Dark Object - Don Ledger and Chris Styles-pages

Page 73 of 82

Page 73 of 82
Dark Object - Don Ledger and Chris Styles-pages

Page Content (OCR)

airport. I was going to fly over the sound again a few times, solo, trying to imitate the movements the Dark Object would have made on its flight before hitting the water. I also made a visual inspection of the waters adjacent to the east and west shorelines bordering the sound. The sun's angle and the water 1" that day. I reported I could see the bottom in some areas, particularly off Outer Island, as far out as one thousand feet. The waters were shoaling very gradually, and the bottom consisted of a tan-colored gravel-and-sand mixture, dotted here and there with clumps of kelp and seaweed. Any bottom detail that aroused my interest would be checked out later. Sadly, nothing suspicious was spotted, and I turned my plane back to the airport in Yarmouth. It was now early in the afternoon, and the boat crew once more got down to some hard work as they continued tracking sonar lines, cataloging interesting hits for a dive later in the day. Chris sat next to John Mercer, watching the data as it appeared, and, with his advice, rated targets for their "high strangeness" factor. They rated them with a one, two, or three, based on their size, symmetry, vertical height from the seafloor, and placement. By mid-afternoon they had a few good targets to choose from. None were exciting but a few showed promise. The best of these was selected and Murphy's Law maneuvered to drop anchor as they prepared for their first dive. Alec Griffith would dive with the two professional divers who had been hired for the survey. They were equipped with underwater cameras, lights, two-way radios, and a power assist. Once Lawrence, the dive master, was satisfied, he gave his approval and the three divers sat on the boat's rail, ready to roll over the side and into the water. Alec wanted the divers to roll over the side backwards for dramatic effect, since the camera would be recording it. He thought it would be even better if all three of them rolled in at the same time. In the first few minutes of the dive it was apparent in the control room that there was something wrong below. Underwater radio communications with Alec went from confused and broken to none at all. The other two divers lost visual contact with him. Chris kept up attempts to reestablish radio contact with Alec while the rest of the crew watched the surface for any sign of his bubbles. It was starting to get scary. After a few tense moments, to everyone's relief, Alec's head and shoulders bobbed to the surface near Murphy's Law's stern. Willing hands reached over the stern, straining to get him aboard quickly. He showed no signs of recognition at first, but after a few minutes he got himself together and explained that a seal had failed on his dry suit and it had filled with seawater, dragging him to the bottom. Once Alec had gotten himself together, he had charged his buoyancy compensator with air and bobbed to the surface. He was all right now, although he was exhausted and understandably shaken. Fear gave way to relief aboard Murphy s Law. The moment that Alec broke surface was recorded by Dean on tape and actually made it into one of the programs. It was shown without explanation as a filler while the show's host explained something else. That dive would fail to locate the sonar target. The satellite navigation equipment had been drifting at anchor and a five-knot current was angling the divers away from their anticipated rendezvous point. The underwater camera was hung from a cable and not mounted on an ROV (remotely operated clarity were excellent