Scuba Geocaching

[BarrelRoll]

How would one sign the log under water?

working on that.

I made the mistake of showing this thread to my wife and I've now been tasked with building a treasure chest that we can put in Clear Springs Scuba Park in Terrel, Texas.

She just ordered this to use as the log:

Rite in The Rain #635 DuraRite Underwater Waterproof Notebook 3" X 5"

 

[Herk_Man]

I can see docs point, any introduction of anything no matter how small and inconspicuous in the underwater environment is litter. So my solution is a virtual geocache.

If I plant a rosebush in the middle of my yard, is it a weed? Most geocaches cannot even be seen by someone unless they are searching for it and have the instructions to find it. Litter. Pfft.

 

[Doc Harry]

If I plant a rosebush in the middle of my yard, is it a weed? Most geocaches cannot even be seen by someone unless they are searching for it and have the instructions to find it. Litter. Pfft.

No... but it's YOUR YARD.

Don't be stashing your trash anywhere but YOUR YARD.

 

[BarrelRoll]

No... but it's YOUR YARD.

Don't be stashing your trash anywhere but YOUR YARD.

Geocachers are very, very environmentally motivated. In fact, if you go to their site they advocate carrying a garbage bag and picking up litter while caching.

It's a very hippy, love nature sort of activity.

 

[Guba]

Yeah, BR, but I'd still check with Robert (CSSP manager) before you stash a cache there.

After all, that is most certainly HIS yard.

 

[BarrelRoll]

Oh definitely. Any place that won't even let you bring your dog when camping is definitely one where you need to make sure the bosses are cool with every little move you make.

Related question -- We're looking for some sort of treasure chest sort of deal to use as the cache. Any suggestions? The only ones I can find online that look like they'd work are like 2-3 feet, little too big for our purposes me thinks.

 

[Diver0001]

Related question -- We're looking for some sort of treasure chest sort of deal to use as the cache. Any suggestions? The only ones I can find online that look like they'd work are like 2-3 feet, little too big for our purposes me thinks.

Around here people often use old ammo boxes. You could paint it to look like a teasure chest....

Just a thought.

I've been thinking about hiding one in a place where we go diving as part of a multi. All you'd need to do for the under water part is leave something that would allow the finder to either calculate the next coordinate or copy it.

One idea I had is to use characteristics of a wreck. Something like this kind of a clue: "find the depth at the hard bottom exactly 27 metres in the compass direction of 140 deg from the exact tip of the bow rounded to the nearest 3 meters" (so small variations due to tides or instrument readings don't screw it up) and then using that number, the next coordinate in the multi is N52.152.(XX-12) E004.243.(XX+36)

Something like that is doable without the need to stash a log book or whatever on the dive site. If the bottom contour was stable enough (and interesting enough to force them to dive it) that would work. I know a place where everyone knows that the wreck has an easy to find engine block in 15 metres of water but 50 meters further up to the SE, the hard bottom is at 25 meters and 50 meters further up to the WSW it's 8 meters deep..... hmmmm...

R..

 

[Hoomi]

Yeppers. Anything introduced to the bottom of the ocean is litter.

One thing that cachers strive for in hiding a cache is to make it as inconspicuous as possible, so that it doesn't get "muggled". Some non-cachers, if they find a cache, will remove it or vandalize it, and it's a real disappointment to spend time getting to the cache site, only to find the cache is gone. If the cacher has done his job well, the only people that will ever see the cache are those that are specifically looking for it.

Quite often, a cache is placed at a spot that has some special attraction. A scuba cache might be placed where there is a cool underwater arch, or maybe an especially interesting population of marine life, such as "Stingray Alley".

 

[BarrelRoll]

Around here people often use old ammo boxes. You could paint it to look like a teasure chest....

Yeah, ammo boxes are par for the course here as well.

I guess it's hard to describe, but Clear Springs is sort of a SCUBA amusement park. There's sunken planes and boats, a giant propane tank thing that's been welded and cut to look like a shark for penetration training. Long story short, it's a rock quarry that allows nothing but SCUBA training. No fishing, boats, nothing but divers.

For that reason my wife (being the purist she is) wants to make an "attraction", a treasure chest which would dictate it's own nav point on the lake, possibly a hard to find navigation point for training.

 

[vjanelle]

Besides clues from shore from a GPS point, how else would you go about setting up a scuba cache?

Compass bearings (you do have a compass and know how to use it, right?), combined with reference points to combat tidal exchanges, etc.

There are various memorial markers around some dive sites where people have died... And then there's things like: