Enviro-Culture Freshwater Testimonials
Take A Dive Into The Deep
It sits under 50 feet of water in the Sparks Marina. Those who’ve ventured down to see it say it sneaks up on you, appearing suddenly out of the green gloom, or knocking you on the kneecap before you’ve seen it’s there.
It’s the F-4 Phantom, a 63-foot long, 6-foot high fighter jet which crews dropped into the depths of the Sparks Marina three years ago on the 4th of July. Since then, it’s become one of the top attractions for scuba divers living in or visiting the area.
“It’s very cool, actually,” said Keith Chesnut, owner of Sierra Diving Center in Reno. “It’s a real popular location. When we have divers come in from out of town, a lot of times they want to go a day at Lake Tahoe, and then they want to see the F-4 in the Sparks Marina.”
Tied to an orange buoy about 100 yards off the south side of the peninsula, the plane is easy to locate, even for inexperienced divers, Chesnut said.
But seeing the plane, many say, is tougher than you might expect. The algae thriving in the Marina’s nutrient rich waters keep visibility anywhere from 15 feet to a scant two feet, and diving on the F-4 can be a challenging.
“There are times when I’ve followed that cable down, and I don’t see the plane until my knees hit it,” said Amadeo Flores, a 40-year-old Reno resident and retired police detective. “(But) it’s got some potential for just excitement because it’s challenging. More challenging that just going to (Lake Tahoe’s) Sand Harbor. You want to experience some things and challenge yourself a little bit.”
Chesnut described the dive as a slow process of exploration.
“It’s kind of eerie, initially,” Chesnut said. “As you approach the plane, you can begin to make out the shadow and the shape. And once you’re down on the airplane, you stay relatively close to it and you just swim around and explore. It’s got bars over it so divers can’t climb in the cockpit, but you can still see all the controls inside. As you swim underneath it you can see all the landing gear. And you can swim in the engine bay on the back end. It’s got enough room in there for one to two divers.”
The plane, built in 1964, flew missions in southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. The F-4 arrived in Reno in 1975, and became part of the Nevada Air National Guard’s fleet until a 1988 crash landing, which damaged it beyond repair.
Sparks resident Kevin Schwartz acquired the plane in 2000, with the intention of starting a scuba park at the Sparks Marina — the only lake in the Truckee Meadows appropriate for open water scuba diving.
“As divers we wanted someplace to dive around here that would be kind of fun, and I thought an airplane at the bottom of a local body of water would be fun,” Schwartz said.
Originally, Schwartz planned to drop the plane in the Marina in September but agreed to postpone the event to coincide with the first Star Spangled Sparks celebration in July 2001, when the plane was lowered into the water with an Nevada Amy National Guard Chinook helicopter.
“People stopped dead on the highway to watch,” said Schwartz, who spent three years and roughly $10,000 acquiring, cleaning and transporting the plane. “To me it was extremely worth it. I think that from the diver’s community, from that standpoint, it’s just been very valuable. It creates something to talk about and dive on. It’s amazing to me to this day, I’ll be talking to someone at the grocery store or at the bank and they find out I’m a diver and they’ll ask if I’ve ever dove the F-4. It’s been tremendous.”
Hans Baumann, a diver from Truckee, said for him, the F-4 has a mysterious, magnetic quality.
“It’s hard to really explain other than that I’ve done over 50 dives in the Marina now over the last year and a half,” said the 39-year-old truck driver. “I’ll take people out there at any time when I’m available to do it. I keep going back to it. To me, it’s a challenge.”
The challenge, most divers agree, is tied to the low visibility. But Chesnut said visibility in the Marina is actually quite typical for the area.
“It’s not necessarily poor visibility by mountain lake diving standards,” he said. “When you talk about high mountain lakes, typical visibility would be between 5 and 15 feet, and that’s pretty much what we see out at the Sparks Marina.”
Nonetheless, Sparks parks officials have been busy trying to improve the Marina’s clarity the past two months, spraying the water with Enviro-Culture — a safe, organic bacteria designed to eat bird feces, algae, and other organic matter that clouds the water.
“You lessen the algae growth, you improve the water clarity, and it increases the dissolved oxygen in the water which makes it a much better environment for fish,” said Brian Bessette, operations superintendent for the Parks and Recreation Department.
Bessette said parks crews made two applications of the substance, first in April then in May, adding 500 gallons of Enviro-culture each time. The cost of each application is about $1,000, and Bessette said it will be applied six times each summer.
“I’ll tell you, we’ve already had people saying the water is much clearer,” Bessette said. Tests by park officials show the substance has already drastically reduced organisms in the lake, which was already quite clean by most standards.
Schwartz said if the Marina clears up enough, he plans to acquire additional items to submerge in the lake, including a school bus, a sailboat, and a railcar.
Bessette said ever since the F-4 was placed in the Marina, the Parks and Recreation Department has turned down numerous suggestions for additional submergible items.
“I was deluged with offers from people of things to put under the water, (but) we’ve kind of backed up a little on that,” Bessette said. “We would weigh each and every item very carefully. You don’t want it to become a dumping