Alki Plains Line Project & SCRET

Sounder · Post by **Sounder** » Sat Sep 30, 2006 8:16 am

Lamont can tell you a WHOLE lot more about this than I can (he's one of the dive team), but I did want to let people know about the website that is not public and includes a great short video.

The website is http://www.aplponline.org

The SCRET project is also very interesting (and addicting if you're at work) - http://www.scret.org

As I understand it, the APLP is a "trail" of cave line that creates a simulated cave dive, is excellent for technical skill practice, and allows for long-range scooter diving. Evidently there has recently been a whole host of baby grunt sculpins at one of the gas drops too.

As I understand SCRET, it is a group of divers who are diving and videoing wrecks in Puget Sound and Lake Washington including everything from boats to planes and modern military (well, sort of) to very old huge wooden sailing ships.

Anyway, for folks who aren't familiar with these projects - here's something for you to enjoy.

sparky · Post by **sparky** » Sat Sep 30, 2006 4:43 pm

BOY I wish I coulddo some of that but I know even though I have over 140 dives this is way beyound my traineing and abulity

my Idea of a tech dive is maybe going to doubles so I can extend my bottom time at say 50 feet
I am thinking about going to Double AL 80s but just for the bottom time not the depth

thanks Sounder for shareing this find with us
I think it wouold be cool to do a dive like that but not for a verry verry long time

Sparky

lamont · Post by **lamont** » Sat Sep 30, 2006 8:26 pm

sparky wrote:BOY I wish I coulddo some of that but I know even though I have over 140 dives this is way beyound my traineing and abulity

You're not too far behind me. I've got about 250 dives, 150 of them in doubles, with about 30 or so scooter dives. The 3,000 ft out and back run is "nearly NDL" -- max depth is 120 for a short bit near the i-beams then it runs between 90-110 and is 15 minutes out and 15 minutes back for 30-35 mins of bottom time on 30/30...

lamont · Post by **lamont** » Sun Oct 01, 2006 5:01 pm

They made it 14.8-15k today and emptied 3 1200' reels onto the end of the line.'

peo · Post by **peo** » Tue Oct 03, 2006 10:16 pm

Sounder wrote:As I understand it, the APLP is a "trail" of cave line that creates a simulated cave dive, is excellent for technical skill practice, and allows for long-range scooter diving. Evidently there has recently been a whole host of baby grunt sculpins at one of the gas drops too.

That's a pretty accurate description of what the project is, though I'd like to underline that we also have a number of divers (actually the bulk of them) diving in the no- (or minimal, as I prefer to call it) decompression zone on these dives. Then, of course, they all dive doubles and almost all divers use Gavin scooters, so if you call that technical, I guess you're right.

The divers that did the longest dives last Sunday (this isn't up on the site yet) had a 272 minute long dive (yup, that's 4.5 hours) of which about 190 were spent at a depth between 90 and 120 feet, and the remainder was decompression.

The baby grunt sculpins are of course very nice. Last Sunday, we saw a couple of huge skates out towards Duwamish Point and Richard and I paused for a miunte or so on the way home from the 6,000 foot stage drop we had set up to admire the beauty of a 9' six-gill shark that was slowly following our line.

An update with the latest proceedings in the project will be published on the site within a week or so.

Sounder · Post by **Sounder** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 8:01 am

Hey Peo! Welcome to our little group. Thanks for adding to that - I didn't hear about the skates. I failed to mention that most everyone stayed out of deco, and perhaps a better term would be a multi-team dive.

Post by **H20doctor** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 11:40 am

those guys go DEEP.... I mean deep.... How do you not get Narced at 300 feet.. thats insane even on tri mix gas, helium, etc....
Them boys are good at diving deep...

Sounder · Post by **Sounder** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 12:47 pm

Yes, they do go deep. The APLP doesn't break 120fsw though... it follows the contour line. You should see the video from diving those deep wrecks... HUGE FISH!!! It seems as things get older and larger, they go deeper. There are some big, old fish on those videos. It's neat to watch... but after about 15 minutes, it all begins to look the same to me.

peo · Post by **peo** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 1:09 pm

H20doctor wrote:those guys go DEEP.... I mean deep.... How do you not get Narced at 300 feet.. thats insane even on tri mix gas, helium, etc....
Them boys are good at diving deep...

The answer is by not having much nitrogen in your breathing gas, and not too much oxygen either. Not much at all...

lamont · Post by **lamont** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 3:32 pm

Sounder wrote:Yes, they do go deep. The APLP doesn't break 120fsw though... it follows the contour line. You should see the video from diving those deep wrecks... HUGE FISH!!! It seems as things get older and larger, they go deeper. There are some big, old fish on those videos. It's neat to watch... but after about 15 minutes, it all begins to look the same to me.

I hit at least 121 on sunday's dive =)

New depth record for me by a foot, i think...

I was on the deep side and Bones missed a turn uphill and ran me off of the 'road' and a couple of fsw deeper on a high tide...

I would like to see the huge rockfish on some of the deeper wrecks... Still not sure about the whole 300 foot dive thing, but it'll be awhile before I get anywhere close to that...

Sounder · Post by **Sounder** » Thu Oct 05, 2006 7:58 am

I'll happily enjoy watching the 300fsw video playing on "loop" in Mark's shop and hearing all about it.

peo · Post by **peo** » Tue Oct 10, 2006 11:28 am

We started posting reports from our latest push, code named The Last Waltz, last night.

peo · Post by **peo** » Wed Nov 01, 2006 4:33 pm

The http://www.aplponline.org site has been updated with a new video and some more dive reports, and the SCRET page (http://www.scret.org) will be updated with a new newsletter regarding a wreck in Lake Washington within the next couple of weeks.

CaptnJack · Post by **CaptnJack** » Wed Nov 01, 2006 5:05 pm

I'm ok with this whole line thing - not for me, but sounds like you all have a good time.

But is there any chance some of the old lines will get removed? Some of the old gunky ones are beginning to be more like "litter". They present an entanglement hazard at times and they aren't biodegradable.

For instance, I think there are 5 or 6 between the top of the I-beams and the monolith. And I recently saw new lines running up to the piles/honey bear area.

Grateful Diver · Post by **Grateful Diver** » Wed Nov 01, 2006 5:41 pm

CaptnJack wrote:I'm ok with this whole line thing - not for me, but sounds like you all have a good time.

But is there any chance some of the old lines will get removed? Some of the old gunky ones are beginning to be more like "litter". They present an entanglement hazard at times and they aren't biodegradable.

For instance, I think there are 5 or 6 between the top of the I-beams and the monolith. And I recently saw new lines running up to the piles/honey bear area.

Sometimes ya just gotta ask ... last year after one of my OW students damn near got tangled up in cave line out at the pilings in Cove 3 I had to ask those responsible to go out and clean up their play area. They did ... with apologies.

I've got no problem with the lines running deep ... but given all the student activity that takes place in the shallower portions of the cove ... and the fact that it's a popular playground for the newly-certified ... the shallower lines should really not be placed down there with any permanence. They become an entanglement hazard for those not yet equippped to deal with entanglements.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

lamont · Post by **lamont** » Wed Nov 01, 2006 6:46 pm

CaptnJack wrote:I'm ok with this whole line thing - not for me, but sounds like you all have a good time.

But is there any chance some of the old lines will get removed? Some of the old gunky ones are beginning to be more like "litter". They present an entanglement hazard at times and they aren't biodegradable.

For instance, I think there are 5 or 6 between the top of the I-beams and the monolith. And I recently saw new lines running up to the piles/honey bear area.

There are plans to remove it... Scooters being stripped down and copious free time issues have gotten in the way...

Bones tried to clean up the monolith line after we ran new line out there, but his first attempt at trying to reel up encrusted cave line didn't work...

It looks like we also need to reposition the line from the top of the I-beams to the monolith since it keeps getting cut... We'll probably need to move it so that it comes off the bottom of the deepest I-beam -- that should keep most of the north and south lines away from most divers....

peo · Post by **peo** » Wed Nov 01, 2006 10:52 pm

Based on feedback from Bob and others, we always clean up the shallow decompression line after a dive these days.

If those darn fishermen wouldn't drag our line all over the place at times, there would only be one line down there. :-) That said, plenty of line has been removed too.

CaptnJack · Post by **CaptnJack** » Wed Nov 01, 2006 11:01 pm

Thanks, both for the update and trying to clean up periodically too.

Grateful Diver · Post by **Grateful Diver** » Thu Nov 02, 2006 5:44 am

peo wrote:Based on feedback from Bob and others, we always clean up the shallow decompression line after a dive these days.

If those darn fishermen wouldn't drag our line all over the place at times, there would only be one line down there. :-) That said, plenty of line has been removed too.

... and those of us who use the coves for herding guppies thank you ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

Northwest Dive Club

Alki Plains Line Project & SCRET

Alki Plains Line Project & SCRET

Re: Alki Plains Line Project & SCRET

APLP update