Some dive destinations feel like places you visit. Others start to feel a little more like home.
For Extreme Sports Scuba, Mermet Springs in southern Illinois has definitely fallen into the second category.
Over Labor Day weekend, divers began trickling into the Metropolis area on Friday for three days of diving September 5–7. By the time everyone was assembled—or at least assembled long enough to get a group picture before wandering off again—nearly 30 Extreme Sports divers were represented.
Some came to work on certifications. Some were there to help with classes. Some came simply to get underwater.
And, as usually happens on an Extreme Sports dive trip, quite a bit happened in between.
A Familiar Dive Destination
Mermet Springs has been an annual destination for Extreme Sports Scuba for years, and there’s a reason we keep going back.
Glen Faith, his wife PJ, and the Mermet Springs staff have created a dive facility that works equally well for training and recreational diving. There are platforms for classes, tank fills on site, plenty of underwater attractions to explore and even a cook shack serving breakfast and lunch for those who didn’t bring enough food.
Although, let’s be realistic. Dive groups usually bring enough food.
This particular group also arrived with an unreasonable quantity of chocolate chip cookies, but [that’s an entirely different story].
Mermet is also home to its most famous underwater attraction: a Boeing 727 used in the movie U.S. Marshals with Tommy Lee Jones and Wesley Snipes. The airplane eventually found a second career submerged at Mermet Springs, where it now provides divers with one of the more unusual wreck-diving opportunities available without leaving the Midwest.
Longtime Extreme Sports blog readers may remember our 2016 interview with Mermet Springs owner Glen Faith, where he shared more of the story behind the facility and the famous 727.
And that airplane got plenty of use this weekend.
A Busy Weekend for Training
While many divers came simply to enjoy the weekend, there was also a lot of training taking place.
The 727 served as the classroom—well, technically the underwater classroom—for the weekend’s Wreck Diver students. Deep Diver and Advanced Buoyancy training were also underway throughout the weekend.
Congratulations to the divers who earned new certifications:
- Dylan Jones — Wreck Diver
- Hunter Drake — Wreck Diver
- Becca Weston — Wreck Diver
- Jacob Letner — Advanced Buoyancy Diver
- Bodie Gubser — Wreck Diver
- Robert Banes — Deep Diver and Wreck Diver
- Jennifer Banes — Deep Diver and Wreck Diver
- Jan Collins — Wreck Diver
- Randy Coleman — Wreck Diver
- Doy Hensley — Wreck Diver
Divemasters in Training Travis Githens and Joshua Hay also spent the weekend working toward their own requirements. Along with assisting instructors and students, they conducted dive briefings and took two of the group’s junior divers out to explore Mermet.
Training weekends like this are one of the reasons destinations such as Mermet are so valuable. Students can work on new skills, experienced divers can simply go diving, and newer divers get to watch what continued dive education actually looks like outside the pool.
Sometimes it looks very professional.
Sometimes it looks like somebody standing around in a dry suit in 100-degree heat while everyone else starts yelling at them to get in the water before they cook themselves.
Both are educational.
This Was Not Normal Mermet Weather
Anyone who has dove Mermet before probably has one piece of advice:
Bring exposure protection.
Then maybe bring more.
Mermet can be cold. A 5 mm wetsuit isn’t unusual, and plenty of divers choose dry suits, particularly when they’re planning deeper dives.
This weekend was a little different.
Saturday’s temperature climbed to approximately 102°F. Sunday provided what felt like a generous reprieve at around 90°F, followed by a sunny Labor Day Monday at approximately 89°F.
The upper portion of the quarry was unusually warm as well. Surface temperatures had been running into the 80s, with the first noticeable thermocline around the 20- to 25-foot range.
For once, that thermocline wasn’t necessarily something to avoid.
It was air conditioning.
Divers in heavier wetsuits and dry suits had to be especially careful about overheating while gearing up. At one point, a bottle of cold water down the back of the neck qualified as excellent customer service.
Once divers descended deeper, however, Mermet reminded everyone that it was still Mermet. Temperatures dropped significantly below the thermoclines, particularly at the depths used for Deep Diver training.
Warm at the surface does not mean warm at depth.
Mother Nature likes layers too.
BS Visibility and AS Visibility
Visibility throughout the weekend was good, particularly at depth, but Saturday was busy. Very busy.
All of Mermet’s pavilions were booked, with multiple groups and plenty of students in the water.
Which brings us to a highly technical scuba term:
BS visibility and AS visibility.
Before Students.
After Students.
Any instructor—or anyone who has ever followed a group of students across a silty bottom—knows exactly what that means.
As more divers entered the water throughout Saturday, visibility naturally dropped in some of the shallower, heavily used areas. Even so, conditions remained good, and visibility generally improved as divers moved deeper.
There’s a Lot More Down There Than an Airplane
The 727 may get most of the attention, but it is far from the only reason to explore Mermet.
Over the years, more and more attractions have been added underwater. Divers can find boats, Cessna airplanes, a motorcycle, an ambulance, a semi truck, a school bus, a coal car, and plenty of other things scattered throughout the quarry.
There are also some slightly less conventional forms of underwater entertainment.
Want to play Connect Four underwater?
You can.
Want to sit in a bathtub and attempt to juggle bowling balls?
Apparently, someone decided divers needed that option too.
And when nobody feels particularly ambitious, there are always the fish.
Cheap hot dogs have traditionally been the snack of choice for feeding Mermet’s fish. Someone this weekend claimed they really like tuna.
Whether that was legitimate fish-feeding advice or somebody messing with us remains unresolved.
Further research may be necessary.
Dive Trips Aren’t Just About the Dives
Of course, some of the best parts of a dive weekend happen above water.
Gear stayed together. Stories got told. People wandered from pavilion to pavilion talking, laughing and generally harassing one another in the affectionate way people do when they’ve spent enough time together.
There were small-group dinners around Metropolis, with Fat Edd’s becoming a stop for quite a few people at some point during the weekend.
There were cookies. So many cookies.
And, because no dive trip would be complete without at least a little chaos, there were divers who forgot to turn on their air, someone attempted to descend without a regulator where a regulator really should have been, and there was even a Saturday-morning vehicle rescue when a set of brakes decided they were finished participating in the weekend.
Jared, Becca, and Deb came to the rescue.
Because sometimes dive buddies help you underwater. Sometimes they come get you when your truck doesn’t want to make it to the dive site.
More Than a Weekend Underwater
Mermet Springs is a great place to train. It’s a great place to add dives to the logbook. It’s a great place to explore a movie-famous airplane, practice buoyancy, dive deep, play underwater games, or sit quietly and feed fish hot dogs.
But that’s only part of why Extreme Sports keeps returning.
Trips like this give new divers a chance to become more comfortable. They give experienced divers an excuse to get back in the water. They allow students to move into the next phase of their training, and give future Divemasters opportunities to develop their leadership skills.
Most importantly, they give everyone time together.
By the end of a weekend, it’s less like 29 people who happened to choose the same dive destination and more like a family reunion—with scuba tanks.
There may be classes going on. Someone may be gearing up for the 727 while someone else is headed out simply to explore. Junior divers may be playing underwater Connect Four while another group prepares to descend through a thermocline into much colder water.
Topside, someone is probably eating.
Someone is probably giving somebody else a hard time.
And, apparently, someone may have brought eight different kinds of chocolate chip cookies across two states for an unnecessary experiment.
That’s an Extreme Sports Scuba dive trip.
Congratulations again to everyone who earned certifications, worked toward new goals, helped students, hauled gear, provided rescue transportation, took pictures, shared food, told stories and simply showed up to dive.
Mermet Springs, we’ll see you again.
