Dive Stories From Back In The Day

[ricki]

Here's another one. We were doing a reef survey about 20 miles off Tampa Bay in December decades back. We were staying on an EPA support ship, a big one, think it was a former oversized gunboat or something in the Vietnam War. The goal was to survey quadrants on the bottom, a coral patch reef, for type and percent coverage. I recall it had something to do with a dredging project related to the Port of Tampa. The corals looked pretty good surprising me at the time. We were two man teams in Zodiacs with no comlink, usually no big deal but this day there was fog. Another fog story? Fog, especially the real thick variety isn't that common in the SE coast but is more common in the Tampa area. There weren't any waves or wind to speak of fortunately. Anyway, here we were 20 miles offshore heading out in a small inflatable and at about a ships length out, the mothership vanishes? Not very comforting particularly considering how routinely I used to have outboard failures in those years. Twenty miles offshore, no power, no mothership in sight and no communications lost in a fog? Hope the consultant we were working for worked up a bit more contingency management for future projects. Can't recall another time had to so a survey in the fog, heavy seas, cold water, after dark, curious sharks, stupid deco but not fog. Good news is, no outboard failure or getting lost either. The viz.UW was pretty good about 40 ft., the water was only about 18 ft. and a lot warmer than I would have thought possible for that time of year. I had made a snowman in Tampa a few years prior at USF and was firmly convinced at just how nippy it can get over there. It was an interesting project with no real problems. Regarding attire, recall I had on a 72 cft with USD Conshelf Reg, a Aquatech BCD (think I still have it too) and a 4 or 5 mm farmer john. Hope the reef is still doing ok out there.