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
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.
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.
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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