Well today we where invited by the land owners to visit a quarry near wakefield to look at the
feasibility of it becoming a possiable location for diving.
The first impresions where great sunny weather, nice sized lake with rumours of it been arround 30m deep!!!!!!!!
And we were as far as they know we where the first people ever to dive it, as it hasnt been arround that long....
Entry is easy via a gentle slope, slightly muddy to start with, once at 3m it all seamed ok and started to look a lot like blue lagoon, not great viz but very divable. We headed out on a bearing along the northen edge of the lake looking for the slope to depth. We contiuned along at about 5m fighting through the grass and weeds, once to theother side we surfaced to get another bearing.
Ha ah we thought as we set off straight down slope at about 45 degrees. All was looking good until we hit 8m suddenly the world went black, when i say black i mean black.
At first we lost each other compleatly but after a quick rise to 7m out of the blackness we found each other.
We readjusted ourself's and had another go.
8m Blackness again, we both had lights but unless you held it up to the glass on your mask you couldnt see it at all, we however carryed on down. We got to 17m, had no idea which way was up, left or right, but we hit bottom.
Via a few hand signals, not by sight but by touch we ended the dive and headed for the surface again at 8m we had viz again.
The reason for the blackness was the fact at 8m and deeper is just full of coal silt just suspended in the water and belive me you could see more with your eyes closed.
Also which was quite strange was the fact you could taste what i can only describe as a rotting stench.
After we got out avoiding a couple of jet ski's we spent time surface plumbing for depth and can quite confidently say the max depth is 19m, not the hopefull 30m.
There are a few other local dive centres due to dive this place in the next week and then the landowners may make a decision what to do with the place so we will keep you posted.
Due to the black layer at 8m it is unlikely to become a dive location but there might be the chance to dive here again and it would be good for a few things, but then again it might become a motor boat centre or something.
Shame as we could do with a local quarry with a bit of depth.