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Friday, August 3
Team 4: Sam Erdman, James Waterbury and Alek
Zywot
Today was an adventurous day.
Without worrying about what was for lunch (as we pre-made our own) and
no worries about the weather we had an amazing time. We sailed out early
and quickly arrived at our dive site. It was windy today so the current
was a little stronger but throughout the day it died out. We immediately
got suited up and jumped in the water. Today everything went so smoothly
with no hitches on the boat.
Several parts of the central section of the wreck
feature heavy metal pins, indicating heavily-reinforced structure.
We went out to the Tonawanda on the Coral Sea again this
morning and arrived at the wreck site around 11 a.m. in the morning.
After setting anchor the first of the 4 teams went into the water and
within a short period of time every team was in the water heading for
their objectives. Continuing from the prior day each team set out to map
any large artifacts within an arc around their datum point, while taking
care not to damage the delicate reef. The water was very warm and even
though at the surface is a little rough; it was much calmer at depth.
The sea life on the wreck was abundant with various fish and even a
nurse shark that swam through the area. As teams starting getting low on
air they went to the surface to get new tanks and eat some lunch.
Team 4 recovers
datum markers at the end of the dive day. Aleksander Zywot, Sam Erdman
and James Waterbury.
After lunch the teams went back in again to get back to work on mapping
the artifacts. Despite being down a reel each team was able to gather
more data on the artifacts. Again as teams got low on air they went to
the surface with the last two teams retrieving the datum posts. After
all were onboard the Coral Sea head back to the dock were we
unloaded and got ready for dinner.
Dive Safety Officer
Anne Corscadden Knox completes a final round of the site.
After dinner half of the team members went for leisure night dive while
the rest of the crew started work on the site map. We started with the
datum points and got no further because of some difficulties in plotting
the data as recorded on Thursday. This will be reviewed and additional
data collection, if needed, undertaken at our next return to the site.
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