Dhruv Naik and Gaurav Manek visited Crusty's Quarry on a sunny Saturday afternoon. There was quite a crowd in the morning, with families (and kids!) all there to dive in this (seemingly) warm freshwater quarry together. While getting suited and booted on the grass, we had the unwelcome surprise of an extruded o-ring on some new, untested equipment. The folks over at the quarry kindly gave us a replacement ring for free and even installed it for us.
We plunged into the warm water for our shakedown dive, and spent the first 20 minutes adjusting weights, testing out new equipment, and just generally enjoying the shallows. Once ready, we swam out to a training platform and sank down to 6m (18'). On the way down, at about 3.5m (10-11ft) we crossed a sharp thermocline of probably 15 degrees F, which was absolutely brutally cold, especially in our thin summer suits. After freezing down there for a minute, we ascended to just above the thermocline and decided to spend the rest of our time exploring the shallows.
Over three dives (totalling 2 hours submerged), we explored the shallows quite thoroughly. The fish were very friendly (they'll come within inches of you) and there were sloping fields of freshwater grass with zones of petrified wood to swim around. The underwater surfaces were all very loose and silty, and visibility was greatly hampered by the slightest pressure wave from our finning.
At the northernmost point, at about 4m, we saw a collection of fish (of the same species) having arranged beautiful nests and were quite intent on defending their turf from creatures easily twenty times their size. Somewhere in the south shallows, we came across an underwater tree that had been completely covered in some sort of thick mucus, which we avoided. Throughout the quarry there are about a half-dozen manmade attractions sunk at various depths. We were only able to visit the sunken airplane, and even that was limited to a short two-minute visit.
Visibility in the shallows was okay (10' to 15') and greatly improved with depth (to 20' at a depth of 15'), but it was surprisingly dark -- probably due to silt in the water at higher depths.
Next time, we'll rent thicker wetsuits and bring a tarp to prepare on, instead of the grass. Also, lights!