September 20, was international Project Aware Day for beach and water cleanup. As a scuba diver, I chose water cleanup. I went with N-Depth Scuba out of Chandler, AZ and rode the bus out to Saguaro Lake. It is reputed to be little more than a mudhole, but I was being overly optimistic in thinking it might be okay.

I didn’t have a dive buddy, I was out there pretty much on my own. I brought all my gear, wetsuit, fins, gloves (wasn’t taking any chances in picking up garbage) etc. N-Depth also arranged for a cookout as well. It turned out to be really fun in spite of the lake conditions. We had to sign in, set up our gear and in my case, search out a dive buddy. I met a nice man named Jim who had come out there on his own as well and we decided to be dive buddies. We grabbed a bag and went in. There was a sentinel at the entry point taking note of who went in to make sure that the same amount came back out of The Black Lagoon. I had some trouble getting my fins on, then trouble with a foggy mask. It was suggested that since I was in the water that I use spit. I have heard that spit works really well to defog a mask, but it has to be your own brand. So I tried it and it really worked despite grossing me out.

At first things were mostly okay, we were cruising along and picking up cans, bottles, plastic cups etc. The bottom is so silty that whenever you picked something up it was like a pyroclastic blast from a volcano and it caused visibility to be even worse than it already was. We came across two other divers and got separated. I couldn’t find Jim, so seeing as that I was only 15 feet down, I ascended and waited at the surface. Jim eventually came up and we re-grouped and went back down. I had taken a compass reading and was trying to head parallel to shore and go over to the pier. I guess I need an underwater nav class because we ended up out at the far buoy. We got down about 26 feet and it was cold and very dark. We came across a dead sunken tree and got all caught up in it. It was then that we decided it was time to go back. I tried to get turned around but it was really difficult to see anything at that point becasue we had kicked up all that silt. As we were only 26 feet down, we decided to go up and surface swim back.

We turned in our garbage, which included the seat from a boat, and got ready to eat lunch which was being prepared. There were about 60 divers and we collected quite a bit of trash. After lunch there were some drawings for some free stuff. I scored a new regulator bag. I was stoked as I really wanted a new one.

When I got home I felt the tremendous need to disinfect myself and all my gear. I brought my BC into the shower and was going to shampoo it, but I ended up just rinsing it.

That was not lake diving at it’s finest. But we were there to provide a service and do our part in keeping our lakes fairly clean. That is until the drunken redneck jackass boaters who don’t know what a dive flag means hit the lakes again to toss their garbage overboard. No, I’m not judgmental at all…..

The ScubaJedi

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