20200701_Aborted dive off Tower 4

Martha and I got up early.  I walked Mia and then we loaded the Jeep and headed to the beach. We arrived there about 6:20 am. The parking lot at Tower 4 was filling up but we found a space to park near the pedestrian bridge. It took a while to gear up but we got in the water by 7:00 am. We swam past the buoy line, then descended at 7:15 am on the reef, where I found this little Balloonfish (Diodon holocanthus). 

I got some shots and then noticed that Martha had not come down yet. Visibility was better than 15 feet and I spotted her still at the surface. I surfaced and she said that she had dropped a weight packet somewhere. She swam on the back towards the beach. I came behind her making a 50 yard North/South swath and looking for her missing weight packet. 

Neither of us spotted the packet but I remembered that she had encountered some difficulty attaching the flag reel to her BCD. I thought it was likely that the packet got dislodged during that struggle. I swam to the sand bar and then swam North along the the sand bar. I found the weight packet in about 10 feet of water just East of the sand bar. Both of us were tired after searching for the weight packet so we decided to call the dive and head home. 

Dive time was 19 minutes at a maximum depth of  17 feet. My actual consumption rate was  42.74 psi/minute; my SAC was 30.01 psi/minute and my Residual Minute Volume was .77 cubic feet per minute.