Today, our team (Lauren and Scott) continued to map our unit at the Brick Site. After refining our technique over the past few days, we found that we were becoming quite efficient at the task.
We were also able to increase our bottom time through slow deliberate breathing in order to conserve air; some of the issue was related to weighting. I found that I was light at the end of each day’s dive. This caused me to struggle a bit and consume more air. Today, I added two pounds of weight to my gear. The increase in weight made me more comfortable on the bottom when my tank was lower on air.
We had a fairly heavy current today which continuously pushed us into neighboring units. We found ourselves bumping into the team adjacent to us quite a bit. More than once, I found myself sticking one finger in the sand to hold position. Over all, the current caused us to work a little harder to stay on task, but we still managed to do quite well with mapping and air consumption. Our bottom time has increased by ten minutes over the last three days.
We finished up our unit this morning and transferred our map to the site plan this afternoon. We are digitizing all of the original maps then saving the hard copy for future reference. We scan each map when it is completed and save it to our project hard drive. This duplication of the data record is an important precautionary measure. As our Dive Safety Officer, Jason is fond of saying: “If you have one, you have none. If you have two, you have one.”
– Scott