Super Cooper Blooper

Ahh the Cooper river... Its loaded with fossil teeth just waiting to be picked up by anyone with enough nerve to dive to the bottom. Today was megamouth's first river dive, and in addition to teeth, I was on a mission to bring him back alive. We all arrived at the boat landing ready to go, but unfortunately RivrDigr had to make a slight 60 mile detour because he forgot his son's gear. While he exceeded the speed limit, the rest of us (da fossz, t$, young digr, megamouth, and myself) just sat on the boat chilling out, talking to each other.

RivrDigr got back, and it was only about a 2 minute boat ride to the dive spot. The first dive, megamouth went down with me. We stuck together as long as we could, but there were 6 divers in a narrow creek so the water clouded up really quickly. Normally, the current takes all the muck away, but it was slack tide for most of this dive. I got my first artifact ever in this particular spot on this dive so I was pretty stoked.

The next dive, megamouth decided he knew what he was doing, so he wanted to go down by himself. I let him. I rolled over the edge, hit the bottom, and immediately started picking up teeth. Speaking of picking up, that's what the current started doing - in a big way. I felt like I was fighting my whole dive! I kicked both legs constantly and pulled myself along with a screw driver. About 30 minutes into the dive, I realized that one of the weight packs for my weight integrated BC had fallen out somewhere. That explains why I was fighting so much! I was 10 pounds light! Finally, after about an hour I was completely out of energy and almost out of air so I surfaced way up in front of the boat. I easily drifted back to catch the boat. I realized no one else was in yet, so after I dumped off my gear I started looking for bubbles. Everyone was behind the boat! In current like this, that's really bad. Its nearly impossible to swim against it in full gear, so I pulled the anchor and let the boat drift so everyone could come up in front of the boat. Then I heard megamouth calling from over in the bushes. He said he ran out of air and was hanging onto a branch. There was a ski line dragging behind the boat as a last resort for divers who come up behind the boat, so I pulled it in and flung it hook style a la Deadliest Catch and actually got it over to him. He let go of the branch, grabbed the line, and I pulled him in. Mission accomplished.