Dive 227 - A (N)ice Dive

This morning I headed out to Union Lake to get a dive in and met up with Chad, Keith and Brandon.

The ice is now about 3.5 to 4 inches thick, and there were quite a few people out ice fishing already. Not really recommended at that thickness, but they were having a good time doing it.

The same hole where we entered last week is smaller now, with much thicker ice around it.

The same duck was still there, still wondering what we were doing heading into the water.

So we headed out under the ice. It felt a little different knowing we absolutely had to return to the starting point as the ice was too thick to break out from underneath. That's why you run a continuous line to the surface at all times.

The temperature on my dive computer read 33 degrees, so it was cold down there.

Interestingly enough as we swam along, we passed close by to an ice fishing hole and got to see the line, hook and bait in action in the water as the fisherman jigged it up and down. He was letting it sit on the bottom and every few seconds you'd see him jerk the line and pull it up a bit. Quite a different perspective and he didn't hook any of us.

We did see quite a few fish and a very large mud puppy that was photo-worthy.

Unfortunately, my immersed underwater camera did not recover from its dunking.

While it still takes pictures and movies, the LCD screen on the back is kaput. Luckily, ebay has a ton of used SD1000s for sale, but for some reason people keep paying ridiculously high prices for these old digital cameras. They can't all have the specific underwater case so why aren't they buying the newer and better cameras and leaving the rest to those of us that are locked into them? Kinda strange but that's life.

I've now won an auction for the camera's replacement on ebay and ordered some new o-rings from Canon, so I should be back to underwater photography shortly. Hopefully Brandon will put some pics and vids up and I'll post them here once I've see them.

A (n)ice 30 minute plus dive in 33 degree water with very clear visibility and a good time had by all.