It's not just "Diving".....

   As a member of the Point Pleasant First Aid Dive Team we get to dive in some really cool places and places a lot of divers never get to go! We also get to dive a lot! Training and other missions takes us everywhere. Beach sweeps, recovery’s just to name a few.

   But it’s not all diving. There is first aid training, driving training, compressor operator training, boat training, knowing your knots and search patterns and the list goes on. But wait there is still more! Let’s not forget cleaning all the dive gear, both yours and the teams and keeping the dive truck loaded and stocked up ready to roll if needed. The dive bay doesn’t clean its self! We have to do that too! You can never believe how fast it can become a real mess, sand, dirt, old bottles and dive gear and wet wetsuits and wet dry suits, all have places to hang or be put into.

   You would think you’re done but you would be wrong! We’re also members of the first aid squad too. Someone has to clean the squad building. There is lot’s to do on an old building. Fixing and painting and cleaning, not everybody is a handyman, but we do what we can, you can clean or you can answer first aid calls so other can keep working.

   There are many jobs that need to be done. Answering first aid calls is number one! Fund raising is also a big job that has to be done, without fund raising the first aid would be out of business in no time! So everything that we can do to save money we do!

2015 ~New Years Day Dive~

Happy New Year to everyone!! If you didn’t make the first dive of the year you missed one of the best first dive ever! Was the weather great, not really it could have been warmer not as cold as pass first dive or as warm as first dives in the past, but the sun was out and that help with the visibility.

This year the high tide was very late in the afternoon and we didn’t want to make it a night dive, so we planned a low tide dive. We were looking at the rail road bridge and the inlet but we have done this is the past. We did checked the ocean and it was flat so we planned an in and around. This is where we go in off the beach and let the tide bring us into the inlet and to the exit point.

   So off to the beach Max, mike B. OJ, Big foot Joe, Sue L and guest Eric geared up and headed for the water. We had surface support with Sara, Bob S, Flo, Tom C. and a new member Rick and his wife Jess. It was a nice easy walk into the water as there were no waves to speak of. We put on our masks and fins on and just rolled over and headed for the inlet.

  The water saw so clean on the beach, it had to be twenty feet or better of visibility. This dropped down to ten feet at the point of the jetty but was still good. At the point of the jetty were the Atlantic Traveler fishing boat sank a few years back the visibility went right back to twenty feet. The sand has moved out and pieces of the wreck can be seen jam in and around the rocks. (These have not been seen for a few years because of being covered over by the sand.)

   Everyone drifted down the inlet picking up sinkers and whatever they could find. It was a good day getting sinkers, with the bottom laid bare and very little sand to hide them they were there for the picking. Even Max came away with a very nice dive weight he found on the bottom. All toll the dives came away with 173 pounds of sinkers.

   With the water temperature of 43 you didn’t want to sit around digging or looking to long in the rocks. It was best to keep moving to fight off the cold. Everyone made the exit point and with the help of the surface support people we packed up and then it was back to the building for a great lunch of Flo’s homemade clam chowder and grilled cheese.

  Nina V. our team photograph had a field day with her camera, taking over 350 pictures. It’s not an easy job going through them as all of them are so good. She really does have a good eye! We’ll be posting them.

  So it was a great start to the New Year, great people and a great dive and a good time!

.

~2014 Sinker Sale~ Point Pleasant Fire Company Fishing Flea market...

It took the team eleven and half months to get 2579 pounds of sinkers and five and a half hours to sell every one. This week end was the Point Pleasant fire departments company #1 fishing flea market and as in the past they give the dive team a table to sell all the stuff we found throughout the year. Sell we did!! 

   Two thousand five hundred seventy nine pounds of sinkers, hundreds of lures, many fishing poles, anchors, and old bottles all for sale, and everything was recovered from underwater.  We do clean the lures and the sinkers of old line and any debris that hangs on to it.

  We were ready for the doors to open and the mad rush of people looking for deals! Well it didn’t happen that way! People did come in but not like in years past. Sales were OK but kind of slow and it was not just us. Nobody was doing very well. There just  wasn’t a lot of people.

   Our sales did pick up late in the morning and we started moving a lot more sinkers. Paul D. had his hand truck and was kept busy taking half buckets of sinkers out to the parking lot. Half of bucket here and a half bucket there and we well on your way to getting cleaned out, One sale took all our bigger sinkers. Another sale took over half our lures and that’s how the morning went.

   By 1:00 we were pretty much done, most of the vendors were packing up, we had two half buckets of sinkers left and looked like they are going back to the building with us! But wait!!! As we were loading it on the truck one last customer came up and took everything we had left. Nothing but empty buckets and one fishing pole were going back with us.

   It was a really good day! We sold everything. It was the best we ever did and the most we ever made. “If you bring it someone will buy it”.

   You would think after working all day selling sinkers we would take a rest, but you would be wrong!!  We checked the water and it was really clear so it was off to get gear and hit the inlet.

   So Ali, Bob, Joe, OJ, Greg, Linda and I all suited up and jumped into the inlet with Paul and Milton as surface support. Being on call 24/7 we have to be ready at all times so this keeps us on our toes!! The water was COLD! I could feel it on my face the minute I hit the water, but the visibility was so good with over 10-15 feet. Everybody teamed up and started looking around.

   The inlet is always changing, sand moves here and sand moves there and you never know what you’re going to find. The find of the day goes to Ali, she found a brand new watch and it had the right time on it!! Joe followed that up with a nice silver ring!! Linda and I came out with a full sinker tube and some quarters and a clip of 30-06 bullets and Linda got a nice bottle too. Joe out did us on the bottles also! He got a bottle I have never seen before.

   After over an hour the divers started coming out and checking out our finds. It’s really nice having surface support to help the divers getting out of the water and helping the divers out of their gear. Paul saw Joe’s bottle and got on his I-phone and found out it’s a soda-milk bottle from the 40’s. With the last diver coming out an hour and twenty five minutes after going in, it was time for coffee and to head back to clean up and start the next year’s great sinker race again!

.

Fishermen's Flea Mkt ~2013~

Sunday was our big fund raiser for the year. The ocean #1 fire company’s fishing flea market. We recover sinkers all year and sell them back to the fishermen and anything else we find, ie fishing pole, lures, tools, anchors or old bottles. Some people will buy any thing. One  year we sold a three foot high concrete owl that sue and tom recovered.

  This year we had over 2056lbs of sinkers and over one hundred lures to sell and fishing poles and anchors. It took over eight hours to clean the sinkers and lures to get them ready to sell. Saturday night we finished up the sorting and cleaning and loaded up the dive truck for Sunday.

Sunday morning saw a pretty good turnout of members to get set up and sell! Sell we did!! It didn’t look to us like a good turnout, most times you can’t walk around due to so many people. But not this year, you could walk around without any problems. Sales were slow for a little while but picked up after about an hour. The good lures were the first to go. Afew old bottles got sold and the anchors were gone, tom was pushing the fishing poles and sue and flo had the sinkers flying off the table!

Then it was let’s make a deal time! People didn’t want bags of sinkers, they wanted half buckets of sinkers. The captain of the queen mary got all the 4 oz sinkers and that started it off. Paulie D and his hand truck got one hell of a work out, he was running half buckets of sinkers out to cars and trucks the rest of the day. By 1200hrs we were sold out of sinkers and lures and anchors. We had afew fishing pole and some old bottles and that was it.

Getting back to the building and getting everything put away it was time to sit back and start planning for next year! May be we can get 2500lbs this time!

We had our best year ever, we made over $1300!  I would like to thank Ocean fire company #1 for the table” you guys are the best”, and I want to thank Sue, Flo, Joann, Ali, Tom C,     Tom T, BOB, Mike B, Paulie D, and new member Joe P for all their hand work in pulling this off.

Sinker Sales 2012....

Today, Feb 26, 2012, we had an excellent turnout for our Blowout Sinker Sale. Ocean Fire Co. #1 invited us again to table at their annual Fisherman's Flea Market, held at Antrim School. With a beautiful day, the event was well-attended, and fortunately 13 members were available to pack out 2116 pounds of sinkers. (In case you were wondering, that's nine FULL 5-gallon buckets. Of course, you shouldn't ACTUALLY fill a five gallon bucket with lead and try to move it. We did a scientific investigation and proved that it will break.)

.

Our crew of Professional Sinker Sorters were busy sorting the whole morning and preparing custom orders to exacting specifications. Or not. (When you want to get rid of a ton of lead, it becomes necessary to throw in an extra handful here and there.) Mike and Justin were so busy selling, we actually ran out of bags and had to make a supermarket run. We also sold lures (hand-polished by Flo), F-Cove salvaged sunglasses, and a handful of vintage bottles. In the meantime, Larry the Singing Lobster kept the kids busy with his only two songs.
.

In the end, we did have to take back home some bottles, lures, and a rusty anchor that just couldn't pass muster. And Larry. BUT NO LEAD. This was our best sinker sale to date, so thanks to everyone who stopped by and to our hosts.

Can we take ONE week off from collecting now? Not if we want to have 2500 pounds next year...

.

WHAT WE LEARNED TODAY:
1. Full buckets of sinkers are HEAVY!!! LIFT WITH THE LEGS!!!!
2. Kids LOVE Larry the Lobster.....Adults DO NOT!!! (Except Flo)
3. There are some things you cant even GIVE away!!

Sinker dive facts
52 sinker dives in 51 weeks
Biggest haul 288lbs
Most sinkers came out of manasquan inlet
five dives in shark river inlet
two dives on the wreck of the delaware
two dives at the highlands bridge
It took eight people six hours to clean and sort the sinkers.
Best sinker spot is sue's sinker garden, over five hundred lbs of sinkers came from that one spot.

.

End of soggy wetsuit season....

This weekend marked the probable last chance for the dive team to dive "Wet suit" for the 2011 season and the choice for the dive was the new Highlands Bridge just completed a month or so back. The new bridge has some pretty lines to it and it should for the estimated $124 million price tag that came with it and all the effort it took to complete a project like this...

.

"NJDOT will demolish the bridge and replace it with a 65-foot high fixed span structure with 12-foot lanes and 8-foot shoulders. NJDOT will construct the bridge in a manner that maintains existing traffic flow and minimizes seasonal impacts and diversion of traffic to local streets"

The old bridge had been there for a considerable amount of time and any qualified diver that has spent time under this bridge during and through a tidal change can only imagine the amount of water that has passed under this bridge over the years. This is one of the best dive sites to view marine sponges that have attached themselves to anything they can and thrive very nicely due to current and nutrients that pass by.

This site has been very beneficial in the past for training sessions dealing with swift currents as well as low visibility search techniques. Many fine old bottles have been recovered from this site as well as coins, medallions, jewelry, tools, and pretty much anything you can imagine being thrown by people standing on the bridge while the drawbridge was up and boat traffic was in progress. This site has also provided many different dive profiles for sometimes it was nice to swim the entire area depending on visibility and current conditions and at other times just finding a comfortable spot to simply "fan" and see what you could find. With that the entire area under the bridge provided many unique bottom profiles and at many times numerous underwater obstructions. Fortunately the people in the below video chose the correct high tide period to perform their stunt for the camera... If they only knew....

Chief Diver Nesley going over the dive site and profile with some of the recently certified divers. Great opportunity to inform those who had not experienced the site as to what to expect and some of the history to this area and dive site.

.



Removal of some of the bridge abutments to the old bridge in the above photo...

Sue Lewicki inspecting some of the artifacts discovered during the dive

Picnic after the dive was at Sandy hook and provided the opportunity to debrief the dive and to go over and inspect the finds from the dive....

.

Congrats !...