Oakden writing.

This was a very successful work day. Stacy started out doing her LAST hard-hat dive. She was understandably thrilled. She had saved the best for last--the Outfall--known among the divers as Mt. Charmin (partially because its covered with a snowy-white layer of bacteria). The samples she brought back were what one might expect when sampling directly under a sewer outfall. Thinking back over my years of sampling in some pretty disgusting places, I would rank these samples within the top 5 on the "that's gross" scale. I ended up sieving them under the hood so as not to contaminate the air in the lab. Then we had lunch.

The afternoon saw all the remaining divers (except Dan, who still has a non-diveable ear) mobilized to set up some experiments in front of town. The experiments were designed to mimic some of the conditions that are found around outfalls. A number of small containers were placed on the seafloor with replicate treatments (see Jonna's description from yesterday). The sediment in the containers was enriched with organic material, then inoculated with Beggiotoa bacteria. The containers were protected on the bottom with cages to keep the deposit-feeding animals from disturbing them. After a couple weeks, once the bacteria is established, we'll go back and remove the cages, and see what happens.

There's always a lot of talk on the surface before a dive about exactly who is going to do what, exactly how its going to be done, and in what order things will be done. It has to be pretty carefully thought out, because it is hard to communicate under water, and it is very annoying to get to the bottom and find out that you don't have something you really need.

As an example of a typical work dive, here's how the dive went today (its not AT ALL like doing a sport dive in the tropics...). We lowered 2 lines. One was the hole down line with 3 flashers (so we can spot the line), the pony bottle (in case someone runs low on air during their safety stop), and a yellow goodie bag with a measuring bar and a hammer. A second down line had an extra dive light (the lights break, and its dark down there), the scoops we would use to bury the cages, and 2 buckets with the containers we were going to arrange on the seafloor.

In this case, Craig and I were going in first. I took down with me a dive light and the string of cages, which I left on the bottom for Craig.

A smiling Craig gets the double-glove treatment from Jonna and Jen.	Jim heading down towing a train of cages.

Craig gave me a couple minute head start. When I reached the bottom (we were in 60ft of water) I swam around till I found a good spot to set up the experiment, then went back to the line and got one of the buckets of containers. I laid out the containers in a 4m x 4m matrix, using the measuring bar. I had a diagram of the layout clipped to my depth gauge (its easy to forget things under water), which I used to make sure I got all the containers in the right order. After I had a few of the containers placed, Craig arrived and started placing and burying the cages. Since the cages float, we had to be careful to keep the ones that we weren't using tied together, and had to be aware not to let go of the one we were working with. Once we start digging things get pretty murky, but we can just swim up 10ft or so and easily get out of the cloud. It can be pretty awkward trying to juggle all the stuff we need to get the work done, particularly when its dark, but after a while we learn to cope. Craig and I got all but one of the cages buried, and the last thing I did was pound the bar into the seafloor to indicate the top of the matrix.

After we got out of the water, Jen and Jonna went in to finish things up. They were first going to bury any cages we didn't get to, and make sure all the others were well buried. Then Jen would go around with the syringes and inoculate all the containers with bacteria, while Jonna held a light and stayed out of the way.

	The syringes Jen used to inoculate the treatment containers, along with the digging scoops, ready to go into the hole.

After a long dive we get REALLY cold. Sometimes we can't even get our gear off. A full service dive tender will not only get your tank and weight belt off and pull you out of the hole, but will then remove your gloves, mask, and fins. If they're really good, they'll have the heater going and hand you hot chocolate.

Dan, the consummate full-service dive tender, taking Jim's fins off.	A very cold Jonna trying to warm up after the dive.

	Celebrating the successful dive with a group shower to warm up.

After the dive everyone was a bit fried, and we'd run out of holes in which to dive. The main stuff we now need to get done is out at Turtle Rock (see snow map for location). Unfortunately, the vehicle that the drillers need to use to tow our hut all the way out to Turtle is broken, so we're crossing our fingers that it will be fixed soon. Anyway, we spent the last couple hours of the work day getting caught up in the lab. After dinner people dispersed in different directions: back to the computers, to watch a movie, to play pool at the bar, or to crash.

Stacy meditating while waiting for the next dive.