Tag Archives: Virginia Institute of Marine Science

York River Scientific Diving

In October 2022, in the York River, we did our second round of collaborative scientific dive sampling involving scientists and engineers from the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS), VA Tech, and the Dauphin Island Sea Lab (DISL). There were multiple goals of the study which involved looking at the sediment structure (characteristics) and infauna (worms) of the York River bottom in Virginia, USA. Various shipboard coring samplers were employed, however, diving with hand cores obtained much better samples for x-ray analysis and other protocols. Thanks to a reciprocity agreement within the Standards of the American Academy of Underwater Sciences (AAUS), between VIMS and DISL, my dive buddy, Dr. Kelly Dorgan (DISL), and I were more than happy to obtain these samples in SCUBA, especially given the optimal conditions for the dive featured in the video below. The visibility was around 2 meters and water temperature was 15oC. There were other dives during this same project where the visibility was essentially zero! Hope you enjoy virtually joining us for the dive, thanks to my head-mounted GoPro Hero8 video camera.