After a full day of being stuffed into vehicles with little, or no, leg room (oh, the hard life of a tall man), beginning our first day of work in the water felt like a blessing. After a breakfast of eggs, beans, rice, and fresh fruit (the fruit tastes way better here than stateside), we packed up our kits and began the quick five minute walk to Willie’s Tours. I have a feeling that this walk will become all too routine by the end of our excursion. There, we met Jorge, the guide who has planned our entire trip. He introduced us to Don Manuel, Luis, Minor, and Marvin – the men who will serve as our boat crews for the next two weeks. After introductions, crews launched the small boats and we started making our way to the first stop, the Anchor and Cannon site.
Today served as a reconnaissance trip in order to get acquainted with the sites we will begin diving tomorrow. We opted to snorkel and free dive, as opposed to SCUBA dive, today for logistical reasons. At our first site, the primary concern was locating and marking major site features, like anchors and cannon. In order to do this, a free diver had to swim a line down to the feature and secure it while their buddy fed them slack on the surface. Then we had to cut the line and place a piece of pool noodle with an attached tag number to buoy the location. This will allow us to quickly relocate the features during future outings, ultimately saving us air and time.
As visibility began to deteriorate and our buoy supply began running low, we moved to the second site, the Brick Pile, in order to familiarize ourselves with its location. We spent the next forty-five minutes on site assessment and orientation (the visibility was much better at this location). After the site boundaries were roughly established, we boarded the boat and headed back to shore.
We were allowed the rest of the day off because the staff and crew chiefs had to venture to Puerto Viejo in order to check out El Lanchon, another site we will be recording using photogrammetry. It will be awesome to return to the Anchor and Cannon site tomorrow, tanks in tow, so we can get a true sense of the site as a whole!
-Mitch