Bonneville Seabase

On Saturday Adrien and I braved the snow, freezing winds, and ill-fitting rental equipment to spend the day SCUBA diving at Bonneville Seabase up in Grantsville (very near the Great Salt Lake).
When we arrived, there were several snorkelers already on the premises kicking up silt and screaming and being generally irritating. They left around lunch time, however, and a beginning SCUBA course arrived, who were also loud, but not quite as irritating. Adrien and I were there until closing. What I loved most about this place was that since they don't get tons of customers, especially in the winter, the customer service was excellent. From the time we arrived we were barraged by equipment help, dive trip information, jokes, recommendations on everything, inquiries as to our well-being, assistance in weighting, and orders to holler no matter where we were on the base if we needed anything at all. It sort of felt like they were our personal team of dive helpers.

On the base, there are three "bays" to dive (or snorkel) in: White Rocks Bay, Habitat Bay, and the Abyss. White Rocks Bay is where we did three of our five dives. White Rocks was a covered pool with tons of fish and fabled nurse sharks (which we spent two dives searching for but never found, sadly). We bought lettuce for $2 and fed the fish with it. It was fun to hear them munching and feel the strong pull of fish beaks on soggy lettuce (fun to watch too, but visibility was so bad that most of the time they caught me by surprise). In Habitat Bay (called so because of a sort of diving bell "habitat" area under the water somewhere...we couldn't find it) there was a boat "wreck" for divers to investigate on clearer days. We did poke around there for a bit, but since it was unsheltered, it was considerably colder and we didn't stay long. The Abyss is about 65 feet deep and the deepest spot on the base. We originally intended to only descend to about 40 feet, but after local light failure and my neglecting to take my flashlight into the Abyss, we ended up going to 50 feet, which was all well and good except that it took a little longer to ascend and we ran out of air faster than we'd planned for so we couldn't do a sixth dive to look for the sharks (again). I plan on returning in warmer weather for a better look for the sharks and the boat.

The entrance to White Rocks Bay

Habitat BayThe Abyss-- under that white thing

This picture is funny for 3 reasons: our faces, since the guy gave us no warning as to when he was taking the picture; the fact that we can't put our arms against our body; and that it documents the aftermath of putting on the wetsuits-- we considered making a video of us trying to get them on because it was quite a hilarious endeavor and people had to ask through the dressing room door if we were okay.