Dive 2 — The Reference Occupation

Question: what is the water column doing here, now?

The first dive that produces data, and the occupation against which the whole of Day 2 is compared. Everything recorded here — logger depths, disc bearings, background, working depth, dwell time, and the time of day — becomes the specification that Dives 4 and 5 must reproduce exactly.

Follow the Station Occupation Procedure in full.

Specific to this dive

Record the time of day, and mean it. Dive 4 must be conducted at approximately the same hour on the following day, because that is what makes the two comparable. The time this dive happens therefore fixes part of tomorrow's schedule.

Write the specification down. Not in memory, and not only on a slate that may not survive the day. Logger depths to the centimetre as read from the computer, disc bearings, the background sighted against, the working depth, the dwell time, and which diver held which position. Tomorrow's team reads from this, not from recollection.

Practice slate

This is the real recording grid you copy onto a slate before the dive — Slate A — Station Occupation (Dives 2, 4, 5, 6). Fill it in here to get the feel of it. Nothing is saved, nothing is submitted, and there is no right answer to find; it is a surface to practise on. Print it blank if you want a slate to copy from.

If a field cannot be filled, write a dash rather than leaving it blank, so the reader knows it was missed rather than overlooked. Every blank is a question you will not be able to answer later.

Quick check

Three questions, drawn at random from this lesson's set, one attempt each. The right answer is shown either way. Two of three opens the next lesson; fewer and you get another three. Nothing is recorded anywhere but this browser, and this is not the Knowledge Review — it is a way of showing the lesson was read.

Generated from the Reef Hydrocaster Course Guide, version 1.10. The course documents are the authority; if these pages and they ever disagree, the documents are right.