Letting neither weather forecast nor lingering snow deter us,  myself and fellow BtLG Dive Team member Caleb C. got out to pull a second battery from the popular Seattle dive site known as “cove 2” over in Alki.

Upon leaving the house there was a bit of snow falling, but a short 5 min drive around Duwamish head revealed naught but a howling biting wind.   We geared up in moderately expeditious fashion,  i need to remember to not stand around on cold concrete without full booties beneath my feet… once feet are cold, its very hard to warm them back up.   I donned my heated vest (the wonderful thing that makes inclement weather like this actually quite tolerable) and we were off.   A side note, although i am in 100% agreement that if you need more insulation you should go get it, i will also say that active heating is simply awesome.

Our plan was a moderately short dive, we were off to look for a rather large battery between the wreck of an abandoned cabin cruiser (the honey bear) and the entry point.   On our way out we took a secchi disk reading (vis was a whopping 37′!!)  checked out a couple empty octopus dens and finally arrived at our intended target.

I was a bit surprised at first, this battery was double the size of the first battery.  it was a bit of a struggle getting it into my containment bin (aka milk crate) if only because its was so heavy underwater!   before this dive i’d taken the time to pre-rig a sort of harness for the milk crate for ease of setup with lift bag.   I’d also left a few other items on the shock cord in my bin… next time i won’t be doing that, extra stuff just gets in the way.  KISS.  Ok, containment field activated, lift bag deployed… the rest of the show was pretty uneventful, Caleb shot some video with his little point and shoot and we made our way back to the boundary line.  on the way up i pointed out a little gastropod sea angel, he was expecting something …bigger 🙂   An pleasant cruse back up the line, a check for critters in the battery…  a heave ho!  And… achievement unlocked!   Another Battery into the bin and ready to go to recycling!!!!!!!!!!