Dives in unusual waters

[wet]

I'm just curious if anyone has dived in any of these spots, and if they'd mind giving a brief note on the general conditions, good-bad-unique feelings, fishing results:

Lake Baikal (Russia)
Lake Bolkash (Russia?)
Lake Titicaca (Peru)
Lake Nicaragua (Nicaragua)
Salton Sea (Calif.)
Great Salt Lake (Utah)
Caspian Sea (Russia, Iran, Georgia..)

Any place with freshwater bull sharks (which must reproduce in salt water)
Any place with croc/gator adults very nearby

DDeden

 

[fogish]

I have swam in the great salt lake, diving in it would be a waste of time. Visibility would be near zero (too much brine shrimp), you would have to have a lot of lead to sink, and it is only 33 feet deep at the deepest with nothing in the lake worth looking at. You might enjoy a short dive where a tributary empties into it, but it would be extremely shallow.

There is a place near it called Bonneville Sea Base, it is a warm spring of fresh water that is mixed with the salt water and they have put marine fish in it for people to swim with and feed.

 

[trux]

Not sure if it counts, but I swam and dove in a huge brewery tank. Unfortunately it was not full of beer; just water. Also no fish.

 

[Marwan]

i swam in the suez canal , but not the nile

 

[wet]

I have swam in the great salt lake, diving in it would be a waste of time. Visibility would be near zero (too much brine shrimp), you would have to have a lot of lead to sink, and it is only 33 feet deep at the deepest with nothing in the lake worth looking at. You might enjoy a short dive where a tributary empties into it, but it would be extremely shallow.

There is a place near it called Bonneville Sea Base, it is a warm spring of fresh water that is mixed with the salt water and they have put marine fish in it for people to swim with and feed.

I was shocked at the depth 33' (11m), I thought it was about 200' deep! It's more or less a huge salty shrimpy mudpuddle! That area must have once been a huge inland sea, now there's nothing left but the bottom. Probably need a good mask.

Marwan

i swam in the suez canal , but not the nile

Is the canal brackish or supersaline? Any fish, rays or crocs?
Is the Nile full of crocs? Too polluted or muddy to swim and dive?

trux

Not sure if it counts, but I swam and dove in a huge brewery tank. Unfortunately it was not full of beer; just water. Also no fish.

I'd guess if it were beer or carbonated water, it would be hard to dive deeply, not sure though.

Seems like nobody dove the Caspian, or Lake Titicaca, interesting to me since it is so high in the Andes mountains with poorly oxygenated air. Thanks all!

DDeden

 

[trux]

There is a DB member from Nepal - Aita Singh Lama who claimed to be diving in lakes and rivers in Himalaya. Unfortunately he posted only once and never replied questions we asked him. I agree that it would be quite interesting to know his expereince.

 

[trux]

I'd guess if it were beer or carbonated water, it would be hard to dive deeply, not sure though.

Actually, rather the opposite would be true with carbonated liquids, but it depends how much carbonated it is. Dissolved gas does not change the buyancy too much, but free bubbles do. The more bubbles, the less buyancy - that's one of reasons why people often drawn in white-water - it is diffucult to stay on the surface. Though I do not think it would be too bad with beer - in the worth case you can always drink yourself through. Besides it, most of the CO2 you find in beers is added artificially when filling bottles or kegs, so in the brewing tanks it is not yet there. Frankly told though, beer does not look too appealing for swimming in most phases of the brewing or aging.

 

[fogish]

That area must have once been a huge inland sea, now there's nothing left but the bottom. Probably need a good mask.

Funny, that is exactly what it is. Utah's Great Salt Lake and Ancient Lake Bonneville - Utah Geological Survey I have seen the marks the shoreline left on the mountains where I grew up, it was really cool.

 

[Oldsarge]

And you wouldn't want to dive the Salton Sea, either. It's heavily polluted by the ag runoff from the local farms and has got to be one of the worst smelling places in SoCal . . . and that's saying something, given the number of oil fields and refineries 'round here.

 

[octopus]

I guess this does not count, but I dove in one of the rivers in Ecuador that eventually form Amazon.
Someone dropped my UW camera out of the canoe, so I had to fetch it.
Dove down to about 10m. I might have had my eyes closed as well due to no visibility whatsoever. I spent about half a minute "feeling" the river bed with my hands until I found the camera. I think far the biggest danger in the river is (no, not pirhanas and caymans) all the trees under the water. One can easily bump their head into the tree trunk or get entangled into branches.

 

[Marwan]

the canal is super saline, one of the waterpolo clubs didnt have a pool so we would actually play the match against them IN THE CANAL!, the nile has some crocs in the south of egypt mainly, but not near cairo or the north, and yes quite muddy in most areas

 

[wet]

Neat answers, thanks. I have this rather stupid feeling that lakes are not "supposed" to dry up, they're supposed to stay deep and blue, but I guess that is sort of a temporary situation when talking about really long periods like millions of years. Eventually they fill up with eroded sediment and get shallower and shallower.... Then the geology shakes it up with tectonic plates moving and quakes, then the remnants of the lake get all mixed up...and then another lake forms somewhere else, or maybe in the same place. Nothing on Earth is really a permanent address, even the ocean bottoms eventually become land sometime. Trippy!
Who gets to be the first diver on Mars when they find water? That would be considered "unusual waters" I think.
Man I'm drifting! Time for bed, hasta manana..DD

 

[trux]

I have this rather stupid feeling that lakes are not "supposed" to dry up, they're supposed to stay deep and blue, but I guess that is sort of a temporary situation when talking about really long periods like millions of years.

Ah, you mean like the Aral Sea? It is vanishing pretty fast, but that's mostly due to humans cutting off the suply:

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