie
We had about 12 people show up. We all just did one dive and found a collection of garbage, a few boat anchors and miscellaneous stuff. The miscellaneous included a high school ID from 1978-79, a belt, a toy truck, lots of bottles, an old mask, what remained of a 50 gallon steel drum, a small tractor tire, etc. The vis was about a foot. This was the first time I dove where I was required to use a dive flag. There was very little boat traffic though, so basically it was good practice for 1) using a dive flag 2) working in a buddy team with a dive flag in poor vis and 3) using lift bags and working with a buddy in zero vis (because when you found something and pulled it out of the black muck, you could not see and operated the lift bag and tied the knots by feel only.
I thought it was fun. My husband thought it totally sucked. The water was a little icky and smelled bad, but not enough that we felt it was a hazard.
It was about a 45 minute dive to about 8 feet. (Don't tell PADI, but I'm logging it;)!)
After the dive, our wonderful Illinois Council officers had burgers and dogs waiting for us and everyone won a prize. I won a new SeaVision mask!
Woo Hoo!
Julie