Split Rock dive sites

[DetectorGuy]

I really like the concept, and know that it can be a major project if you let it. I have some ideas that could help you out, but I don't have the ability to commit to it this fall. Here is my 2 cents: Dive the crap out of the area and start by marking major pieces. If each diver had 2 or 3 'dog bone' buoys with them, they could deploy them on these major pieces (call these major pieces landmarks) sending the float to the surface and the lead weight sitting on or near the object. When the tanks are low, ascend and get in the boat, motor over each buoy and mark each landmark with GPS coordinates. Pull the buoys and mark more landmarks the same way. All of these landmarks should be heavy, non-movable, or notable items that can be the hub for a circular search later. Here is a rough link to some search patterns: With all the landmarks locked into GPS, a person can come back at any point in time and do a circular search centered on each of the landmarks, noting direction and distance from the landmark using a compass and fiberglass tape. Using a slate while underwater to record the bearing/distance could be useful in a target rich environment. Mark everything of interest until you run out of summer or ambition (which ever comes first). Then in the winter months (if you are not an ice diver) you can add these coordinates to the landmarks to Google Earth, and add info for each like depth, description, condition, ETC. Once you have all the push pins on Google Earth for all the major landmarks, You can use the Google Earth measure tool to get some pretty accurate measurements between the landmarks & from them to shore ETC. Once the major landmarks are on Google Earth, you take out your field notes from the dive slate info on the lesser targets showing bearing/distance from a landmark and transfer these to Google Earth using the bearings and measure tool again. Once you have all the items you want on your Google Earth map, you need to go a little redneck... Adjust the size of Google Earth image to have everything you want to show on your map to be just under the size of a 8 1/2" x 11" piece of paper (landscape). Place a piece of paper over the computer screen and temporarily tape it to the screen. The light and image from the screen shine through the paper and allows you to trace the outline of the shoreline and place a small x over each of the push pins. Once you have everything traced on the 8 1/2" x 11" paper remove it from the screen, clean up the lines, add dimension lines between items, and label
items. That gets you a small map of the area that can be scanned in to a computer. The file can be transferred to a thumb drive, taken to Kinkos, and plotted out in a 3'x4' map. More detail can be then added to this bigger map. Then Ta-daaaa, your done with that site and you start over on another site.

We did a similar map using these exact methods for the dive sites on the North side of the Ore Be Gone pit in July and the first half of August. Here is a copy of that map:

by , on Flickr