Conducting a profiling dive
TaMOs pursuits several objectives. All participants are supposed to collect compareable data, but we don't want to downsize the fun while diving. The comparability is the reason for a standardized method and dive plan, but the standard has been developed from a normal diveplan and follows this plan as close as possible.
A profiling dive
This article describes how to pursuit a profiling dive following the TaMOs concept. While most divers in Schleswig-Holstein will mainly perform land based dives we will use this example to describe the method, but we do appreciate protocolls from ship based dives and wreck dives aswell. It might seams that the concept is very strict, but it was tried to leave as much decisions to the diver as possible without endanger the comparability. We recommend every participant to take pictures during a dive for documentation of seen species. It might be possible that writing the protocoll does not leave enough time for this.
Any given dive spot. Once shown from above (upper part) and once in the vertical profil (lower part)
The dive will be started right from the shallow waters at the beach. Before going under water measure the heading you want to follow and log it in you protocoll. If possible use a dive set up with a right angle between your profil and the depth lines. The heading will be kept up as long as possible.
During the decending the diver notes for every animal and plante species depth and time. The time will be a estimator for the horizontal dimension of a certain plant zone. The writing panel is suppossed to support you during this task as much as possible, while reducing the work to a minimum.
Logging the depth distribution of animals and plants should be done till the maximum deth has been reached. At this point the divers carry on according to their owne decisions. It is still possible to log new species if some new ones appear during the rest of the dive.
The ascending phase will be conducted according to all safty instructions and the decisions of the diving team. This concept leaves 2/3 of a dive open to the divers.
If you have a digital camera available and can take it with you on a dive it would be a good opportunity for documentation of the seen species during the whole dive. Maybe it is possible to identify species which haven't been identified during the dive by using these pictures.
NDR 1 Welle Nord: TaMOs feature
