Thursday, May 22, 2014

Lack of Brine Shrimp

This time last year the bottom of the Great Salt Lake was visible.  At this time however, it's still not visible.  Visibility is limited to about 3 feet.  I suspect this is due to the lack of brine shrimp.  I recall there being roughly dozens of brine shrimp per square foot of GSL water.  This morning I stopped during my swim to take an estimate, and right now it's about about 6 brine shrimp per square foot.  I don't know why that is the case, but it's disturbing.  The lack of brine shrimp is why I'm blaming the lack of visibility.  The brine shrimp when they're thriving and feasting on the microbes in the water, then it clears things up.

I just talked to Ron (a big time GSL sailer and a coworker of mine), and he mentioned that the marina just cleared out the marina entrance by bringing in a big tug, "Lucin" which is typically up at Promontory Marina and it used a huge prop to blow lots of the sand out from the marina entrance to make it a little deeper.  Maybe that explains the poor visibility.  He mentioned that it would probably be a couple more weeks and then visibility would improve.

Crossing my fingers that's true.  I'm hoping that it clears up before the big race on June 7th.  Sure is nice for the swimmers to appreciate the beauty of the bottom of the lake.

This morning I met Sarah at the marina at 6:15 and she did a buoy line route while I did a horned Gridley Straight.  The water was almost glass.  There was a slight breeze, but not enough to create any type of waves, just ripples with an occasional larger one.  Beaufort scale 1.

Lots of seagulls as usual at seagull point about 600 yards Northeast of Black rock.  Fun swim.

I had a dream last night about MIMS.  I dreamt that I got there and saw that the river was literally covered in floating slabs of wood.  I dreamt that I was swimming and running into this stuff, but didn't seem to mind.  Seems like my subconscious is getting me prepared for a pounding, yet letting me know that it's not a big deal and that I can do it anyway.
Thank you inner Gords.

Total: 3 miles in 1:27



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