Yesterday after taking a boat tour of Wakulla Springs state park I had a short snorkel in the approved swimming area (no diving allowed unfortunately). The vis was not great for a spring, about 60'. I swam from the boat docks up to the diving tower along the rope. I saw my first gar underwater and there were some really awesome little fish (killies or dace?) with fantastic red and blue coloration on thier dorsal and ventral fins. There were also tons of bass and sunfish. I could see to the edge of the cave entrance but then the water got too dark. It was a bit creepy because we took the first boat tour of the day and the giant 12'+ gator (Joe Jr.) that is usually sitting on the far side of the spring basin was NOT on the bank which most likely means he was IN the water while I was......somewhere in the gloom......absolutely nothing but his own mind stopping him from walking along the bottom up out of the gloom *shiver*

We also went across the highway to check out Cherokee Sink, where you can dive as long as you check in with the ranger station. It's 70' with TONS of fish and a heck of a lot warmer than the 70F river. We will be definitely be diving it at some point in time when we make another visit to the Tallahassee area.

We got to the spring just before 11am so we had first dibs and the place to ourselves for a little while. The Nestle bottling company bought the spring a few years ago so there is no land access and we are technically not supposed to touch the bottom, not that anybody obeys the latter rule. We did some freediving in the shallow spring, made shallower by the current nasty drought. My record was 26.46 seconds to about 20', which isn't too challenging even though I am out of shape. I wore my 3/2mm wetsuit in the 68F water with a 2mm core vest underneath.

The spring got fairly crowded with locals after awhile so we decided to go run up and down the rest of the creek. As we were getting into the boat we noticed a beautiful little six-lined skink slinking along the cypress knees delicately flicking his tongue at the small flies hovering around the moss. Of course my camera was in the drybag under the seat and I didn't have much hope of extricating it quickly enough to photograph the skink. In an attempt to remedy this situation my Beloved hopped out of the boat and up onto the cypress knees (see photo below) in an attempt to "herd" the skink back toward me. He immediately let out an expletive and by the tone I knew there was a snake coiled up among the cypress knees. He quickly hopped back into the boat even though it was a smallish (3') snake that was probably just a water snake (Nerodia sp.).

Yes the water really is that color, it's not a trick of the light. This is yet another reason I am smitten with Florida's freshwater springs.

This is a view directly over the boil. Cypress is a second magnitude spring, meaning that it puts out a LOT of water every day. Have a look at your bottled water. If it's Nestle it may come from this spring, although not from the part we swim in of course.

This is a view looking down the run as we leave the spring. The water is so low there are signs on some of the Baptist churches in the area stating which days they are praying for rain.

We decided to explore up the other branch of the creek and ended up in a Wildlife Management area. Boating in Florida creeks is very similar to a constant **** of bumper boats because there are so many snags, although fortunately this spring-fed creek is not terribly turbid and you can see the most dangerous logs. My Beloved felt that we must explore the creek past the following log. Keep in mind that this is a  2.5-3' clearence at best.

We did actually make it under safely, although I had my doubts.

We then turned back around, went back under the log, and went down the creek past the boat launch and found Becton Spring. This spring has a larger basin but less flow and less interesting geological formations. My beloved got out to do some freediving while I stayed in the boat due to being a bit chilled. He brought me up a head-sized chunk of limestone for my garden.

Ok so I outlined some of the reasons for my SCUBA/water anxiety in the first installment of this little rant or whatever it is. I think I have been thinking about these issues a lot lately because I have been reading a lot of freediving pages on myspace and elsewhere. Now that I live someplace warm with relatively reliable visibility I'd like to be slightly more serious about freediving. It is my hypothesis that I could get some really cool underwater photos of myself (like the ones in my blog) in the spring if I could do some freediving without my mask or with just swim goggles. I really need to figure out how to keep the water out of my nose. Everybody else I know makes it look effortless. It's rather frustrating. I'd also like to be able to open my eyes underwater, I used to be able to as a young teen.

I got my start in the water freediving and snorkelling. There was a big store where I grew up that would be kind of like what Big Lots is now. This was before the advent of Walmart. They had a pretty decent toys section and they had an assortment of swim goggles and dive masks that I lustfully covetted (and eventually got a pair of each). I believe the first time I looked through a diving mask, one of the old fashioned high volume oval lensed ones with indents to equalize instead of a molded nose piece, was in the pond in the gravel pit that a family freind owned.  The pond was inhabited by bullfrog tadpoles and beavers (I now know better than to swim where there are beavers) and had carnivorous plants growing on the shores. I didn't see anything but some mud and rocks and maybe my toes in the murky waters but I can remember being thrilled. The mask of course leaked horribly. I have always had a narrow face and then I knew nothing about how to properly fit a mask. The leaking didn't matter too much since I was hanging over the edge of the inner tube of a truck tire because I definately was not a swimmer. That must have been between the ages of 8 and 10

I spent a good amount of time at the community pool, on the rare occaisons I got to go, perfecting surface diving and holding my breath as an adolescent. That was back when I could still keep the water out of my nose. As a teenager I snorkelled in the third branch of the White River quite extensively. Not much breath holding required for that but it was very thrilling for me to see brook trout, brown trout and Atlantic salmon, along with huge suckers and crayfish up close.

Prior to my initial trip to the USVI we did a lot of pool time. We learned proper form for a number of swim strokes, which was very helpful for me, and we did quite a bit of endurance work. The more time I spend in the water the less sensitive I am to having it in my face, although the dreaded nose problem still exists. I remember doing a relay activity. I was paired with Hunter and Rob (I think, maybe it was Josh). Hunter was a lifegaurd and I think Rob might have been too. The idea was that we all had to get to one end of the pool and back the fastest and figure out a creative way to do it. The guys knew I was a very weak swimmer so they got the idea to hold me between them and tow me along by the arms. We were diving in from the edge of the pool like in a real swimming race and I was quite petrified. I was sure I'd get water up my nose and gag. I don't recall the outcome of the relay except we did complete it in a decent amount of time.

The last couple of years I was in high school I swam in the Cold River and the Mill River a lot. I actually swam. Active involvement in athletics at school allowed me to partially remedy my lack of upper body strength. I snorkelled, swam, and went kayaking with Niki a lot. We also did this crazy thing where we tried to see how early we could go swimming in the sub-arctic waters of Vermont in the spring and have the latest last swim of the fall. Before we went away to college it was our goal to swim across the Chittenden Resevoir to the island. My mother thought this was fine but accomanied us in a kayak as a spotter. It's probably a half mile swim round trip. I did make it across for the first leg, something I thought I'd never be able to do, but I road back being towed by the boat for the return trip. I pretty much stopped swimming in college. There really wasn't anywhere to swim in rural Maine and the Gulf of Maine is fit only for seals. That didn't stop me from snorkelling it once and I did have an idea about swimming across Lake Winnecook but it never came to fruition. As a result I pretty much lost all my muscle tone from high school by the time I got to graduate school. During the first part of my stint at grad school I swam laps in the morning often enough to keep my figure but my research and course demands became too great for any consistency. The university pools were nice and had actually hosted Olympic athletes in their early days. Most of the women's pool records are held by Olympians, gold medal winners even, who competed in college.

I started actively diving again in 2005 when graduate school was threatening my sanity. Fortunately the Gulf Stream runs along the coast of Rhode Island so I could actually stand to be in the water long enough to dive and snorkel. Actually now that I think about it diving is why I am where I am today. When I started diving again I needed buddies so naturally I looked for them online (where you get everything else right?) and I live with my buddy the Monkey now and we have a pretty nice diving life in the Florida springs. Ok enough about my swimming issues and water-up-the-nose phobia. My next installment will entail an analysis of my actually SCUBA anxiety and why sometimes I'd rather snorkel and/or freedive.

I have a lot of anxiety about diving and about water in general. Some of this may have to do with the fact that I am a terrestrial mammal. I have been a certified diver for ten years, although I have only been diving regularly for the last two years (I was a broke student in a cold place broke+ cold /no drysuit = no diving). I didn't learn to swim until I was nine or maybe ten years old and I suspect this is a large contributing factor to my water anxiety.

I don't know why it took so long for me to learn, or be taught, to swim. Many of my fondest early childhood (from about toddler to just before I went to kindergarden) memories involve being around water; catching minnows in the brook near my grandparents' house, hunting for tadpoles in the pond in the gravel pit, Gladys Baker's swimming hole. In reference to the last I was never actually swimming in the Tweed River in Vermont. I remember trying to climb up the rock while my mother and the neighbor's grandchildren were in the water. I slipped and got dunked. The water wasn't at all deep but it went up my nose and made me choke and I was terrified. I'm not sure if that is where I got my fear of water or not.

I was maybe four or five when that happened. Most children have started learning to swim at that time. I don't know why I didn't. I am an asthmatic, or I used to be, and I was a little frail as a child. I was always kind of weak, especially in my upper body. I was never allowed to swim at summer camps unless I had a life vest on. I had a kiddie pool where I learned to float on my back when I was pre-school age and we had a 4' deep pool when I was older. I still didn't learn to swim for some reason. It really is quite perplexing.

My main issue with water is it going up my nose. It seems to get up there and then proceeds to make me gag at the drop of a hat. For awhile when I was a young teenager I could swim underwater without holding my nose by pooching out my lips and blocking my nose that way. Then I went through puberty and I got my adult facial shape and water goes up my nose again! Water in my face is one of my main problems. As a child when I was transitioning from bathes to showers I had a great fear of water in my face that has persisted to some degree into adulthood.

I learned to dive when I was 16 in preparation for a trip with my marine biology class to St. John USVI. I didn't absolutely NEED to be certified to go but SCUBA diving had been a dream of mine ever since I can remember. Before I could read I had a picture book that had a cut-out of a dive mask. The idea was the place the mask over each page of the book for a diver's eye view. That book is probably what made me want to be a diver.

Mask removal and replacement was a big problem for me during my initial training. That water in my mask and up my nose, ugh! My instructors were great guys and frankly the only reason I mastered that skill was because of the dive master Bill. When it was time for me to do that skill at thirty feet I of course started having what I assume was an anxiety attack, or at least hyperventilating very severely. My instructor passed me off to the dive master and we worked on it until I realized I could breathe from my reg with my mask off without drowning. After that I did the removal and replacement and the ascent sans mask but I hated every second of it. Even if I don't gag the water goes way up my nostrils and burns.

It probably didn't help that during my certification there was no pool training. That's right wimpy warmwater divers I said NO POOL! The shop I did my class with had an agreement with a local boy scout council. The council owned a lake with a shallow roped off area with a gravel bottom so we used that for our confined water training. In May. In Vermont. Cold does not adequately describe the situation. In fact I actually got hypothermia during the fin pivot at 30' lesson. I turned several shades of blue and purple and was banished from the water for the rest of the day. I was thoroughly annoyed. I had to sit in the truck in dry clothes. I guess I looked pretty bad because some of the big macho football guys in my class came to make sure I was ok before eating my lunch for me. Then to add insult to injury I contracted mononucleosis and lost about twenty pounds and was banished from SCUBA class until July. Now that I am getting old I would have quit but not back then. I actually did all my open water skills twice and I got my certification in 1997.

Despite all that mask removal and replacement still is about my least favorite SCUBA skill. I hated doing it at my first SCUBA review. I was 17 then. The next time I did a review in the pool I was 23 or 24 and I told my instructor up front that it was my worst skill and I needed to do it repeatedly. Oddly I did very well in a nice warm pool. I took it off and put it back on several times and swam around horizontally without it (and hated every second). My instructor Dan said I did just fine but I had a very pained expression while my mask was off. I told him the water in my nostrils burned and I hated it.

Well I have no thoroughly established the fact that I have an irrational fear of water up my nose and this is getting kind of long so I think I'll end it here for the moment and then talk some more about my SCUBA anxiety in another installment......

"Cyberstalkers target victims using online forums, bulletin boards, chat rooms, spyware, and spam. They may engage in live chat harassment or flaming or they may send electronic viruses and unsolicited e-mails. ^[1] They may repeatedly instant message their targets. ^[2] More commonly they will post defamatory or derogatory statements about their stalking target on web pages, message boards and in guest books designed to trigger a reaction or response from their victim, thereby initiating contact. ^[1]

When prosecuted, many stalkers have unsuccessfully attempted to justify their behavior based on their use of public forums, as opposed to direct contact. Once they get a reaction from the victim, they will typically attempt to track or follow the victim's internet activity. Classic cyberstalking behavior includes the tracing of the victim's IP address in an attempt to verify their home or place of employment. ^[1]

Stalking does not consist of single incidents, but is a continuous process. Similar to stalking off-line (physical stalking), cyberstalking can be a terrifying experience for victims, placing them at risk of psychological trauma, and possible physical harm. As Rokkers writes, "Stalking is a form of mental assault, in which the perpetrator repeatedly, unwantedly, and disruptively breaks into the life-world of the victim, with whom he has no relationship (or no longer has)....Moreover, the separated acts that make up the intrusion cannot by themselves cause the mental abuse, but do taken together (cumulative effect)."^[3] (For a list of effects, see Stalking)

Some cyberstalking situations do evolve into physical stalking, and a victim may experience abusive and excessive phone calls, vandalism, threatening or obscene mail, trespassing, and physical assault.^[1] Moreover, many physical stalkers will use cyberstalking as another method of harassing their victims.^{[4] [5]"}

^{from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberstalking}

^{Admittedly Wikipedia is not the most reliable source of information but this definition certainly gives an interesting perspective on the matter.
The staff of a certain SCUBA forum probably did not take this into considoration when they decided to endorse cyber stalking on their forums. While this site can certainly be a great resource for information it is my opinion that it is best to merely read the postings and not interact with the members.}

Yesterday the Monkey and I went on a long ramble around the more rural areas of the Panhandle. First we did some recon at Pitt's Spring on Ecofina Creek in Bay county.

It didn't look quite like that since the water was low and it was overcast but we will return in more pleasant conditions.

We then adjourned to Merrit's Mill Pond in Jackson county to snorkel and catch crayfish at Shangri-la Spring on the north end of the pond. We located a boat launch closer to the area of the pond that interests us most and the beefcake Monkey rowed us up the pond. We didn'y have the luxury of the trolling motor due to an expired boat registration and the fact that we've been busted for boating infractions on this pond previously. We encountered a "sea monster" near the Twin Caves dive platform. We had navigated into the cypress to look at the roosing comorants and we noticed a slick black object on the surface some distance from us. What we could see was about 3' long and at least as thick as my forearm. My initial guesses were: stick, garbage, dead cormorant. We approached the the Sea Monster became very lively and disappeared with a forceful splash. Our current guesses as to it's true identity are: siren, a LARGE shy aquatic salamander or a carp whose back was out of the water.

The water was the usual low 70's F, as was the air. I wore my 7mm jumpsuit with 5/6mm hooded vest and was quite comfortable. As much as I hate donning this suit it is the most appropriate for wet spring diving. I was actually able to stay in the water for about an hour. Usually it is far too hot to struggle into the 7mm in the summer and I wear the 3mm and get chilled right away. I also found a use for my hated polypropeline long underwear. The only reason I own such a detestable garment is that I was required to have it for my college freshman  orientation (a sea kayaking voyage long long ago). I hate my polypros and only use them when I am starting to go hypothermic, which unfortunately for me is a fairly frequent experience during water sports. Normally I wear a lycra skin under my 7mm wetsuit but lycra has no insulative value and stays wet forever. This adds to the "swamp cooler" effect of sitting in a boat on a pond in the wind. I decided to wear my polypros, which supposedly still insulate when wet, under my wetsuit. The result was quite good although the donning was not as easy as with the skin.

The bluegill were shoaling, not schooling but shoaling, which they don't do in the summer. More abundant than the above photo (courtesy of http://underwaterflorida.homestead.com/springs.html a somewhat outdated and grammatically atrocious webpage that is useful and interesting none-the-less). Fortunately the invasive aquatic weed Hydrilla was less copious than in the above photo from winter die-back. We were last at the pond in September '06 and the Hydrilla was disturbingly dense. The bass at the site are usually quite cheeky but were being inordinately bold and biting the end of my impromptou tickle stick while I attempted to lever crayfish out of their limestone fortresses. There were a large number of bass ranging from 6-14" in length and schooling loosely. All looked quite healthy. They proceeded to follow me around as I turned over rocks in search of crayfish. In the fish world there is such a thing as a free lunch, evidenced by a sunfish that caught a juvenile crayfishI startled and swam around with the claws protruding from its mouth for about ten minutes. The Monkey has aquired an improvised video housing and was testing it out while I caught crayfish. The results were not that stellar but that's how we learn. They'll be better next time. The Monkey also made the astute observation that there are no pickerel in the pond. We often see pickerel in other locations we dive so this is a bit perplexing. It may be due to the damn at the end of the pond.

Some aquaintances, with whose environmental organization I am planning to volunteer, showed up via the land route and showed us some of the interesting terrestrial features of the area including spring flowers, bats, sinkholes, and caves. After they left the Monkey harvested a few more crayfish while towing me in the boat like the princess I am. It was about 4:30 in the afternoon so we took the boat back to the launch and the Monkey caught more crayfish while I got into warm clothes. We then stopped in Holmes county on our way home to have dinner with another diver who had been at Vortex spring all day.

It was nice to finally get back in the water. The Mill Pond is pretty reliably clear and is always interesting. We have been to the same small spot at Shangri-la 3 times now and there is always something new to see. The seasonal changes in aquatic and terrestrial vegetation reveal features we don't always see like the numerous caverns and springs and the animals are always interesting.

Yesterday by a stroke of serendipity (long story, don't ask) we ended up at Wakulla Springs State Park. You can't dive there even though they have an AWESOME spring basin. I assume the reason for this is that Wakulla Springs is part of the most extensive and studied underwater cavern/cave system in this country and the world. The cave entrance is quite deep in the spring bowl. The management tries to keep the area as natural as possible and there are a large number of fossils on the bottom. I assume this is why they don't want divers in there as the irresponsible few have (or would) ruined it for the rest of us.

Despite these restrictions it is an awesome place to visit. There are water birds, turtles, fish, and GATORS everywhere! We went on a nice 40 minute boat tour and saw tons of stuff. There are also manatees there in the summer and you can swim in a designated (gatorproof?) swimming area. Just standing on the dock you can see gar, carp, mullet, sunfish, and bass. The spring is a first order magnitude spring so the water is almost ripping past. Thre is also swimming at Cherokee Sink across the road but we didn't investigate that.

Our NYD dive may not be happening. It's been raining for the last two days and in such cases the river tends to rise and a lot of run-off coming out of the swamp usually obscures the vis except around the spring boil, which really isn't any fun.

Monkey and I are going out there to check the conditions in a moment since we are the closest of any of our crew. Monkey also made us tee shirts with the Monkey/Weasel logo at the top of the page and we were kicking around the idea of donating a permenant charcoal grill (like those at camp grounds) to the park since the diver who was supposed to bring the grill today already chickened out. Anyway our dive may not happen so I guess we'll stay home and watch shark videos and Animal Planet. Bummer

First: I haven't been diving much lately because well.....being a dive bum doesn't pay and I had to sort of do something to attempt to resucitate my so-called career. I am now getting into teaching *gag*

Second: Why was my password arbitrarily changed and why was I not notified?

Third: I am scheming a New Year's Day dive at Morrison Spring with my usual dive cronies. Up North "Sober Up" dives are a big deal and last year there were about 100 divers at the one I was at. The idea needs to catch on down here so I planted the idea in my buddy KCH's head and she has rallied the troops. We are thinking dive and BBQ at our favorite spring for about half a dozen of us. The spring is the place I definately want to be on the first day of the new year!

Well Florida is fabled to be the land of never-ending summer but autumn weather finally caught up with us for this weekend. The forecast was for highs of low 80's F Friday through Sunday but we awoke to an overcast Friday with highs about ten degrees cooler. I finished prepping the camper and dive gear while Monkey replaced the rotted brake lines on his truck. After all the futzing around we got on the road and arrived at Vortex during midafternoon.

It appeared that none of our comrades had arrived yet so we set up camp in space #2. Soon we met up with Wethoss who was squatting on site #1, which was reserved for the Kamp Director: The Kraken.

Little to our knowledge site # 3 was occupied by our other wet compatriots Kentley, E, and Lonefrogman but we didn't meet them until later. Hoss wanted to do another dive so Monkey and I suited up to snorkel in the spring basin while Hoss blew bubbles down below.

The spring basin is accessed by three docks with steps down into about 8' of water. This system keeps the shallows from getting stirred up. The inhabitants of the spring include: large koi, grass carp, varying flavors of sunfish, suckers, American eels, and a few bass. Feeding the fish is encouraged so they are all rather acclimated to humans in dive gear. There were a couple of classes in the water when we got in but the basin is sufficiently large enough that it wasn't crowded. We dive-bombed Hoss while he swam around on the bottom and through the cave training apparatus. Hoss and Monkey got out but I stayed in for awhile longer to watch the fish since I had on my 5/6mm hooded vest and my 7mm full suit. By the time I got out and mostly dry the rest of the crew started arriving. The Monkey assumed the role of Maker of Fire and Cooker of Meat and we had dinner and chatted around the campfire and then went to bed.

It was so cold Saturday morning that the spring was steaming even at 68F. I would have liked to do an early dive before the classes started dredging the bottom but we had to wait for some stragglers and apparently not everybody has the good sense not to consume dessert, nor alcohol, nor rent movies, and generally not have any fun for months in order to afford a drysuit. Some folks headed to nearby Panama City to do a boat dive and some of the guys, including Monkey, headed to Morrison for a dive. Since I can dive Morrison any time for free I opted to stay at camp and dive Vortex with whomever took pity on me.

Uncle Ricky and Moonie ended up being my buddies (Moonie is the short one not wearing a drysuit).

Uncle Ricky is an instructor and a bit of a legend on the forums so I was rather in awe that he would dive with me. Moonie on the other hand, has crashed at my place before when I lived up North and is pretty much an old pal. The dive plan was to enter the water from one of the docks, take Moonie into the cavern to the "DEATH TO OPEN WATER DIVERS" sign for a photo op then to putt around the spring. I was a little nervous since I have never been in a cavern before but this one is mostly like a big room in the side of a cliff as opposed to squeezing down a mouse hole like Morrison.

The water was pretty murked up by the time we got in. There was a class of open water divers wearing identicle high-vis yellow hoods (snicker) and we skirted them and an artificial structure and dropped down into the hole leading to the cavern with the bottom at 50'. The sign is immediately visbible once you go into the cavern so it wasn't as scary as I thought it would be. There were about four other divers in there with us stirring things up but they did manage not to crash into us. The idea was for me to hold Moonie up to the sign and Uncle Ricky would take a picture. Since I have yet to see the pictures they may not have come out.

Once we had a couple shots of Moonie Uncle Ricky signalled for me to lead the rest of the dive. It took me a minute but I finally understood him and we slowly exited the cavern to the left where we encountered a small American eel that didn't want to socialize. Since more divers were descending to the cavern I then turned us right and ascended up between two of the several very impressive limestone arches that are near the mouth of the cavern. At this point I was being rather fidgity in my drysuit. Normally I tie my rock boots too tight and I lose circulation in my feet toward the end of the dive. I've been trying to loosen them gradually and fine-tune the boot tying process. This time I got them too loose and managed to get air down into my feet. While my feet weren't really in any danger of zooming up over my head I was having trouble extricating the air while staying generally horizontal and as such kicking was rather uncomfortable. The whole time I was thinking something to the effect of: "Oh great I am going to do a feet-up ascent in front of Uncle Ricky the Legend, how embarassing"  I also wasn't happy about where I had my tank and was squirming a bit.

We got up to about 15' of water and I started snooping around looking for fish as Uncle Ricky sedately swam alongside with his camera. The remainder of the dive was very pleasant and Uncle Ricky was a great buddy. I just did my meandering-without-purpose thing and we found lots of fish. There was an aggregation of sunfish above one of the artificial structures at about 8'. I stopped to admire them, intrigued by thier tameness, and Uncle Ricky put Moonie on the structure and we backed off a bit to watch the sunfish investigate his bare bottom. When I got tired of sunfish I started following the koi around the lower section of the basin until we encountered the grass carp near the dock with no stairs. The grass carp are large and rather inbred, some with really pronounced lordosis. I followed them under the dock and decided that was a bad idea in case an open water class was practicing giant strides.

I'd been noting the bottom topography throughout the dive. I took note of the extensive fill, apparently roughly crushed limestone with an avetage size similar to my fist. There were various devices to hold the fill and some sediment in place and apparently extensive dredging had occurred. There were a few scrubby aquatic plants and some clumps of algae that might have been quite noxious if more extensive. I have no idea what all the corrogated plastic piping was for. It made me kind of sad and mad and made me wonder what the natural spring had looked like before all the development. I have become quite enamored with springs since moving here and diving Morrison all the time. By this time we'd meandered back toward the entry point so I signalled Uncle Ricky that we might as well ascend and finish the dive.

It was about a 50 minute dive with a maximum depth of 50' for which I used about 1100 psi from my steel 72. I wore my 300g fleece and 18lbs and had decent bouyancy. Vortex is interesting but not someplace I'd like to dive often. I might like to go back in the winter when there are no crowds, and hopefully less silting, and explore more maybe.

I poached that photo of Uncle Ricky and Moonie from Bill's photobucket.

Vortoberfest is an unofficial Scubaboard event dreamed up by the Deep Dixie Divers. Since the Panhandle is generally considored to be the southern portion of Alabama and Georgia by the stuck-up pretentious inhabitants of the southern portion of Florida (who probably migarated from such dubious climes as the Midwest  ) the Deep Dixie Divers are fully sanctioned to hold gatherings here. I never thought I'd find myself at a Deep Dixie Diver event. I am a Yankee shore diver through and through and drysuits, murky water, and lobsters are in my DNA.  Despite disagreeing with certain aspects of Southern culture I liked the folks we met this weekend and had a very good time.

Please keep in mind that photos will be forthcoming as soon as Monkey uploads his, plus those of other participants whose photobucket accounts I will raid. Right now the Monkey is huddled in the recliner, in my sleeping bag, eating a grilled cheese sandwich and recovering from the long weekend of fun, something he doesn't get to do often.

Participants were members (and friends, spouses, offspring, and significant others of offspring) of Scubaboard.com, a good place for information if you can deal with jerks and facists, who may or may not comprise a large population on the forum. Here is a list as best I can remember (screen names or initials used to protect privacy):

Monkey-trouble maker

Weasel-me

WetHoss-comic relief since M wasn't there

Kraken-maker of Brunswick stew

Kraken's wife L

Uncle Ricky-was nice enough to dive with me

Uncle Ricky's wife K

Uncle Ricky's daughter S & her SO

TS & significant other

Sea Yoda aka B from my other reports

SuprBugman aka MB from my other reports

Kentley-designer and distributer of tee shirts

E (or was it A? Sorry, what is your screenname anyway?)

paulwall-was very late

Moonie-was dubacherous and vulgar as usual

Natebrrrr & H stopped by Sunday morning

a couple of other SB guys from either Deep Dixie or the FL forum were at Morrison on Saturday when I wasn't

We took over camp sites 1-3 and some of the lodge at Vortex Springs in Ponce DeLeon (pronounced "Ponce Duh-Leee-Oon" in the typical Deep South fashion as opposed to the  more correct Spanish inflection sounding more like " Ponce Day-Le-Own"), FL. Vortex ( http://www.vortexspring.com/classic/classicsite.htm )is a dive resort very near to the fabled Morrison Spring that I often write about. Yes I said dive resort, we do actually have those here on the Panhandle, with a special Panhandle twist of course. It's a big campground built around a spring basin with RV hook ups and primative campsites, a lodge, dive shop/small camp store, showers, changing rooms, big fire pit, picnic tables, fill station, swim area, nature trail, go kart track, and such. Very low-key, very Southern, kind of divey in more ways than one, and an environmental disaster. Despite that and the exorbitant prices to dive it is very popular becauses it is a good place for open water dive classes from all over the Deep South to do thier final open water dives with relative comfort regardless of weather.

The spring is similar to Morrison in that it is a constant 68 F and issues from an underground cave system. It is somewhat deeper with the cavern entrance being a 50-55' where as Morrison bottoms out at 35-40'. Not to sound ancient but when I was certified you were required to do at least one open water dive to 60' for your certification but something must have changed because I see people doing thier final dives at Morrison all the time. Anyway the spring system is where the similarities between Vortex and Morrison end.

Morrison is very natural. Vortex is highly developed and not necessarily in a prudent fashion. The basin has been dredged extensively and several artificial structures for cave diver training have been installed. Additionally there is fill material in the basin and a lot of corrogated tubing and pumps for an indescernible purpose. An artificial earth berm/levy has been constructed across the point where the spring run connects to the creek as a flood control measure and to prevent the 300 Japanese koi from escaping. Florida has very strict laws regarding the possesion of non-native fish due to the extensive invasive species problem.

Due to the koi, who produce massive amounts of ammonia like any cyprinid, dredging, fill, and berm the "Gin Clear" water of Vortex Spring looks more like dishwater with dubious 8-10' visibility yesterday. This may or may not have been due to the hordes of bottom-dredging open water students. I had a look at the water at about 7am on Saturday and it was improved but not much. I prefer the glassine waters of Morrison but fortunately murk doesn't bother me much.

To be continued...........installments for Friday and Saturday forthcoming after we move the camper out of the front yard.