This time I start describing the diving instead of the location. The reason for this unusual start is the unusual dive. This time diving was not for training or fun, but to collect garbage from the lake bed to improve, protect the environment. This garbage collection is performed on lakes where divers dive every year in Hungary. There is no rule, or law to order us to do it about. It is just our basic instinct that increases the urge we can not resist but go and do the job. (Omg, this was so pathetic... Compare this to the fact that I am diving since this year June, and this was my very first garbage collection dive.) So let me phrase it a bit more honest.
After a while all the crap heaps up on the bottom of the lake and it is better to dive from time to time into a lake that is not full of broken beer bottles and alike. And garbage collection is type of dive that is fun. This time you can go around the lake to places reserved for the anglers during the rest of the year, and you can really do something as opposed to the usual dive when you just watch. In addition to that I was not diving for a few weeks since my Aegean “sink”. Thus I could not resist.
The garbage collection was advertised on the discussion forum of index.hu It was organized by the local dive sport club. They offered free dive ticket and air. I called the contact person and we agreed over the phone. In addition to their initial offer I needed the air bottle and a DM to dive with. Antal Sturcz agreed to be the DM for my dive and to provide the bottle.
The lake Palatinus is in the town Dorog. This is a small mine lake, approximately 1km long and a few hundred meter wide filled with sweet water. The maximum depth is 10 meters. On one side it is reedy. On the other side there are angler houses built. The dive base is close to the beach resort. There is a clear separation so that beach visitors, anglers, windsurfers and divers have their own part and do not disturb each other. This is something that really works; there is no incident between anglers and divers. Nevertheless diving knife is a must there; not to defend yourself from the anglers but only from their hooks and lines.
A few years ago there were a lot of crabs in the lake and still there is at least one of them I saw during this dive. Great cat-fish can also be seen there if you are lucky and some sweet water mussels can also be found.
There were 16 divers gathering for the job. We formed two groups. One group was heading for the reedy side; I joined the other group seeking garbage in front of the angler cottages. We were going up and down 13 times during the dive that lasted 2hours and 20 minutes. We sought garbage in stripes, each pair having their 4m wide stripe. Each pair of diver was companied by a boat following the bubbles.
Smaller pieces of garbage were collected into plastic net sacks that are usually used to store raw potato. Big pieces litter was attached to a rope and pulled up by boat staff.
We did not, however pull the ropes all the way along. Whenever we have found some heavy stuff one of the pair stayed there, while the other raised up to ask for the end of the rope; and then navigating back to the place on the bubbles. That is nothing like safety rule no 1: dive with your buddy in arm distance. Unless you have a 5m long arm.
We have found several beer bottles (no beer, only mud inside), two rubber balls, a silk handkerchief, a wooden barrel, a few car tires, a sank buoy and its concrete weight and finally a huge wire that remained there from the times when the lake belonged to the mine. There was also an anchor trapped into the knot of wire. The knot was about 4m in diameter; the wire itself was an inch wide. It was so heavy that they could not lift it to the boats, but slowly pull it under water with the aid of three divers to the shore.
There should be a lot of garbage that we did not find, and there is a special one that I did find but decided to leave it there. It was already inhabited. When I first saw the broken bottle I noticed that two antennas were poking out. As I moved the water around it with my hands a curious crab was slowly walking out looking at us.
I aimed to collect garbage and not fun dive. I believed that handling a camera under water would have set me back in work. I was right. Even though I was not having a camera I made some film underwater. The Hungarian national television company had sent a troupe to make a film about the garbage collection. Interestingly they had an underwater camera (just as well as a professional “over water” one) but no diver to handle. They assembled the camera and handed to my dive buddy and also to me. It was a Sony DV digital camera in a home made waterproof box. It was heavy and huge compared to my lightweight Sony CyberShot P100. However my one is not a professional camera. Even though it was nice to know that I was a cameraman for the professional TV even they won’t credit me (didn’t ask the name even).
Alter all it was nice and tiring dive. The water was 21C. The max depth was 6.8m. Average depth was 4.5m and the calculated air consumption was 10.24 liter/min. That is cool is it. (Even if I remembered wrong and had only 80bars left, that means 12 liter/min, which is still quite a cool value.)
That was my dive number 9.
I slept 10 hours in the night after. That concluded the no-fly time.