Edition 15-11.html

December 10, 2011

The last of the lakes in our area are frozen over and making ice.

Yesterday Pat Johnston , Larry Olson and I traveled to Wendell MN to recover a sensor, for the Univ. of St Thomas , that was lost in a wetland. It was a little on the cool side with the wind we had but everything went well. There was 6 inches of ice by shore and about 4 inches where the buoy was. The sensor had been attached to the buoy and when they went to recover it this fall the sensor was no longer attached to the buoy. They did not know if it became detached or someone had stolen it. It was about 5 feet deep and Larry took very little time to locate the sensor. It took longer to get everything set up than it did for Larry to locate the sensor. Visibility was pretty good for a wetland that has a maximum depth of five feet. When he brought it up it was not the same as in the picture they had emailed us so we had to call to make sure we had recovered the right sensor and we had. Thank you to Al Brutlag for checking the ice thickness out for us so we knew when it would be safe to venture down to Wendell to do the job and for allowing us to change into our suits in his heated shop. Al only lives a few miles from the wetland. Here are some pictures of the job. On picture three the shaded area only froze over a few days before we got there.

4 Wheeler back because of ice thickness Seal pushing cut ice underneath out of the way. Larry setting up gear

Larry handing up sensor to Seal. Heading back to access

Over the years we have located 4 sensors. One for the Pelican River water shed, two for the USGS, and one for the U of St. Thomas.

It looks like we should have enough ice to do and ice dive between Christmas and New Years. Let me know if you are interested so I can put you on a contact list to get a hold of you when we set the date. With no snow on the ice we should help with the visibility.

There are still some of you that have not picked up your certification cards so give us a call when you can come out and pick them up.

Sea You on the Bottom

Tri-State Diving Making Diving Safe and Adventurous