Mercer Island
manuel and i snorked it up again for the first time since i've been back from alaska. we met at Luther Burbank Park on Mercer Island.
it was a nice sunny day, i scoped out the place a bit before diving.
it didn't look like too huge of a dock, but when we got in the water and dove down, there was a treasure chest of shit down there.
where we dove in was way out at the end of the furthest arm of the dock.
out at the point where most people don't go, proved by the whitewash of bird shit blanketing the final 30 feet of the walk.
we jumped off and were well-received by the water.
this was the first time my balls didn't try to climb up into my throat.
i somehow forgot to check the temperature of the water with my watch, but after being out of the water for a little while and getting back in, my watch read 76 degrees.
that's pretty damn warm, i don't know if i can fully trust that reading.
but what i did remember to watch for this time around was the depths that we went to. at that furthest point along the dock we tried to dive down. however, the bottom was unexpectedly deep. after another try, knowing what i was in for, i made it down and hurriedly slammed the watch onto the sludgy bottom.
gauge reads: 40 feet.
my deepest recorded dive yet!
i didn't have much time at the bottom after checking out my watch, so i grabbed the nearest bottle and headed up to the surface.
manuel and i did two or three of these dives and realized that if we were going to do anymore, that we needed to move in a bit towards the shore.
those deep dives took a lot out of me.
along the dock was a virtual bottle and can graveyard. i hadn't seen this many can's per square ______ (your choice of measurement) at any other place!
this area was literally littered with cans. from any given bottle or can, you could reach out your arm and you'd have a near 100% chance that there would be another bottle or can within that reaching distance.
it's very amazing when you consider the environmental consciousness that the islanders seem to exude.
so you can see our collection of stuff. there's always a few i've never heard of.
some of the cans ended up being a home for tiny lobsters. i know people might say that they're crawfish, but these guy's backs aren't curved like the crawfish i imagine, but are more flat and wide like a lobster. so until i find out otherwise, i'll call them that.
either way, they live in cans. one had the unfortunate turn of events that left him in a can where he grew too large to leave. poor guy. he seemed to be doing ok for the time being. there was another lobster that i surprisingly found when dumping out water from a rusted can. the thing almost fell out onto my arm!
this guy was about 5 inches long and after being held out of the water for a bit, he weaseled his way out of the rusted can top, plopped onto manuel's arm, and streamlined his body shooting straight back to the lakebed. after a while i went back to diving and i found the guy again skuttling across the bottom. i approached him and within about a foot, he started to rear up his claws and angled his head back to look at me, ready for a fight.
i really didn't want my nose cut off, so i left him alone. he continued skuttling into the murky abyss.
later on, wedged up in the pilings, manuel and i found a fiberglass boat! it was almost vertical, about 8 feet long with about a 20 foot rope attached.
we had the brilliant idea of hauling it some 100 feet to shore.
easy, no?
no.
it was harder than fuck to drag along the bottom, so what we ended up doing was using the rope in a pulley system that also involved the horizontal supports on the underside of the dock.
we'd yank on the rope until the boat was within a few feet of the support, then we'd quickly unwind the rope and tether it to another support closer to land.
we did this about 5 or 6 times.
the funny part was that the dock wasn't a straight line to the shore, so we had to slingshot ourselves around these supports and pilings. we'd also have one person hold onto the rope, and another on the piling, then we'd grab hands and pull the person holding the rope to the piling when the rope didn't quite reach.
all this slingshotting made me realize why it's a lot easier to use the moon's gravitaional pull in your space shuttle, rather than using your own energy.
you're basically a turd in the water with a boat attached to you if it's just sitting on the bottom.
if you can get the momentum going and get it off the bottom, it's not so bad.
but once it's gone again, you're screwed.
so that was the extent of it. people were amazed at how much shit was down there.
once again, water can cover up everyone's mess, but it'll always come back to haunt you.
keep it clean, bitches.
it was a nice sunny day, i scoped out the place a bit before diving.
it didn't look like too huge of a dock, but when we got in the water and dove down, there was a treasure chest of shit down there.
where we dove in was way out at the end of the furthest arm of the dock.
out at the point where most people don't go, proved by the whitewash of bird shit blanketing the final 30 feet of the walk.
we jumped off and were well-received by the water.
this was the first time my balls didn't try to climb up into my throat.
i somehow forgot to check the temperature of the water with my watch, but after being out of the water for a little while and getting back in, my watch read 76 degrees.
that's pretty damn warm, i don't know if i can fully trust that reading.
but what i did remember to watch for this time around was the depths that we went to. at that furthest point along the dock we tried to dive down. however, the bottom was unexpectedly deep. after another try, knowing what i was in for, i made it down and hurriedly slammed the watch onto the sludgy bottom.
gauge reads: 40 feet.
my deepest recorded dive yet!
i didn't have much time at the bottom after checking out my watch, so i grabbed the nearest bottle and headed up to the surface.
manuel and i did two or three of these dives and realized that if we were going to do anymore, that we needed to move in a bit towards the shore.
those deep dives took a lot out of me.
along the dock was a virtual bottle and can graveyard. i hadn't seen this many can's per square ______ (your choice of measurement) at any other place!
this area was literally littered with cans. from any given bottle or can, you could reach out your arm and you'd have a near 100% chance that there would be another bottle or can within that reaching distance.
it's very amazing when you consider the environmental consciousness that the islanders seem to exude.
so you can see our collection of stuff. there's always a few i've never heard of.
some of the cans ended up being a home for tiny lobsters. i know people might say that they're crawfish, but these guy's backs aren't curved like the crawfish i imagine, but are more flat and wide like a lobster. so until i find out otherwise, i'll call them that.
either way, they live in cans. one had the unfortunate turn of events that left him in a can where he grew too large to leave. poor guy. he seemed to be doing ok for the time being. there was another lobster that i surprisingly found when dumping out water from a rusted can. the thing almost fell out onto my arm!
this guy was about 5 inches long and after being held out of the water for a bit, he weaseled his way out of the rusted can top, plopped onto manuel's arm, and streamlined his body shooting straight back to the lakebed. after a while i went back to diving and i found the guy again skuttling across the bottom. i approached him and within about a foot, he started to rear up his claws and angled his head back to look at me, ready for a fight.
i really didn't want my nose cut off, so i left him alone. he continued skuttling into the murky abyss.
later on, wedged up in the pilings, manuel and i found a fiberglass boat! it was almost vertical, about 8 feet long with about a 20 foot rope attached.
we had the brilliant idea of hauling it some 100 feet to shore.
easy, no?
no.
it was harder than fuck to drag along the bottom, so what we ended up doing was using the rope in a pulley system that also involved the horizontal supports on the underside of the dock.
we'd yank on the rope until the boat was within a few feet of the support, then we'd quickly unwind the rope and tether it to another support closer to land.
we did this about 5 or 6 times.
the funny part was that the dock wasn't a straight line to the shore, so we had to slingshot ourselves around these supports and pilings. we'd also have one person hold onto the rope, and another on the piling, then we'd grab hands and pull the person holding the rope to the piling when the rope didn't quite reach.
all this slingshotting made me realize why it's a lot easier to use the moon's gravitaional pull in your space shuttle, rather than using your own energy.
you're basically a turd in the water with a boat attached to you if it's just sitting on the bottom.
if you can get the momentum going and get it off the bottom, it's not so bad.
but once it's gone again, you're screwed.
so that was the extent of it. people were amazed at how much shit was down there.
once again, water can cover up everyone's mess, but it'll always come back to haunt you.
keep it clean, bitches.
6 Comments:
Good times. I just have to tell you about my second to last call in Paramedic school( thats right mother fuckers, I threw my last tube today and am done). We were dispatch to a drowning on the Colombia river yesterday, boy was that the understatement of the year! This guy and his family had been out innertubing behind his boat and he got knocked off. Well he was drifting down the river toward a bridge. He got caught in the hydrolic and sucked under water. They were frantically looking for him until bump, bump. Yup, ran over his ass with the boat and his life jacket got caught in the propeller and turned him into hamburger. For those of you who want more detail you can ask me but for now I will leave it at that. But I will say it was the worste trauma I have seen yet. Sooooo Trav....watch out for those boats
fuck that. you can always hear the whine of the engine coming from miles away.
unless i'm coming up for much needed air, i'll easily be able to avoid them.
i'm not some bloated-ass manitee.
Manatees just can't hear the boats.
"Research by Dr. Edmund Gerstein, a psychobiologist at Florida Atlantic University, is finally revealing the true nature of these gentle and, unfortunately (and often detrimentally), slow-moving creatures. Manatees are not dumb, but to low-frequency soundssuch as those produced by most boats-they are deaf."
Shame on you for criticising the manatee.....
crazy pics man. those cans have been down there forever! so, did you just leave em on the dock afterwards, or what do you do with em?
we found a trash can nearby and filled it up.
i saved two of the bottles.
i don't know about the manitees, but i can sure as hell hear those boats coming from a mile away.
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