Lake diving ?????

[Rooster1]

Originally posted by peter
Watergal
You made my mouth water with the stunning discription. Drabby coloured fish, rocks, and some trash all in one dive, things dreams are made of
But the dive on a grave yard that would be the ultimate night dive SPOOKY
p.s Did you have that stutter in your typing before the power plant dive?

Rooster1
Are all of the wrecks mapped or do you have to rely on local knowledge. Would be good to see if you could find some uncharted ones. Do they suffer from rust as much as salt water immersed ones.


TexasMike
Maybe, and this is just a hunch, the jewelry ,beer botles,bikes and bikini tops all come from drunk bikini clad girls jumping thier bikes into the swamp/lake. Should'nt be to hard to track down the scource

All the wrecks are not charted in fact many still missing. Every once in a while a knew one is found and like Piranhas divers are all over it to take a look at the knew never been dove wreck, that is of course after the officials go down first. Many of them are charted and some good sites online with gps/loran to get you right on top of them.
.....Rooster

 

[Greg G.]

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[Greg G.]

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[Drew Sailbum]

I've never heard of a salt water lake.

:approve: Snorkling in Jellyfish lake in Palau is one of the impressive sites Micronesia has to offer. There are several saltwater lakes that are fed by the sea through underground channels. In the famous jellyfish lake, two species of jellies were long ago trapped, and have since evolved and lost the ability to sting.

I have done freshwater lake dives to salvage a sunken sailboat, and for cleaning up the lake. But the best search and recovery was for a diamond engagement ring. I saw the couple having a heated argument while sitting on the end of the pier. She got up, slapped him, and tossed the ring into the lake. It gave us a little more purpose than usual to go sorting through the debris of beer cans and assorted junk that lined the lake bottom there.

 

[scuba-sass]

Originally posted by Greg G.
I've never heard of a salt water lake.

Is Seattle that far from the rest of the US?!? Ever heard of Salt Lake City? It got that name somehow......

Scuba-sass

 

[Greg G.]

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[Weezle]

Here in Tennessee we dive the TVA system sometimes. These lakes as you might know were dammed during the great depression as part of FDR's "New Deal", I believe.
Anyhow, there are six or seven lakes within an hour drive from my house that are between 400 to 500,000 acres and have something like 11,000 miles of shorline.

When TVA backed up the lakes, they moved people out, but did not tear down buildings. In Dale Hollow and Fontana there are entire towns that are diveable.

Talking about SPOOKY, at Dale Hollow Lake, you can dive the remains of the town of Willow Grove. Before the lake, Willow Grove was a typical Tennessee small town of the 20's (think Andy Griffith only smaller). When the school was built there, they unearthed a casket with the body of a child in it. Legend has it that they entombed the casket into the basement steps of the schoolhouse, and it wasn't removed before TVA flooded the area. When you dive the school, you can see the steps leading down into the darkness, but I for one am not going down there...

 

[watergal]

Peeetter:::
whhhhattt sttttuuuuttterr???

One of the creative charter services runs Halloween night dives on the graveyard in October. Of course those of us that visit regularly consider it our duty to stock the site with suitably posed (plastic) skeletons. It is fairly deep (usually 130-170ft, but we have had a drought and the lake is low now--it starts at 110ft so if anyone is thinking of coming to check it out, this spring would be good) so a little narcosis makes it really nifty!

I used to Live in Thunder Bay, ONT on the shores of Lake Superior. As TM pointed out the lakes are so vast that they act more like an ocean. Most of those shipwrecks came from violent storms that would rival the mid-Atlantic.

But the wrecks are well preserved with the cold fresh water. Other things are too. Some folks are salvaging submerged logs from old growth forest. Lumber that was cut 100+ years ago and lost.

The other recent topic of interest in the Great Lakes is the Zebra mussles. An accidentally imported critter with no native preditors. They now cover most underwater surfaces and are a bane to ship owner operators, but as filter feeders they have cleaned up the Great Lakes and dramatically improved visability in the pst 5-8 years.

So what does one dive in Austrilia, other than reefs?

 

[Fishkiller]

Originally posted by TexasMike

One of the things I want to do sometime is dive near one of the popular party coves and recover all of the lost jewelry and bikini tops.

If you need a buddy


I must say here there is a spot that my LDS found to anchor in a small cove made from water run off from top of the canyon. You drop down into the water the area is about 20x10x10, great for getting everything situated then as you head West, decending down what would have been a waterfall before the lake was made, as the area speads out you are greeted by the
"Christmas tree" when first discoverd the sunlight was reflecting off all the lost boat anchors. Thanks to the Game and Fish departments color poster you can reconize the species of fish that are known to inhabitat the area, on a good day the young Green Sunfish will follow you while resting at the 15 foot BBQ.

 

[DivingGal]

Sure we may not have the spectacular colourful fish life, but my friend, here in Ontario we have wrecks.....

As Ontario Diver said, he and I have a "pefect" dive trip weather report. In other words no rough/stormy conditions. Around where we dive the fresh water lakes (and rivers) preseve most wrecks with the nice cold/fresh water conditions. The recent arrival of the zebra muscles have improved the vis to absolutely fantastic conditions.

Come on up for a visit, and we'll ensure a grand time. OD keeps promising a pig roast, me I'll stick to the basics great weather (whenever I've organized the charter it's been A-1 conditions)