Lionel and I went to ‘map’ a dive site a few weeks ago. We were given a dive site called ‘Twins,’ so called because there is a shallow and a deep pinnacle, and it’s also bordered by two small islands connected by a sandbar!
We had to dive it twice in order to get the relevant information. Depths, shapes, distances etc.! We started on the surface by marking the buoy lines and then descended and used these as a reference. I was in charge of drawing rocks and recording their depths, and Lionel kept a record of the heading and the direction we were swimming.
It was so much fun just diving with Lionel and as the visibility was great we were able to record quite a bit of info without getting too disorientated!
Funnily enough, we compared our maps against each other’s and against the other DMT’s who mapped the same site; we all got a different map. For us it was really difficult to map it accurately. Maybe it’s because we’re trying to map something 3 dimensional? Maybe we got confused with our x-y-z dimensions? Maybe the water magnifying everything by 33% and 25% closer disorientated us? All this is what makes the Divemaster course so much fun! I can’t believe we are at the end of it now.
Either way it was a fun activity, though I still struggle with finding my bearings underwater!
From this….
To this…
