Britannia Beach GUE Project Baseline 08/03/2015

Josh Gardner had been spearheading GUE Project Baseline work in Vancouver. A few months ago, I went along when the stations were installed at Britannia Beach. It was difficult to find the time and volunteers to visit the site regularly, and I was glad to help out. Josh had actually had divers discover the stations on their own, and submit visibility reports out of the blue which was great. The instructions posted on each station seemed to be paying off!

It was a very early morning start. High tide was at 7 am, and that coupled with the daylight savings time change meant that we were all getting up at about 4:30 am. It was a very pretty morning drive. The moon was out, and it was clear and cold. Josh, Dave Williams, Kevin Griffin, Dennis Diamond and myself all met at the Gallileo Coffee Company parking lot. We geared up and discussed our dive plan while enjoying the dawn.

I found a good overview map of all the wrecks at the site here:

https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=zpHcTVndmc_4.klh9o0qUDM0U&ie=UTF8&t=h&oe=UTF8&msa=0

One station was located at the north end (stern) of the CGS Ready. The other station was located near the north end of the Cape Swain. Josh and I formed one dive team, Dave, Kevin and Dennis formed the second team. Our plan was to descend on the CGS Ready and visit the Cape Swain station first, then lay a line from that station back to the Ready to help people find both. At the same time, we would get visibility, depth and temperature measurements from the stations.

The plan didn`t quite work out. The visibility was much worse than any of us had expected. The water was almost black, like tannic water in a river. Granted, part of the problem was the shallow depths of the stations, since the worst visibility seemed concentrated from 30 feet upward. Both teams got separated on the descent, despite our best efforts to remain close (guess they weren`t good enough!). On the plus side, having two teams defined allowed both groups to be autonomous and carry on with the dive. Josh and I completed all our goals, except we decided to leave off running any line. We were in touch contact for the majority of the dive. All our training certainly was paying off! We were able to accomplish a set of fairly complicated goals in very challenging conditions.

To give you an idea of the conditions, here was a picture of the station near the Ready, at about 40 feet.

Taking the visibility measurement was quite simple. You moved away from the chart until the outside white lines blended into the black bars. Then you noted the distance. You also noted the depth and the temperature.

This bit of video shows just how bad the visibility was.

After we finished the dive, we regrouped in the parking lot and decided to go for one more short dive to do some skills. Kevin was in a wetsuit, so he decided to forgo that dive. Dave and Josh did a few skills, and we finished up in about 20 minutes.

All in all a very successful day, and I couldn`t have asked for a better time on my birthday!