The 17th and 18th brought more reconnaissance work. Wanting to record the positions and dimensions of some interesting artifacts slightly to the east of our quadrant, on the 17th Dr. Zelenko and I suited up, grabbed a pair of 18 liter tanks and got to work.
The juxtaposition of this ancient millstone and modern anchor suggest the motley layout of the site as a whole.
On the 18th we returned close to our quadrant, to take some compass bearings and scout a patch of seafloor between it and the nearest shoreline that remained un-probed.
Our agreed upon method for this kind of work is directly related to the terrain, which for these sectors is mostly plains of sand with scattered rocks and debris. It involves the recon team (the four divers who can use our hookah system at the same time) descending at the chosen coordinates, choosing a large, easily recorded rock roughly in the center of the zone and running cone-shaped trenches out from it.
Our compressor dives are regulated by either temperature or time; buddy pairs surface after two hours on the bottom maximum, or whenever a one gets cold. The 18th of August saw the latter! There is always a thermocline at a depth of about 11 meters, where the temperature drops from about 18* Celsius to 17, 16 or 15 or less depending on the day and the whims of the deep. I don’t know what the temperature was exactly that day, but coming from Wisconsin I know a thing or two about cold water, and I can accurately report that it was cold! After an hour and having recorded some interesting finds, we called the dive and headed sunwards!
