Lake Travis vis report 01/18/2006

[Teknadv3x]

Just got back from Travis. Here is what I observered.
Lake is still very trashed, Vis was 5' at the very the best down to 75'.
Made entry @ Windy Point /public side scootered north for a 71 min. roundtrip.




Dave

 

[ScubaTexan]

Is it as low as I'm afraid it is?

 

[Teknadv3x]

Is it as low as I'm afraid it is?

Yes lake is fairly low, but plenty of water to still dive. Just terrible vis. Someone had mentioned in a recent post that that the vis was 8-10. So we opted to make the
3 & 1/2 hr drive on that report. I should of known better. The only place that there was 8-10 vis was up on the hill at the picnic table. Whoever you were that made that post. Some of us base our dive plans on accurate imfo! In the future until you learn how to judge vis, please do not post a vis report.




Dave

 

[Hemlon]

Yes lake is fairly low, but plenty of water to still dive. Just terrible vis. Someone had mentioned in a recent post that that the vis was 8-10. So we opted to make the
3 & 1/2 hr drive on that report. I should of known better. The only place that there was 8-10 vis was up on the hill at the picnic table. Whoever you were that made that post. Some of us base our dive plans on accurate imfo! In the future until you learn how to judge vis, please do not post a vis report.




Dave

I don't know who posted the vis report you mentioned, so I'm definitely not their advocate.

That being said, you have to keep in mind that there is a wide range of experience levels who dive Lake Travis and who post their reports in this forum.

One person's 8-10 ft vis may be another person's 3-5 ft vis!

If you want a truer representation of the lake's report, I suggest you contact one of Austin's LDS. THEY are more likely to have a broader base of reports. One (at least) of the LDS's here even has a weekly "fun dive" scheduled so they stay pretty in-tune with conditions.

Lighten up! You still had fun, right??

 

[FIXXERVI6]

I feel the pain I too have driven down based on a vis report and did well to see my gauges when the vis was "10 feet"

10 feet is 10 feet, 10 feet is not 2 for one person and 20 for another, I can get a tape measure out and prove that the distance does not change when I hand it to different people

Maybe we need several underwater cameras hooked up to web cames, say in 5 feet sections, camera 1, 5 feet, camera 2, 10 feet and hang and object and hop online, and see which one you can see.....

yea I know pipe dream but I can't dive right now so I have to day dream.

 

[Teknadv3x]

I don't know who posted the vis report you mentioned, so I'm definitely not their advocate.

That being said, you have to keep in mind that there is a wide range of experience levels who dive Lake Travis and who post their reports in this forum.

One person's 8-10 ft vis may be another person's 3-5 ft vis!

If you want a truer representation of the lake's report, I suggest you contact one of Austin's LDS. THEY are more likely to have a broader base of reports. One (at least) of the LDS's here even has a weekly "fun dive" scheduled so they stay pretty in-tune with conditions.

Lighten up! You still had fun, right??

I thought that one purpose of this board was to get accurate lake conditions. So one
could plan their dive if they lived 200 MILES AWAY from the lake.
If my memory serves me correctly..The person that did the Lake condition post WAS from a Austin diveshop or at least is a Austin area OW Inst. I would think that at that level he/she would be able to judge vis. I guess it would not be such a big thing if fuel cost, time off work, dive preperation and the 3 & 1/2 hr drive were not involved but in the real world they are involved..For the record there are members on this board that give very accurate imfo. God bless them, they had not posted recently so I took a gamble on what I thought would be a pretty accurate report based on the Austin area OW Inst observation. Well I was mistaken and I payed the price. My point of this follow up is to give the heads up to those reading on how IMPORTANT it is to give accurate Vis reports. Not all of us live close to the lake.

Dave

 

[cyklon_300]

pinged me...two of my friends dived the dam last week and had lousy conditions there as well. Sorry you had a bummer dive.

Dave, you do realize where you got this bogus info...you know, the same place where you read stuff about Air2s, deep air, split fins, diving EAN28 to 180', and well, you know...

To paraphrase Hemlon...one man's 8-10' vis is another man's touch contact...I wouldn't bother with contacting the shops tho...they want people in the water and seem to give questionable vis estimates. Most of them aren't doing any winter diving anyways...lots of WWW types at the LDS.

You could be like my partner with a brand new set of Worthington 130s and no where to go for at least a month...or me with a bronchial infection that will not go away.

We're all getting a little testy...

 

[Willie]

Someone had mentioned in a recent post that that the vis was 8-10. So we opted to make the 3 & 1/2 hr drive on that report. I should of known better. The only place that there was 8-10 vis was up on the hill at the picnic table. Whoever you were that made that post. Some of us base our dive plans on accurate imfo! In the future until you learn how to judge vis, please do not post a vis report.

I posted a report on two dives I did with subzero on Sunday, 1-15, at Mansfield Park Dam.

At 64' I estimated vis was 5'. I could see the full length of subzero when at his fins. That is what I based the report on. Vis was much better at the safety stop. I asked subzero afterward what he thought and we agreed it was around 15' in the shallower water. I did that based on how far I was from objects near us. We stayed at one location at that depth for 5 mins or so. In retrospect that might have been a bit optimistic, but it was at least 10-12'.

I am open to any suggestions as to standards of estimating vis. I am new at this and it is something I have thought about. There are so many variables.

At depth I did have my flashlight on and I am sure that I wouldnt have been able to see as far without it.

It also strikes me that, especially on windy days, vis could be much different on the downwind side of the lake compared to the upwind side of the lake or behind some other wind break.

Willie

 

[Hemlon]

ROFL...too funny! Maybe I'm naive, but I thought half the fun of diving was just being off work, in water, and (hopefully) surrounded by fun people.

Well, it is for me anyway!

Peace to be.

 

[Willie]

Just for discussion purposes here are some of the variables I see in a vis estimate.

1. ambient light -- amount of cloud cover, time of day, in the shadow of a dam or cliff or boat
2. is there anything to see -- much easier to see an airplane than a fish
3. contrast -- if there is a light colored bottom I can see something further away than if it is dark colored
4. color of objects -- much easier to see yellow fins than black ones in low vis
5. am I using a flashlight, how good is it
6. physical ability -- I dont see near as well as I did when I was younger. My night/dark vision has suffered the most. I normally go to a nearby window to see the caller ID if I dont have my glasses on. I can easily read my gauges without corrective lenses if there is plenty of ambient light, but not if it is dark.
7. wind affects the visibility -- I suspect that on a windy day vis is much worse on the downwind side of a lake than on the upwind wide or in a protected cove. Choppy conditions diffuse the light reaching the surface.

Theoretically it seems that vis would be a constant based on the water clarity and amount of light available. Too bad we dont have transmissiometers to measure the vis at a particular point like they do at the end of runways. Wouldnt it be nice if the ocean buoys had cables that went to about 80' and reported the vis and temp as well as the surface conditions?

I try to estimate vis as, horizontally, how far away can I see my dive buddy.

Willie