Dive Report: Clinton
Sunday, January 30, 2000

Five divers dove the Clinton barge this afternoon.  The day was
sunny and about 78F.  I was diving the Sucre yesterday in fairly
flat seas, but today, despite a forecast to the contrary, the
seas were up a bit.  There were continuous three to four foot
rolling waves and a few white-caps.  Also, the sea wasn't as
blue as it was the day before when we had 100+ foot visibility.
The water was about 74F, and there was almost no current.  I was
diving trimix 24/23/53.

The captain set up, and our divemaster jumped in and set a floatline.
Then the divers jumped in.  I free-swam along the downline and was
in the sand at 170 feet in about a minute.  We were tied off to the
stern of the barge, and as I approached the bottom I saw a big nurse
shark about eight feet long resting under the back section of the hull
where it curves up.  I backed away from the wreck as I sank so as not
to scare away the shark and settled into the sand about 15 feet from
it.  It was beautiful.  I looked around to see if any of the other
divers were down yet, but I didn't see anyone.  I looked up along
the floatline and saw a diver in silhouette, but he was too far away
to signal, so I just sat in the sand a few minutes looking at the shark.
After a while, my proximity seemed to make the shark uncomfortable and
it left.  Later, back on the boat, some of the other divers told me they
saw a bull shark, but I never saw that one.

Now that the shark was gone, I swam toward the bow alone the port
side of the wreck.  Along the way there was an opening in the hull
which lead to an interesting corridor.  I entered and traversed to
another opening closer to the bow where I exited.  One of the other
divers took some video of me during this swim-through.

After I exited, I swam up to the deck to explore a while longer until
my time ran out.  My bottom time was only 20 minutes because we were
planning to dive the Sub Nets as a second tech dive later today.  Deco
went normally and everyone was on the boat a while later doing an
hour surface interval.  I breathed O2 for 30 minutes during the
surface interval to extend my bottom time on the second dive.

After this dive, we searched for the Sub Nets, but in the end were
unable to find the site.  Instead, we decided to drift-dive at
Secret Lobster Site #7.  The captain set us up, and my buddy and I
jumped in.  Shortly after that, we were at an undisclosed depth
looking for lobster.  We didn't see any for about five minutes,
but then we found lobster rush-hour!  We caught our limit and they
were all big ones.  Finally, with a catch-bag full of dinner, we
headed up and began our deco.  A while later, I was cleaning
lobster at the dock and looking forward to dinner.