Diving - To See or Not to See

Depending on what part of the world you reside, water is water.  Of course some allow better visibility than others but if you start with whatever is close to your location you may be fortunate to begin with relatively clear surroundings if not, you really won't know any better and think this is what diving is all about. 

This is the way it was with me starting out in Lake Erie.  We thought a good day of 20 to 30 foot visibility was the best there was and we didn't question, is this all there is? 

Now we did have some inland quarries where the visibility was better due to the lack of wave action as well as it being like a large concrete swimming pool, but even this visibility varied if it had rained and washed mud in from the banks.  We were then back into the limited visibility of the lake.

Marine life was also few and far between in Lake Erie with the most prevalent species being Perch and White Bass and with visibility being what it was we saw very little of these while diving.

We also had to contend with the discharge of the Cuyahoga River that emptied into the lake off downtown Cleveland.  Depending on which way the wind was blowing we would have to concentrate our diving to the up-wind direction to escape the really bad visibility which was caused by the constant discharge of many manufacturing companies located up the river.

As I mentioned earlier, but what did we know?  Everyone in our group were in their early 20s or 30s and had never traveled out of the area so we didn't know any better and were just elated being able to explore what was on our doorstep.

I think I was about 30 years old when the company I was working for had a need to send me down to Florida on business.  Having this opportunity I made the most of it and packed my diving equipment along with my business clothes.

When I arrived I sought out a charter service that was taking divers out to the offshore reefs.  Making the necessary arrangements to reserve a spot on the weekend, you can imagine my excitement looking forward to being able to make my first dive in the ocean.

When the day came I climbed aboard a large charter boat and began to mingle with the other divers exchanging various dive stories.  They immediately noticed that my equipment was a little dated compared to what they were using so I mentioned how long I had been diving and they were in awe of the experience I had.

Then when we reached the dive location we all began to put on our gear.  When the signal came to dive I was so excited to get wet that once in the water I immediately called up to the boat requesting that someone throw down my fins.  How soon fame also takes a dive. 

I remember that first ocean dive for more than just that embarrassing moment because as I was waiting for my fins on the dive ladder, I looked down in the 60 foot depth and was totally amazed that I could see the bottom. 

Did this ruin me for the diving in Lake Erie, no it just added a new dimension to my experience.  It seems that if you started diving in less than perfect conditions it prepares you to face those conditions in the future with ease instead of being apprehensive.  I have since run into other divers that started in the ocean and if you expose them to lesser visibility conditions they are apprehensive before entering the water or sometimes will not even dive.

Shark Tooth Diving 

A prime example of limited visibility diving is when our club scheduled a dive off Venice Beach, Florida to look for prehistoric sharks teeth.  This location faced the West Side of the state which is the Gulf of Mexico.  Now visibility in the Gulf is generally not as good as the Atlantic Ocean due to it being a more contained body of water and more protected from the prevailing winds.  It's more known for the shells that grow in that environment than diving. 

The closer you get to shore this limited visibility gets worse and worse.  Unfortunately this is where your find the sharks teeth by diving and they can even be found near shore but the larger ones are more prevalent farther out.  By farther out I mean about a mile or two off shore. 

How did prehistoric sharks teeth happen to be off the West Coast of Florida?  These were not the average shark that is known in today's oceans but what was known as a Megalodon.  These sharks grew to a length of over 50 feet and were considered the largest fish in history.  Unfortunately for them, the earth went though a cooling period about 3.6 million years ago and in turn cooled the oceans to the point that these sharks became extinct.  

Also millions of years ago Florida was covered with water but as the seas receded it deposited the remains of these sharks on land and available shallow water areas here and other locations.  Keep in mind that a shark, even the ones that exist today, are made up mainly of cartilage without much of a skeleton.  Because of this not much survived the years except the teeth and each shark had over 250. 

Getting back to our scheduled dive off the west coast of Florida and the visibility that existed of about 8 to 10 feet.  What this type of visibility presented was not only concern as to what was there that you couldn't see but also how did you search for teeth as well as stay with your buddy without wandering off. 

Enter the "buddy line" a common practice we used up North in similar conditions.  It was about a six to ten foot line with swivel snaps at each end that hooked the two divers together.  With this device one diver would use a compass to make certain they were heading in the same direction and not doing circles and retracing their steps.  It's hard enough to maintain a direction underwater even with good visibility unless you have something as a reference such as a reef. 

The compass course also allowed the two divers to search their own area and not be encroaching on the other's territory.  When the two divers air got to a point that it was half used, they would make a large U turn to move over to new territory and then work their way back to where the boat was anchored.

Keith and my son Gary with their Shark Tooth Finds

The finds would vary anywhere from very small teeth up to ones as big as your hand.  There were also other specie of sharks that had teeth patterns similar to the sharks that frequent our bodies of water today, but none of them were anyway near the size of the Megalodon. 

One theory has it that today's Great White could be a descendent of the Meg because research concludes that the Great White has similar features only on a considerably smaller scale.           

Megalodon on the outside with smaller specie on Inside

The Cooper River

 I had heard of another location where the divers were finding large Megalodon teeth.  It was the Cooper River in South Carolina. 

I got with my son Gary and we looked into joining a charter that took divers down the river to hunt for teeth.  The only down side was the current and visibility.  Even though we were both used to limited visibility this was really limited. 

We were told that two things were needed for the dive.  One was a cave diving light which was a very bright light and it had a battery pack that the divers wore on their side to supply the light with power.  The second item necessary was a large screwdriver with a lanyard that could be fastened around your wrist so you didn't loose it.  The main purpose of this screwdriver was to help you fight the head-on current by sticking it in the bottom and holding on. 

Even though this didn't sound enjoyable we had enough drive to see what the conditions were as well as the desire to capture one of the large teeth for our collection.        

The charter boat on the Cooper River.

When we arrived at the dive site the captain told us that we only had about an hour until the tide changed and the current became a lot more swift and we would have to abort the dive. 

In the water, as we descended toward the bottom it became darker and darker to the point where visibility was almost gone.  Even turning on the light was not much help and that mild current was not very mild, it took all we had to hold ourselves against it by digging that screwdriver into the bottom. 

Between holding the light and the screwdriver there wasn't another hand left to search for teeth.  Now I knew why some of the other seasoned river divers were wearing head gear, with lights built in, leaving their hands free to hold on and search. 

Needless to say it was an experience that both of us didn't want to repeat following the dives we did.  Once more we didn't find any of those elusive sharks teeth. 

Actually Megalodon Sharks Teeth have been found all over the world which attests to the range they had before becoming extinct. 

The Croaker Hole 

One weekend in Florida Gary and I were searching for the Croaker Hole on the St. Johns River above Lake George.  Apparently this location was named after the Croaker Fish which is a specie found in the area that actually makes a croaking sound while spawning.  

Someone had told me how there was this springs that came out below the river and you had to go through the river's tannic stained water in order to get to the spring. 

We had the general location all we had to do was pinpoint just where it was.  The information we had was that the hole was only about five feet in diameter and opened into a larger room that ran back about 200 feet to where the springs came out. 

Unless you had some visual sightings from shore to triangulate the location you had to just keep an eye on the depth sounder until it went from about 20 feet deep to 50 feet.  At this point you would throw your anchor that would go down in the hole giving you a definite route to the springs. 

We suited up and grabbing our underwater lights and a camera,  started down in water that had about a one foot visibility.  After reaching the opening to the springs the water turned to a crystal clear column of water that continued down into the cavern entrance.     

                                                                     Cat Fish and Eel in the Croaker Hole

 Someone had placed a rope line leading from the main entrance back into the cavern.  Even though the cavern was wide open without any twists or turns, someone felt it would be safer for novice divers if there was some connection back to the opening.  This is always a good idea to keep first time divers, in this environment, from feeling uncomfortable. 

While exploring the cavern we saw catfish, eels and fresh water shrimp but most of all the excitement of seeing a hidden springs under a river was just plain neat.  When Gary and I decided we had seen all that was to be seen, we began to surface by going back up the anchor line through the poor visibility of the river and out into the daylight. 

All Gary had to say was "that was really cool!"  And so it was, another experience with limited visibility but a great dive. 

George