Black River Diving
August 2004
Clouds suck! In western PA, during most days it is either raining, overcast, or if one is lucky, mostly cloudy. I have only seen the sun a half dozen times since our vacation. During these awful periods of clouds, I would occasionally hear a whisper. The faint whisper would say, “Get out of the rain, come into the sun, come to the low country, dive for fossils.” The south was beckoning me! Well, it may have been my alternate fossil personality talking. At any rate, I hooked up with good old Ditchweezil for a fossil dive.
The day before our dive, Aim and I decided to try the Big Ditch for some Big Teeth. However, the ditch was filled with silt and algae, which, we hypothesized, hid most of the fossils. Whatever was the cause, there were no fossils over 1” to be found. Luckily our dive was fast approaching.
The next day, we met up with Ditchweezil the fossil extraordinaire. He took us to a spot along the Edisto where he has scored big in recent times. When we got there, he said the river was a little high, and the current may be a little strong. Because of this, Aim wanted to be tied to me incase something would happen. This turned out to be a very good idea. As soon a we geared up and dove into the water, Aim began to drift away. We sunk to the bottom and dug in our screwdrivers to keep from drifting even further. Unfortunately, Amy couldn’t battle the current, and was being tossed down the river with me attached. Eventually I got a good hold of the river bottom and pulled her toward me. Every time I would let go of the rope to rest and catch my breath, she would immediately get sucked down the river, and I would get tugged with her. I realized her dive was over. I motioned to her to swim to the shore. As we surfaced, a nice landowner began to laugh at us, “There’s a strong current today” he chuckled. The nice landowner suggested that we cut through his property so we could make it back to the road, where we could walk upstream to our parked cars. We immediately took him up on the offer. Back at the car I deposited Amy, and went back in the river to use the rest of my tank looking for fossils. I didn’t find much on the fist dive. However, on the second dive, I went down with Ditchweezil so he could point out the layer to look for under the sand. With that knowledge, I had a good second dive. I found 2 decent angustidens, they are slightly worn and beat up, but they are much better than the angy’s I found last trip here.
After the 2nd tank was used up, we departed. Ditchweezil didn’t really score anythin too good, but sometimes you have those days. I found my 2 angy’s, and Amy got a nice suntan waiting on shore. Next time we dive, I am loading Amy up with major weight, or maybe I’ll just get a trained dolphin for her to hold onto.
Click here To View Ditchweezils trip report and fossils found on this dive.
Here's the Edisto river. At this spot, is a large gravel bed and the chandler bridge formation below.
These are the two Angy's I found.
Here is Ditchweezil. His Identity is finally revealed!
This is Amy's find of the trip. A pair of Trilobite earings found in a Charleston shop. Cool!
Here are my diving finds. Not allot, nothing of high quality, but I still like the two angy's!
And finally, a close up of the two angy's. The little one has a 2 3/8 slant, and the larger one has a 2 5/8" slant
