August 19th
Today we got in our first dive of the trip, and we are well chuffed! After the disappointment of Bodensee due to the weather, we did get to dive at Seeboden! It could have gone horribly wrong though, as when we got down to the dive centre and started kitting up, we very quickly realised that on the continent most countries use the DIN system as opposed to the Yoke that our reg's use. I had known this, but stupidly it hadn't registered, and there we were with two Yoke-system regulators and DIN-fitted tanks. If you don't know your diving terminology this means we were up a certain creek without a paddle, and we may as well go snorkeling instead. To our rescue, Thomas provided his own personal DIN-Yoke adapter and hired me a DIN regulator so we could go diving after all. Hurrah!
The dive was quite extraordinary. Thomas was German and had described the dive area in his best English but when he said that we were to find the first tree by the buoy, I naturally assumed he meant large plant or something similar. Nope, he meant tree. There were quite a few underwater trees which provided a habitat for the sea-life down there which, along with rapidly decreasing visibility made for quite an eerie dive. The "vis" started at about 6-7 meters near the surface and quickly dropped to around 4-5 meters as we got deeper. It was only a shallow dive as we were at 600m above sea-level to begin with, all the life was at less than 10m, and besides that there was an incredible thermocline at 8m which took you from nice and toasty 21 degrees centigrade to a frosty 10 degrees instantly. It was much nicer in the shallow end.
I also tested my underwater camera housing (without the camera in it) for the first time with success, no leakage so later I took it back in (with camera this time) to snap the fish we had seen on the dive. There were groups of 4-5 striped fish which hung about near the surface and the sandy areas of the bottom, massed shoals of tiny fish surrounding the sunken trees, larger black fish swimming independently, and long-nosed green fish which were about a meter long and hiding among the branches of the trees. In fact there seemed to be a heirarchy among the tree-dwelling fish and the big fellows had their own branches and didn't move even when we got close. All in all a fun dive and it was nice to get the first one of the trip under our weight belts.
We spent the rest of the day lazing about in the sun, snorkeling and generally relaxing on the side of the lake before retiring to plan a bit of a walk for tomorrow...
Click here for our photostream (flickr)
Click here for our route (google maps)
Today we got in our first dive of the trip, and we are well chuffed! After the disappointment of Bodensee due to the weather, we did get to dive at Seeboden! It could have gone horribly wrong though, as when we got down to the dive centre and started kitting up, we very quickly realised that on the continent most countries use the DIN system as opposed to the Yoke that our reg's use. I had known this, but stupidly it hadn't registered, and there we were with two Yoke-system regulators and DIN-fitted tanks. If you don't know your diving terminology this means we were up a certain creek without a paddle, and we may as well go snorkeling instead. To our rescue, Thomas provided his own personal DIN-Yoke adapter and hired me a DIN regulator so we could go diving after all. Hurrah!
The dive was quite extraordinary. Thomas was German and had described the dive area in his best English but when he said that we were to find the first tree by the buoy, I naturally assumed he meant large plant or something similar. Nope, he meant tree. There were quite a few underwater trees which provided a habitat for the sea-life down there which, along with rapidly decreasing visibility made for quite an eerie dive. The "vis" started at about 6-7 meters near the surface and quickly dropped to around 4-5 meters as we got deeper. It was only a shallow dive as we were at 600m above sea-level to begin with, all the life was at less than 10m, and besides that there was an incredible thermocline at 8m which took you from nice and toasty 21 degrees centigrade to a frosty 10 degrees instantly. It was much nicer in the shallow end.
I also tested my underwater camera housing (without the camera in it) for the first time with success, no leakage so later I took it back in (with camera this time) to snap the fish we had seen on the dive. There were groups of 4-5 striped fish which hung about near the surface and the sandy areas of the bottom, massed shoals of tiny fish surrounding the sunken trees, larger black fish swimming independently, and long-nosed green fish which were about a meter long and hiding among the branches of the trees. In fact there seemed to be a heirarchy among the tree-dwelling fish and the big fellows had their own branches and didn't move even when we got close. All in all a fun dive and it was nice to get the first one of the trip under our weight belts.
We spent the rest of the day lazing about in the sun, snorkeling and generally relaxing on the side of the lake before retiring to plan a bit of a walk for tomorrow...
Click here for our photostream (flickr)
Click here for our route (google maps)
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