Sunday morning, Chuck and I dove upstream cow and saw an "X" in the same clay bank . I told Wayne and told Ron at the Dive outpost. This must stop. I don't know how were gonna do it, but it needs to stop!
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Sunday morning, Chuck and I dove upstream cow and saw an "X" in the same clay bank . I told Wayne and told Ron at the Dive outpost. This must stop. I don't know how were gonna do it, but it needs to stop!
How big and deep was the X?Quote:
Originally Posted by Shaun
Looked to be around 3" or so and maybe 1/4 deep. Bad enough.
I noticed over the last couple trips that parts of the repair could be seen from some angles as the softer clay was washing out a bit faster than the original clay.
Did you see an actual X freshly carved or did you see something else that may have been an artifact of the original repair to the DIC not holding up? Ie. were the margins raised as would occur if someone carved it in or were they well rounded as would be the case if softer clay were washing out?
If it is the former it would seriously piss me off and we'd want to start checking with Kathy to see who has been there recently and who may be responsible. My understanding is that things have been slow the last couple months or so, so the list of suspects would be comparatively short.
Freshly X'ed. No question about it.
Probably some OW sidemount diver !!!!!! :rollguy Seriously, this really sucks!!!!
great...
We have a date when it was first noted, can we find some folks who have bene there recently and did not see the X? If so we can narrow the window when it occurred and use the sign in information to try to identify possible suspects who dove Cow in between.
Assuming they signed in?
Buddy and I dove upstream Cow on 08/20/2010, and did not notice a prominent "X" in the clay bank. However, the last time we dove Cow, the clay bank was still in it's somewhat undisturbed condition (2002?).
Whats even worse is if its not a fence jumper its an NSSCDS member.
It's a start. As of now we seem to have narrowed it to between Aug 20th and Aug 29th. I am guessing not too many teams dove there in a 9 day period of time.Quote:
Originally Posted by SuPrBuGmAn
If we start with the list of people who signed in and ask what they saw we will at a minimum narrow the range further. More to the point, if one of the people gives a response that does not fit the time line (reports seeing an X or not seeing an X in between two people who report the opposite) it identifies them as a possible suspect.
If all the responses of the properly signed in divers are consistent, we will then have as narrow a range of when it happend as we are likely to get. Even it was a fence jumper and they stopped at either shop, the odds of identification go way up. If we enquire at Kathy's and Bill's to identify other divers who may have been in the area, and then if needed collect and cross reference information on where identified divers went, who they saw, etc and from other sources (registrations, etc) we will begin to exclude divers as suspects and, again, pieces of information that don't fit or are inconsitent will identify potential suspects.
The message we need to convey is that if a **** head does something like this, we will make every effort to catch them. Alternatively we could just sit around, ***** about it and think up reasons why we can't find the perp while the trail goes cold.
We didnt see it on the 20th... however, we may have missed it. We may have chalked it up to "did you see where the fixed the clay bank?" or something similar. I remember commenting on saying that they did a really good job of repairing the damage (which we never physically saw), so if the "X" is pronounced as you say it is, then perhaps it wasn't there. BTW... we were the last team in on the 20th.
I still support putting up education signs at the site teaching conservation, if it stops even 1 incident it will be worth it.
I say we remove the clay bank so as to prevent this type of thing from happening again.
Good idea Joe. Maybe just put a white blank board and hang bunch of markers so kids can mark territory other than on clay banks. Could publish its snapshot once a season or so on Net.
Removing it is a lot of work and would blow the viz for awhile. Lets just put up great big steel grates to protect all the clay banks and cool formations that could be vandalized.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tegg
Hey wait! maybe we could just install a big acrylic tube up the main line - like the Mall of America aquarium. Then divers could dive upstream cow without actually being able to touch it at all. Every few weeks someone on the 'tube committee' could clean all the graffitti off the inside of the tube.
Or do like they do in Pompeii. Put a little plexi-glass over the mosaics / paintings on the walls to keep the tards from touching them
Be careful, the instructors might see this as another specialty they can charge for -- tube diving.Quote:
Originally Posted by DA Aquamaster
They do already.Quote:
Originally Posted by DeepSea
I've seen 'em in Texas diving concrete pipe laid end to end, and call it cave training :)
Quote:
Originally Posted by DeepSea
I could see that being a fun specialty Walter, just think of the possibilities.....tube diving at Ginnie over Labor day weekend...... ;)
Safe diving,
Rich
Is that code speak for muff diving?Quote:
Originally Posted by Rich
It is still overhead diving. The trick to being a good tube diver is timing the exhalations perfectly as the bikinis in the tubes go precisely overhead.
I was with KG on that dive. The woman at Dive Outpost told us that there was only one team the day before we dove and we were the only team in on the 20th. We returned back to Dive Outpost late (around 6pm). I did notice the repair work that had been made and could tell that there had been a repair even though this was my first dive there in 10 years. I have been in that cave +50-70 dives and I ALWAYS marvel at the clay bank on the way in; not so much on the way out as Cow spits you out like a fire hydrant. But I certainly noticed 'smudging' over a wide area, but did not see an "X".Quote:
Originally Posted by KarsticGator
Cool. That gives us a firmly identifyable start date in the not too distant past.
Please be mindful that we did not actively look for vandalism, only that it is my recollection that an "x" was not seen by us going upstream. I spent more of my focus on sliding the rubber tubes back over all the rub points on the wall and the concrete block in that area of the ski rope (most all of them had slid away from where they should be), and we never left the ski rope. So what we saw from 15' away from the clay banks was limited, and depending on where the "x" is, it may not have even been visible to us. Having spent so long away from Cow, I do remember wanting to see the result of the repair work, but having never seen the inital damage that prompted it, I cannot give a description in a "before/after" format. I just don't want anyone who logged a dive there with Dive Outpost after us to be falsely accused of vandalism that may or may not have existed when we dove on the 20th.
I think it's a given that not noticing it is not 100% proof it was not there, but it does give a starting point to start talking to people to narrow it down a bit further. Given that I was at P1 on the 26th and was at least in the area engaged in cave diving, I am sensitive to the postion divers may be in when their presence in the area during a certain time frame makes them a possible suspect. Asking people where they went, what they saw, who they saw, etc is not the same as accusing them of doing something wrong and needs to be approached that way. But if a larger body of information can be collected, we can start to draw some conclusiosn on what information is consistent, what information is not and who can be included or excluded from the pool of possible suspects.
It gets more fun with rebreathers...Quote:
Originally Posted by DA Aquamaster
I was on a team of two on 8-30-10 and we noticed nothing other than evidence of divers making what we believed to be unintentional markings... mostly on the cave floor - fin strokes, tanks? . Unfortunately Cow is not as pristine as it used to be and as we would all love it to be today. Went back on a team of three on 9-2-10 wanting to see just what we missed on 8-30-10. Again, more of the same ...what to us appeared to be non-deliberate markings of passing divers. There are plenty of these. Mostly on the floor. Is it upsetting? YES ...Do I believe its deliberate ...NO.