River Rescue II

I'm probably one of the least experienced divers in this crowd today. So it was fun to try and learn from so many people who are so willing to share their knowledge and experience.
I've been diving in the Tennessee River 3 other times before today. Each one a little different than the one before.

1. New Year's Day - Cold with a swift current.
2. Earth Day in April - Warmer, with less current. Better visibility.
3. August - Very warm, no current, great visibility, lots of fish.

Today was almost as warm the last time, but this was my first time diving upstream from the Chickamauga Dam. I had been told it was silty, but I was surprised by how murky the water could get. Ricky Boyd was a great dive buddy. And he came prepared with a dive light. My chin was literally inches from the bottom to see what was down there at times. As I was floating above this smooth bottom I was struck by the many holes you would see in the silt. Two things made me smile at that time. As I was floating just above the bottom barely kicking along, I could hear only the sound of my regulator. The calm pace of in and out. And for a second I felt like I knew what the Apollo astronauts must have felt as they floated between steps on the dusty lunar surface. "These tiny holes look like little craters.", I thought to myself. The other thing that made me smile was the tune "There's hole in the bottom of the sea" that popped into my head.

The very nature of collecting garbage of course stirred up more silt. And if it weren't for the mesh bag that Ricky and I were holding onto, I would have lost him as soon as we dropped down. It was thick. Our max depth was only around 27 feet. And at that point you would have thought it was a night dive. Some sunshine would have helped quite a bit.

All in all it was an awesome 50 minutes underwater. Most of the junk we brought to shore was bottles, cans, and plastic cups. A lot of plastic cups.