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Lake Erie Charter Captain Dave Adams of D & D Charters answers questions and provides tips and insights into fishing the region.
If you would like to Ask the Captain a question, please click HERE.
August 13, 2003
The world under, scuba diving Lake Erie
Capt. Dave,
Have you ever chartered a boat for people looking to scuba dive?
Isaac
Hello Isaac,
No, I have never chartered for diving. But I did spend a day observing a dive charter to the Dean Richmond and S. K. Martin for a magazine story. It was aboard the boat, OverTime, which was captained by Dave Jelley, a certified diver and owner of OverTime Charters.
Up close and personal with a Lake Erie smallmouth
Photo courtesy of OverTime Charters
The first dive was to the Dean Richmond, which sank on Sunday, October 17. Her voyage began the Friday before at the Maumee River. She left with a crew of 18 men and one woman, and was under the command of Captain George Stoddard. By Saturday morning, though, they encountered gale force winds of 60 miles an hour and waves, three stories tall. On Sunday morning, with both stacks down, she found her final resting-place; along with Andrew Dodge, from the galley crew and Walter Goodyear, the first mate.
Later in the day a boat recovered the body of Captain Stoddard. His watch had stopped at 12:20.
109 years later and about the same time, I was there with Captain Dave. We were approximately 10 miles north of the North East marina in 110 feet of water, with Doug Smith of Seneca, Pennsylvania and two other divers, Rick Healy and Dan Ross of Brighton Heights to make a recreational dive, which is a dive to a maximum of 130 feet.
With the proper training and certification, a dive that deep is safe and exciting. Each of the divers that day had reached or passed the advanced level of certification required for the 110-foot dive.
Training is done by PADI (The Professional Association of Dive Instructors) and divers are certified in one of four levels: open water, advanced, rescue, or dive master. Training consists of four weeks of theory sessions as well as four training dives in a pool. This is followed by an additional four training dives in open water.
Because of the depth involved in this dive, the entire experience would last no longer than 30 minutes, with only five minutes alongside the Dean Richmond. But in that short time, the diver is taken to another world.
"There's nothing quite like it," Smith said. "The day before you make your first deep dive, it's pretty spooky. All you can think about is - what's going to go wrong? Then after you've been there, you can only compare it to walking on the moon."
With $1500 of gear strapped on - including a 50-pound air tank that holds an hour of air - the divers drop into the water. And with a quick tap on the head, they disappeared, part of that underwater mystery. As they descended, 30 feet below the surface, they encountered a transformation of color, everything had changed to a shade of gray.
Before the dive, all okay!
They experienced no sound, only weightlessness and a feeling of euphoria. Then, they saw her. She was upside down, with one 20-foot propeller still in place and 238 feet long. A few minutes later, it was over. They were creatures outside their element and must leave.
But they were excited. The experience had left them with a different perspective on life and death and the power of Mother Nature. They then began a slow, controlled, and safe ascend. Because if they had risen too fast, too much dissolved nitrogen would have been absorbed into their bodies causing a very dangerous condition known as nitrogen narcosis.
Nitrogen is a colorless, odorless gas that makes up 80 percent of our air. It is perfectly harmless as it's breathed in and out on land, but for underwater divers, it's a mortal enemy.
Pressures exerted by water are formidable, every 30 feet in depth is equal to an added atmosphere of pressure, about 14 pounds per square inch. At high pressure, nitrogen is easily dissolved in the blood and tissues. The deeper a diver goes and the longer they stay down, the more nitrogen is absorbed, and between dives a safety break is required to regulate the absorption of nitrogen.
Two hours later, we were at the S. K. Martin, which at 56 feet provided the divers a chance to swim side-by-side with the fish of Lake Erie. While they explored that wreck, I swam above them.
But I wished that I could be there.
Scuba diver next to the propeller of the Dean Richmond
Photo courtesy of OverTime Charters
Good fishing and diving,
Capt. Dave Adams
Dave Adams is an author and professional charter captain who operates D & D Charters on the Pennsylvania waters of Lake Erie.
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