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FreediveWI · 07-22-2003, 08:39 AM,

Some of you might be aware of the new project going on in Devil's Lake. My regular spearfishing buddy is a limnologist who works at UW Madison. His boss is the prof in charge of it and he wanted us to go and shoot some photos of the pipe intake for him yesterday.

The project itself is a system of pipe that will try and take much of the phosphours out of the lake to improve visibility and get rid of the swimmer's itch that the lake is famous for. When completed vis is predicted to be over 50'- which would bring it back to its original conditon before the resorts were built. Around the turn of the last century there were over 6 resorts and even steam boats on the lake dumping all of their refuse into the lake. The last resort was torn down in the early 60's, so I've been told, and the lake has slowly been trying to return to its origninal clear water.

Yesterday we had about 25' of vis.

Jon

FreediveWI · 07-22-2003, 08:40 AM,

Of course we freedove it 8) and I was glad we did.

We had to first hike the tracks up form the south end to find the bouy.

Jon

FreediveWI · 07-22-2003, 08:50 AM,

Next, we had to climb down this small hill to gain access to the water- I sure was glad I didn't have to drag tanks down that.

From here we swam out to the bouy that should have marked the end of the pipe. It was put in by a scuba team a few weeks ago and wasn't on the pipe. After a few freedives I found the pipe and tied it in. This made the rest of the job go a lot easier.

MAx depth- 45'.

Jon

FreediveWI · 07-22-2003, 08:55 AM,

The pipe itslef is solid except for the last few section on the end. Here they have holes drilled into the pipe to suck in the anoxic bottom water. They were concerened witht he pipe setteling into the bottom asnd needed picutres to show how far away the intake holes were. I guess that everytime a scuba team went down to take the pictres they stirred it up so bad that they couldn't get the shot. The bottom in this part of the lake can best be described as "fluff". It is different from silt as it seems to float , and stay suspended, much longer than silt.

Once you break through the thermocline, at about 25', the vis drops from 25' to less than 10'. All of the particles floating in suspension seem to block out quite a bit more light- still not as bad as the bottom of Red Granite Quarry or anything like that.

Jon

FreediveWI · 07-22-2003, 08:56 AM,

On the way back in we stopped to play with some of the fish, that seem to be everywhere along the rocks.

Jon

FreediveWI · 07-22-2003, 08:57 AM,

As an added bonus, I even found an anchor. ;D

Jon

FreediveWI · 07-22-2003, 08:59 AM,

Water temp was 73 degrees down to 25' and dropped off into the 50's below that. It was warm enough the my kid sister, visiting from San Diego, wasn't cold at all when she went for a dive.

Jon