I recently had the opportunity to dive Mammoth Scuba Park (map, photos) in Clute, TX. The dive park is located behind a Hydrosports Scuba shop (a full service dive shop that includes air fills and rental gear) and is an abandoned clay pit. The pit is (has) filled due to the water table in the area. The owners are going to great lengths to make the park as nice as possible including placing many items of interest in the lake, taking steps to improve visibility as much as possible and populating the lake with flora and fauna. Darin and I dove the park after the grand opening but off hours and pretty much had the place to our selves. We dove from around the mid part of the lake (the shallowest as it turns out). After prepping our gear we entered the water for a 135 min dive and averaged 28′ or so.

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During that time we saw many of the attractions in the central area, including the box truck, the pumping truck, the cave system (pipe berried to go down to ~60′), the steeple, the tire mountain, the telephone pole forest, several boats and King Kong. Visibility was not great (on part with Lake Travis) but the owners are taking steps to improve the visibility. One interesting thing we noticed was “holes” where the depth was below 30′ there was a severe thermocline (or it felt that way going from 85F+ water to something closer to 70F water, maybe colder) and visibility would drop to next to nothing (changes in visibility often accompany thermoclines).

The facility does not allow solo diving without a solo certification. The only recognized solo certification is the TDI certification. Bring a buddy or you can’t dive!

In any case, it was an excellent dive. The fact that it is only an hour from my house (1.5 hours from down town Houston) makes it even more appealing. I’ve been looking for a dive site I can just sneak away to to get wet. This looks like I’ll be diving there more and more often.