Tuesday 7 October 2014

Ed helps Dive with Purpose to survey a ship wreck part 1


Hi all.


Well it takes a long time to write up all my experiences, check through all the photographs etc but at long last here is my first blog from my visit earlier in the year with dive with Purpose.

Well I have arrived in the USA to help out with two very important project. First I will be helping the youths from Dive with Purpose in an ongoing project to document a ship wreck and then I will be helping them, restore a coral reef. I can’t wait to get in the water again. My diving bell is too big to transport to the UK and so I only get to explore underwater properly when I am in the USA.

Sharing  a ginger beer with Ken Stewart Director of Dive with Purpose

This will all be new to the Youths so I will get to learn what we need to do at the same time. I did learn about protecting and monitoring shipwrecks back in 2012 when I visited South African Heritage Resource Agency http://adventuresofedthebear.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/learning-about-how-to-study-shipwrecks.html

Here I am with Ken Stewart and the superintendent at Biscayne National Park Brian Carlstrom

 Charles Lawson who is the park archeologist 
Justine Benanty another archeologist


Dave Conlin the Submerger Office Chief


Before we can dive on the wreck we need to practice the necessary skills on land first. 
Everything will be much harder to do when we try to do it underwater.


Ed the Bear on the baseline. The base line  is used to measure the direction and location of an artifact or part of the ship structure.

The students will be using a survey method called trilateration which uses the Side-Side-Side (maths) Theorem to generate a map to scale of the shipwreck. Very complicated for a little bear like me, so I let the youths get started and I helped out where I was needed.

Ed trilsting with Joshua Harrison


Eric Solis
Madison Jack
Rachel Stewart


Julian Perez

Surveying wreck sites used to be done by laying a grid over the wreck and then recording the details in each square. The trilateration technique of mapping doesn’t require permanent grids

Everyone knew what they needed to do and the activity was accomplished with some great team work. 
 Ed and Olivia Ferenczy with insitu (onsite) drawings

Tomorrow we will do it all again, this time underwater on a real ship wreck.

I spent some time working with one of the youths Adrian Baptiste and he wrote the following blog entry.



Adrian Baptiste


Ed the bear here checking in. Just had another awesome day here at YDWP and I can't wait to tell you about it!. So I started my day off with some morning yoga taught by Mr.Kamau, the class was really helpful and loosened my muscles up and got me going. 


The class started at 6:00 and I got to watch the sun go up while I stretched. Later I had some breakfast and went to Biscayne National Park  to do some class work so that I know what to do tomorrow when I go on my first dive. The instructors taught us how to use the metric system and how to do trilaterations and much more. You would normally think that being in a classroom all day would be very boring, but It wasn't, the teachers were very engaging and really made sure that everyone knew the content. 

So as the day continued there were occurrences where a crab would walk into the classroom; now let me remind you that we are in Florida and there is aquatic life everywhere so I guess it's a normal thing down here. So every time a crab would come in there were always someone  who got up to catch them, it was so funny seeing kids run around the classroom getting pinched just to get it out of the classroom, these events only happened a couple of times and after the we continued.

After we listened to all the information the instructors taught us we went straight to practicing outside. 
Practicing was very fun but I couldn't stand getting bitten by all the Mosquitos that were out there today, They were everywhere and I couldn't stand them I basically bathed in bug spray and I needed to get away from them, once  it was time to leave I rushed to the car and was so grateful to get away. 

When I left the park it was around 6:00 the group had dinner at Denny's and I left most of the group to have and early night and to come back to write to all of you. I hope you enjoyed to my post and excited to tell you what happens tomorrow, so this is Ed the bear signing out.



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