Monday, August 4, 2008
Red skies in the morning, sailors take warning. Well, the skies might
not have been red this morning, they were actually grey, but the seas in
the Keys were not in our favor! The boat ride out to our site was
not as pleasant as it usually was. The wind was blowing hard and
churning up 3’ to 5’ swells but we were not going to let that get in the
way of a long-awaited (2 days!) ‘work’ day. I think I can speak for the
whole group when I say that I have never been so excited to go back to
work on Monday. In our eagerness to get back to the site, each team
devised a dive plan over the weekend in order to make sure we
accomplished all of our tasks. We all still have lots of measuring and
drawing to do, but our site plan is shaping up nicely, and we all feel
much more comfortable with the process of working underwater. Without
being able to talk, teamwork and communication are especially important,
and our skills have improved greatly in those areas. With the rough
seas on top, there was some current and surge on the bottom, but not
enough to keep our friendly neighborhood barracuda away! With the
overnight storm, the visibility was down, keeping us focused on our
individual sites. Usually we all can see each other working on our
separate corners of the site, but not today. Although the rain and
waves and made our visibility much poorer, the agitation of the sea also
uncovered new artifacts and parts of artifacts that had previously been
covered by sand. After our two dives, the seas had become much calmer,
making our ride home a bit more pleasant, and we all discussed how much
we had accomplished.
After rinsing and stowing our gear and having
lunch, we spent the afternoon working on transposing our notes from the
mylars, working on scale drawings of artifacts, and filling in our
portions of the site map. Dr. Sheli cooked up another great dinner, and
we got back to work on our notebooks and drawings, comparing
observations and theories, and getting our gear ready for Tuesday’s
diving. Tomorrow promises to be another great day at the site – we
can’t wait to get back!
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