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thalassamania
02-10-2008, 05:59 AM
I'm reworking a bunch of my old stories for various reasons. Most have been posted elsewhere in earlier form. If y'all want I'll post more of them here later.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, when I was a student at U.C. Berkeley, it was considered by many to be the world's foremost representation of the impersonal megaversity. But within Research Diving Program (http://www.ucdivers.com/) I found an oasis of incredibly diverse and honest people who truly loved and cared for each other. Our shared experiences had profoundly deep effects on us all.

There were many unique aspects to the Research Diving Program at Cal, it was very much a 1960s version of today’s DIR diving, highly refined and standardized training and procedures, extensive and exacting training and identical gear … most of it black. Sound familiar?

It was all there on the equipment list … you see, there was a equipment list, and you needed to show up the first night of class with a full set of gear. Some of the stuff was rather standard and easy to get, other pieces were rarer and in short supply making the weeks before the first night of class into a dive gear scavenger hunt that extended from Monterey to Napa and Sacramento to the Pacific Coast.

The recommended suit was a Rubatex GN-231N, skin out, farmer-john, attached hood, no zipper custom suit. You also needed the parts to make a neoprene instrument cuff for your left forearm that held an Ikelight compass, a Sears Waterproof Sports watch and a capillary depth gauge. Steel ’72s with a K-Valve and a plastic backpack that you learned to modify with two stainless steel twistlocks on the left shoulder were in vogue. Also de regur as was a U.S. Divers BC-2 (also known as a BC-707) with CO2 detonators as well as a weight belt with a wire buckle. You had to have a Dacor 300 regulator, when you saw another Berkeley Diver, you knew who they were. Well … you knew most of them. Then there were the odd-jobs ... like me.

I was already a diver, at least I thought of my self that way. I’d been diving for more than 10 years, and had made about 1500 dives. That’s about the point in every diver’s career that they know everything there is to know. Well, knowing everything about diving that there is to know is fine, but back then, when diving was dangerous and sex was safe, it was much more important to look sharp, and I looked sharp.

Besides being 6’2” and a rather muscular 195 lbs., with a strong, clean shaven, cleft chin and thick brown curly hair that fell down to my shoulders (back then, I'm still 6'2" today ... but that's the only similarlity), my gear was really gnarly. An orange U.S. Divers Taskmaster suit, was topped with a matching hooded vest, I had a shiny aluminum ’72, a Swimaster MR-12 regulator with (gasp) an “octopus”, and lots of ScubaPro: a triple pane mask, Jetfins, JetSnorkel, CamPack, five finger gloves, and that weightbelt with the blue stripe and the bungies in the back.

Ah … there were my instruments, only the hippest gauges would do, ScubaPro Helium Depth Gauge, Suunto SK-6 Compass and my pride and joy, a U.S. Divers, orange face DOXA 300. And the pièce de résistance, my Fenzy. Yeah, I was as cool a diver as they had ever seen , and poor Ken McKaye had to deal with me.

Exactly how Ken turned that refugee from the Thunderball set into a committed Berkeley Research Diver is a story for another time, suffice it to say that through a combination of Ken’s incredible skill as a diver, patience as an instructor and brilliance as a researcher I found myself, within just a few months, looking exactly like every other Berkeley Diver (well … almost … I did continue to use my gnarly gauges, installed, of course, on a regulation U.C. diver gauntlet).

Part of how Ken accomplished this almost miraculous transformation involved the use of some truly unique training exercises like the free diving doff-and-don (in the end we were doing it mask, knife, fins and weightbelt), the doff-and-don buddy-breathe, the circuit swim and the Edward’s Field Crawl. But one exercise that is indelibly engraved in the memory of every Berkeley Diver is the hand signal test. It is as much a part of being a Berkeley Diver as the suit, the surf mat or the guantlet. And trust me, unlike the sixties, if you were there … you’d remember. You stand with your buddy, nervously on the pool deck, John Osterello gesticulates wildly at you and he stands there, judgment personified, belittling your intelligence and insulting your progenitors as a result of your inability to translate his arm and hand motions into something intelligible. Well, hand signals are important … but they don't always work the way you intend.

I rolled out of bed early on a Friday morning. It had rained the night before but the sky was now clear and the evaporative cooling chill of the early morning remained on the streets of Berkeley, California. We loaded our dive gear and the Zodiac into a beige minimalist university van, that provide little creature comfort, and nowhere near enough heat to offset the chill, I got into the van and snuggled into my blue North Face expedition parka. Lloyd Austin, Ken McKaye, and Carole Kane were in the van with me and we were headed to Pt. Lobos to go diving … er, to work on our depth certifications. This was going to be a great day. I had finally had in my possession a properly fitting 3/8" inch (today you’d call that a strong 9 mil) wet suit from Harvey's (I'd only sent it back three times). Lloyd and Ken swore that now I'd be warm. The sun rose up over the east foothills as we headed south on the Nimitz (the road that today you hear preciously called, in imitation of USC communications grads who have more skill with a blow drier than the English Language, “THE 880“). By the time we reached 101 South in San Jose, the air had warmed and the ride down had settled down into the usual drowsy morning, interrupted only by a stop for breakfast in Gilroy at the Busy Bee diner.

What can be more beautiful then Pt. Lobos at 09:00, even on a foggy day? There was a flurry of activity getting the Zodiac set up and putting gear together. Lloyd and Carole took the Zodiac over to Children's Garden while Ken and I set out for Bluefish Cove on our surf mats. After our dive we sat on the picnic bench at Whaler's Cove and watched the chipmunks scurry in and out of the rocks. Lloyd asked how my new suit was. I answered that it was so warm that, for the first time, I noticed that my hands were really cold. Lloyd and Ken told me that what I needed to do now was get rid of those fancy dress five finger ScubaPro dress gloves and get a pair of properly masculine three finger mitts. We drove into town to fill our tanks at the Aquarius Dive Shop and I sacrificed next week's food money to buy a pair of manly three finger mitts.
As I pulled my new mitts on for the afternoon dive, I considered the effects of having just three digits on each hand, an opposable thumb, a forefinger and the remaining fingers welded together into a single rather ungainly appendage. I asked Lloyd and Ken what the hand signal for a shark would be, since when wearing these mitts I could no longer make the “peace sign” that was the traditional “dangerous fish” signal. They looked at each other, chuckled, shrugged, and inquired, “when was the last time you saw a shark at Lobos?” We all agreed we'd never seen a shark there, so it wasn't a problem.

We put all our gear, except our fins on and got into the Zodiac at the boat ramp. Lloyd piloted the Zodiac over to the far kelp bed in Bluefish Cove. Ken and I rolled out backward, gave Lloyd an “okay” signal and watched as Lloyd and Carole motored away toward their dive site, over at the Cone Shell Wall.

The foggy damp gray atmosphere had transmogrified into one of those spectacular central coast days: blue sky, bright sun and 60-foot plus visibility. On a day like this Bluefish Cove is perhaps the most spectacular dive site on Earth. The touristas can have Palancar Reef, and the wall on Cayman Brac, and Rosh Muhammad and Heron Island, all that frantic motion and the frenetic neon of an underwater Times Square. Give me a kelp forest at Pt. Lobos. Subtle deep greens broken by shafts of light that look like a Sunday School painting. That's for me. We hovered above the reddish-purple encrusted rocks, Ken with his slate and I with my new gloves. Our objective was for me to learn the names of the fish found in this aqueous forest. Ken was patient enough to offer to teach me. He would point to a fish and write recondite Greek or Latin nomenclature on the slate. I'd read what he wrote and try to commit it to memory.

After about twenty minutes we'd worked our way up from sixty to forty feet. Ken pointed to a Cabezon, in among the rocks on the bottom, and wrote, “Scorpaenichthys marmoratus.” I was looking at the slate and trying to wrap my tongue around that phrase when Ken tapped me on the shoulder. He held his right hand up. He clenched his last three fingers into his palm, he raised both his thumb and pointer finger. Exactly the gesture you'd make when you told someone, “it was small . . . you know about an inch . . . this big.” I started looking around the bottom for a little, Scorpaenichthys marmoratus. I could not find one.

Ken smacked me on the shoulder insistently. He repeated the gesture. I shrugged. I was mildly annoyed. I knew what he was saying, I was trying to find the damn fish. Ken poked at me again. I held up a clenched fist to tell him to wait. Ken wrenched me around and made a gesture with his right hand with all three of the fingers of his right mit repeatedly contracting into his palm and flexing out again. Suddenly he shifted mode and pointed up at forty-five degrees. I pivoted my head and raised my eyes. The biggest blue shark I had ever seen was coming straight at me! At slightly more than arm’s length it pitched up, went over us and then languidly disappeared at the limit of visibility.

Thump, thump … thump, thump … I could hear my heart. Now I knew exactly what Ken had meant. We dropped to the bottom, knelling, back to back amongst the bryozoan encrusted rocks, scanning the water above. I pulled my pressure gauge out of the small of my back where I liked to keep it under my tank. A thousand PSI ... about half a tank. that would not last me ten minutes unless I calmed down. I took three slow deep cleansing breaths. Phew, there we go … okay … now maybe I had thirty minutes at that depth. How long should we wait?

I caught Ken’s eye, shrugged and pointed to my Doxa. Ken shrugged. There had always been a bit of … well … resentment, perhaps even the feeling that I was guilty of lèse-majesté when it came to this watch. Lloyd had a Rolex, but then that was appropriate; after all he was the Diving Safety Officer. I had (and still have) this beautiful Doxa, but I was just a lowly undergrad. All the other divers in the program had “sports watches” from Sears that went for about thirty bucks with a one year guarantee. When the watch eventually flooded, they’d get the paperwork from a new diver and that would result in a replacement. Anyway, Ken tried to “flip me the bird,” at least that’s how I interpreted the upward jerk of his right forearm and the raised three last digits.

Then we heard the rackety whine of an outboard motor. The noise stopped. We looked at each other, simultaneously shrugged, each raised a thumb and nodded. Back-to-back \, circling slowly we surfaced. Lloyd and Carole were right there in the boat. Normally we’d swim up to the boat and put our rig and weight belt on lines that hung off the side, to be recovered later. Not so this time. Ken shouted, “shark!” and we each went through that moment of tension and stomach butterflies that occurs whenever your head leaves the water and you clamor into a boat knowing that unseen a large toothy creature glides beneath you.

That was the first time I'd ever committed the heresy of entering the zodiac with my tank and weight belt in place. On the way back in I asked Lloyd and Ken, once again, what the “3-finger mitt” signal for “dangerous fish” was. They laughed and told me not to worry about it, I'd never see another.

Supper at Le Coq D'Or was très magific. Lloyd had speared a pair of large Lings (outside the reserve of course) and they were lightly poached in wine with a little fennel. We drank a really amazing Fumé Blanc and chuckled over the day's contretemps. Back at the motel we got a good night's rest, we had a class to teach on Saturday.

The morning session at San Jose Creek went well. After the dive, as was my tradition, I raced my team of students into the beach on our surf mats. Louis Meyer almost beat me. Our deal was that the day he did beat me to the beach I'd buy the pizza on the way home. But I had the strength of desperation with on my side that morning, I had just bought my new three finger mitts … I could not afford to lose!

While the students went into town to fill their tanks, Lloyd and Gaye Little were going out to Gaye's study site in the Zodiac. So Ken and I, and a diver whom I'll call Frank, asked Lloyd for a lift so we could do some spearfishing (remember, no food money for that week). Frank had a full tank and Ken and I each had about half a tank.

Frank, Ken and I descended into fifty feet of water over the rocky canyons off San Jose Creek. It was Ling Cod city. I shot three. They’re a delicious, but truly stupid, fish. I just stacked them up on my spear. Ken tapped me on the shoulder and slashed his hand across his throat. He pointed to Frank, pointed to me and banged his fists together. He pointed to himself and raised his thumb. I gave him an okay. Ken started up and I went after Frank.

Frank was the only University of California diver I knew (not Berkeley might I add, but Santa Barbara) who was not a perfect buddy, but he was a full professor and a very strong swimmer. We were at about fifty feet, he was out ahead and I was having trouble gaining on him. Over the next few minutes he managed to stay about twenty feet in front of me, just at the limit of visibility. As I almost caught him, I feet a tap on my shoulder.

There’s Ken, snorkel in place, pointing to his mouth. I gave him my regulator. Two breaths, I took two, Ken took two. Ken's hand began to gyrate, with sinking stomach and rising respiration rate I recognized the motions from the previous day.

I reviewed the situation as I slowed my breathing: we’re at fifty feet, Ken has an empty tank, we’re buddy-breathing. I’ve got a spear with three dead Lings on it. Frank’s once again disappearing at the limit of visibility, and there’s a shark in the area! I quickly went over my options and choked back an initial impulse to give Ken my spear with the dead fish and my tank, make a free ascent and then tread air all the way back to the beach.

Ken and I continued to buddy breathe, two breaths for me, two for him, two for me, two for him. I give Ken the spear with the bloody fish, pointed to myself, motioned in the direction Frank had gone and banged my fists together. I pointed at Ken and raised my thumb. Ken nodded, flashed the okay and started up. I went after Frank.

It took me a couple of minutes to catch up with him. When I did, I yanked on his fin. He kept going. I tapped him on the shoulder. He held up a fist ... “Wait!” I tapped him on the shoulder again, he started to swim away. I grabbed him by both upper arms and turned him toward me. Frank’s professorial displeasure was clear, he thought I wanted him to carry my goody bag, and he wanted no part of that. I made Ken's “inch-long” gesture of the day before with my right hand. Frank look confused. I put both my palms together and made a motion like a clam opening and closing. Frank recognized this as “chomp.”

And then he noticed that Ken was missing! Frank looked around for Ken. Sure enough no Ken ... Ken was not there! I could see Franks eyes expand to fill his Swimmaster Wideview mask as it dawned on him that Ken had been eaten by a shark.

I dragged him into a thick patch of kelp and we surfaced, back-to-back. Lloyd, Ken and Gaye were in the boat waiving at us. We flopped into the boat, a tangled mass of rubber, metal, flesh and Frank's still loaded spear gun. This was the second time, in as many days, that I had broken the cardinal rule of Lloyd’s Zodiac and boarded without first leaving my weight belt and tank on the lines that usually hung off the side of the boat.

Lloyd and Gaye had seen a blue shark at her study site, maybe 100 yards away from where we were diving. They'd returned to the zodiac and motored over to our bubbles. As they arrived Ken surfaced. Lloyd yelled to him, “There's a shark, go get them.” Ken didn't mention that he was out of air, he free dove fifty feet, down my bubbles and from there we join the story as previously related.

It’s now thirty-odd years later, and what I want to know now is do we have a workable hand signal for dangerous fish when you’re wearing three finger gloves? If we don't, don't worry about it. It's a hand signal you'll never need. When did you last see a shark at Pt. Lobos?

littleleemur
02-10-2008, 06:22 AM
Besides being 6’2” and a rather muscular 195 lbs., with a strong, clean shaven, cleft chin and thick brown curly hair that fell down to my shoulders, my gear was really gnarly.

You're Fabio! :eek:

J/K :D

Nice story. Looking forward to be reading more :)

thalassamania
02-10-2008, 06:28 AM
You're Fabio! :eek:

J/K :D

Nice story. Looking forward to be reading more :)Naw ... he's shorter, his hair is straight and much longer, and he speaks with a foreign accent.

The Publisher
02-10-2008, 04:37 PM
Great article Thal! What great gear memories. The good news is the hetero sex is still as safe today as it was back then in spite of what the media misleads.

You have me beat by two years on the certification thing. I too had the revolutionary U.S. divers triple pane mask, and Dacor backpack. I couldn't afford the At-Pac and fiberglass fairing they tried to sell me, nor could I afford the honking ScubaPro regulator or Fenzy horse collar BC, so I settle for a new England Divers branded horse collar BC. But i did something nobody else in the class who bought gear did-I bought it with an added power inflator instead of what everyone else did. Boy was I the cock of the walk with a power inflator.

But what really made my peacock feathers spread was my resistance to buying a ScubaPro wristmount deco computer, because I managed to get the updated version of it from the manufacturer, SOS.

Keep those stories coming, we're glued to our screens! :)

http://www.posc.com.hk/images/Vintage/SOS%20computer.jpg
http://www.posc.com.hk/images/Vintage/aqualung%20wraparoung.jpg

hbh2oguard
02-11-2008, 05:20 AM
When did you last see a shark at Pt. Lobos?


How about last Friday, just a little guy. So much of the UC diving(SC not Cal) is still very simular today. It's amazing how it doesn't change too much. I'm one of those divers that "stand out" I don't have the generic gear everyone has since I didn't take basic through the school where they tell you to go to this dive shop and buy this package.

thalassamania
02-11-2008, 06:07 AM
http://octopus.gma.org/undersea_landscapes/images/maps_Cashes.jpg

Underwater science is usually rather dull. Hours spent collecting data. Data that’s not particularly interesting in and of itself. Data that becomes interesting only when conjoined with similar data from other sites and times.

While the media stars of underwater science like Sylvia Earle and Bob Ballard reach out from the pages of a glossy book or beckon from a tightly edited video production, crisp and seductive images that intersect at a precise and meaningful conclusion right there on the last page or in the last minute. Real life is not like that, at least not very often. It’s repetitious … hour after hour, cold, uncomfortable, usually strenuous, occasionally dangerous. But every once in a while, every once in a long while, there’s magic in the water. The universe clicks just right and something really special happens that makes up for all that’s come before, something really special … really, really special. This was one of those times.

It had been a hectic and eventful trip so far. I’d staged a close escape from one of those classic binds, having to be two places at once. I had to go out to sea on a research cruise, the ship was leaving the dock with the morning tide, but on the same day I was scheduled to deliver a paper at the annual American Academy of Underwater Sciences meeting.

My Director, Jim Griffin, insisted that both things get done, he's like that, used to be in charge of the Thor-Agena Booster Program for North American Rockwell and firmly believed in that NASA motto of, “the difficult we do immediately, the impossible takes only slightly longer” Our ship was leaving Woods Hole and transiting the Cape Cod Canal on its way to the Gulf of Maine. If my talk was moved to the first slot in the morning and there were no hitches, I could be back in time to meet the ship at the north end of the canal just after sundown. I were late … Plan B goes into effect, a night-time, “casualty evacuation drill” with a USCG helo a good friend flew out of Otis. That’d be the cover for my Plan-B ride out.

On Friday I stowed the last of my gear on the ship and I caught an oh-dark-thirty flight out of Boston down to Florida. A quick cab ride and I was at the podium going over the slides that illustrated a paper I’d coauthored with Rich Pyle of the University of Hawaii on the use of mixed gas, open circuit scuba down to five hundred feet. Twenty minutes of talk, ten minutes of questions, I shook the moderator’s hand as I shoved my Certificate of Appreciation into my case and scooted out the back to a waiting cab that took me back to the airport. I ran for a plane back to Boston and on the plane I switched my tan Sunday-go-to-meeting suit for a pair of 501s, a black U. C. Berkeley sweatshirt and my topsiders.

My work study student Dave Sipperly was waiting for me curbside at Logan. I threw my leather flight bag and black Halliburton, the one covered with dive stickers, on the back seat, jumped in front and off we sped; south toward the Cape. Down Highway 3 to 6a, over the bridge at Sagamore and left onto Tupper Road, left again to Town Neck Road and one more left onto Coast Guard Road. There, at the north end of the canal was a small U.S. Coast Guard station. We pulled in past the whitewashed rocks.

I got out, retrieving my Zero-Halliburton from the rear seat., pulled a set of CANDIVE coveralls from the top of my flight bag, which Dave would drop at my office. We’d made good time, the ship was not due for a good half hour and Plan-B could go by the board.

I pulled my ICOM M5 out, slid a charged battery pack on the bottom and keyed it to 16. “Whiskey, Victor, Foxtrot, Quebec.” I repeated the call ship’s call sign three times and then identified myself, “This is WVFQ Port one, come in.” No response yet. I had some time to kill and the heavy humid air was cooling now as the sun dipped below the land west of the canal. I shivered slightly and went into the Coast Guard station.

I found the O.D. and explained that I was meeting a boat out of the Hole, and that it would heave-to outside the north end of the canal and send a Zodiac for me. The Coasties seemed happy to have something to break their routine; they offered up a mug of hot coffee and asked if I wanted to use their longer range base station to call the ship. The O.D. offered to save us time and confusion by running me out in their rescue boat.

I could see the ship in the canal. I pulled on the bright orange coveralls that Jim English, CANDIVE's Operations Supervisor gave me when we’d worked with the Deep Rover submersible at the Caribbean Marine Research Center during Sylvia Earle's record dive the year before (but that’s a story for another time). We went down to the dock, hopped into an overpowered hard bottom inflatable and sped out toward the oncoming ship, blue lights flashing and sirens screaming. We screemed past the ship, starboard to starboard, headed in opposite directions, came about in a tight turn to port and then pulled up along side the moving and much larger vessel. At about eight knots our boat slid smoothly over to the Jacob’s ladder hanging amidships on the starboard rail. When the Coastguardsman shouted, “Go!” I leaped from the port gunwale of the RIB, out across the black chasm and grabbed on to the Jacob’s ladder. The small craft veered off to starboard, throttled back and then came back up along side of me. I gripped a treadle with my left hand and leaned out. A Coastguardsmen handed my case up to me. I passed the case up over the rail to a fellow Explorers Club member who was making the cruse with us and clambered aboard. Not exactly the way I usually start a cruise, I was really having fun with “action movie” aspects of the situation.

Supper was still on in the mess. I had a meal and then we all got to work. The compressor van had to be hooked to ship’s power and run. The air had to analyzed and the bank brought up to pressure. Filling whips needed to set up at the waist and a 10,000 PSI Kevlar line run from the compressor up on the O1 deck down to the filling station. All our gear for the next day’s dive needed to be unpacked and readied. Contact with Offshore Medical Services had to made and communications with our contingency helicopter evacuation facility needed to be tested. With everything done, I rolled into my rack about 22:00 hrs and was out like a light.

Eight bells. I got up, showered, pulled on my coveralls and went up to get some chow. No one else from the science party was up yet. I had a chance to spend some time with the ship’s folks. I went over the general dive procedures with the Captain, who had stayed up beyond his usual midwatch so that we could talk. The Coxswain set up the diving Zodiac and we went over the boat and all of its gear. By now it was seven bells in the morning watch and the science party was drifting into the mess, pouring coffee and sitting down in the library and the lab.

We were due on station at Ammen Rock in the Gulf of Maine at the start of the afternoon watch. We were planning our first dive about two hours after getting on station. The science party spent the morning setting up their computers and laboratory equipment. Each of the divers got his or her gear unpacked and stowed in the wet lab that had been turned over to dive locker space. As I hung up my black NATO Viking suit one of the University of New Hampshire grad students was heard to exclaim, “Oh! No! It’s Darth’s wader’s.”

Dive procedure’s pretty straight forward. The Zodiac is on the deck. You assemble your rig and put it in the boat. You put your weight belt in the boat. Then you go and get your suit on. By the time you’re dressed in, the ship’s crane has put the loaded Zodiac and the Coxswain in the water and the crew had rigged a Jacob’s ladder over the rail. The water is about nine feet down that ladder. The Zodiac is held against the side of the ship with a bow painter and a stern line and you clamber down the ladder into the boat. You put your gear on in the boat while it motors to the site. On the way the you run through pre-dive checks and once there, back roll off the inflatable gunwales into the water.

We needed to service some current meters, tide gauges and continuous plankton recorders. The bottom’s about 110 feet. It was a great day, visibility was more than 100 feet. There were immense numbers of herring in the area for their late summer spawning. Down we went through the loosely organized school to the tide gauges. It took about ten minutes to dump the data and reset the gauges; the herring cast enough shadow that we needed our dive lights to see what we were doing.

Our tasks done we were getting ready to leave, suddenly … in the blink of an eye … there was a snap from an eerie deep green to pitch black. The lights were out! Mounds of herring pressed closely in on us. I was completely blind. No gauges, no buddy, not even my light was visible. I raised my light and pointed it straight toward my mask. The beam burst into a million mirrored reflections off the herrings’ scales. I took a slow deep breath and felt myself life off the bottom and begin to ascend. Carefully I maintained slight positive buoyancy with my lungs. I could not see my gauges. I could not judge my upward progress. My field of vision was filled with the scintillations of my light reflecting off the herring that had closed tightly in upon me.

As fast as the dark had arrived it was gone. My eyes were momentarily dazzled. I exhaled sharply and sank back into the darkness beneath me. Another breath started me up slowly. This time, just as my head broke out of the tightly packed herring school, I exhaled gently and transformed my ascent to a hover. From my chin down and out as far out as I could see, there was a black mass of squirming fish so closely packed that there was little room even for water.

I turned to my left through about three-quarters of a rotation. I could see one of my three comrades coming up out of the herring mass, perhaps twenty feet away. She ascended about ten feet and pitched back to horizontal, leveling out and smoothly neutralizing her buoyancy. A circular shaped motion of her light indicated she was fine, had seen me and inquired as to my status with that unique economy of the underwater “okay.” I brought my seemingly detached left hand up out of the darkness and responded with a circle of my light.

Suddenly, she pointed sharply to her left, her arm stiff and outstretched. I swiveled my head right, and there is one of the most incredible sights I’ve ever witnessed. Six Giant Bluefin Tuna move toward us, in formation, they pass between us. Each fish, the size of a dinner table that would seat eight, moving fast, yet without apparent effort.. They glide past, each with a huge left eye that stutters for a tiny moment as it find me for a fraction of a second and then moves on to seek it’s normal prey. We watch them almost disappear, circle to the right, and move to the other side of the herring school. They come right back by us and go left to the other side of the seamount.

The black shinny mass beneath us starts to break up, the herring resuming more normal individual distances and expanding their school upward and outward. Once again enveloping me in darkness that slowly lightens to the deep green we saw at the start of our dive. I swam up to my teammate and joined her in a hover. We moved to the down line and ascended to our deep stop. Being out of the lee of the seamount now, the current is rather stiff, we tied off with our Jon lines, waited a minute and then ascended to our 20 foot stop.

Decompression complete we signaled the Zodiac, the Coxswain waived us off as he was already heading to pick up our other two comrades at an alternate surface float. Once we were in the Zodiac everyone was talking excitedly about the Tuna, there had been a big school of them working the herring and every one of us had been blessed with a good long view of at least several.

Tigerbeach
02-11-2008, 02:56 PM
I like the way you write. It makes your stories very vivid, and real.

PinayDiver
04-15-2008, 03:10 PM
Six Giant Bluefin Tuna move toward us, in formation, they pass between us. Each fish, the size of a dinner table that would seat eight, moving fast, yet without apparent effort.. They glide past, each with a huge left eye that stutters for a tiny moment as it find me for a fraction of a second and then moves on to seek it’s normal prey. We watch them almost disappear, circle to the right, and move to the other side of the herring school. They come right back by us and go left to the other side of the seamount.


I'd gladly take all the other "dull" hours for the intervening magical (right place-right time) ones. What a natural high!

David White
05-26-2008, 02:48 PM
Fascinating stories and so well written. Your adventures should be published in a book so that many others could learn about the early days of scuba.

Peteguam
06-20-2008, 01:01 AM
Many, many years ago while in the Coast Guard we were diving on the large concrete blocks that hold the buoys in place. Basically, we'd go down and remove the shackles that held the chains so the ship could pull them up to the surface to work on or replace as necessary.

Our "normal" method of doing this was to use a large Zodiac Grand Mark something or other boat, hang our canvas tool bucket over the side and lower it to about 40', and we'd grab the bucket on the way down. The added weight of the bucket helped us get down very quickly. This is where I learned to humb loudly on the descent.

We always dove with 2 divers exiting from the opposite sides of the boat, and the "tool tender" went over the side that had the bucket line. The 3rd diver stayed in the boat and was supposed to check us before we entered and was theoretically the "safety" diver. HA!

I should mention here that our standard entry was a backroll and then an immediate "twist" to go straight down head first. To make an even faster ascent, we got used to not inhaling when we went over the side, so we were even more negative.

On this particular dive I was the tool tender, so I put on the twin steel tanks, went in at the same time as my team mate, didn't breath to go down faster, did my twist, and then on the way down I reached for my regulator cause' I was getting near the tool bucket and had to stop to get it.

Unfortunately, the reg wasn't there. I had forgotten to put it on!

So......here I was REALLY needing air, no bs about it, sort of descending at some incredible rate, and you can fill in the rest.

Thank god I was going down right beside the line, and you have absolutely NO IDEA how fast I dumped those tanks (but it was world record time), grabbed the line, and hauled my butt back up to the surface.

When I got there the "safety" diver was standing there smiling like an friggin idiot holding my reg in his hand saying something like "Gee, I think you forgot this!"

:DIf I would have had our bangstick he would have been fish food. No questions asked.

thalassamania
06-20-2008, 03:21 AM
Thanks for the story, we've all done it ... or something damned close.:)

myscubastory
02-05-2011, 10:04 PM
Nice stories - keep them coming!

deneeshbarosa
03-01-2011, 06:08 AM
These are stories of some of the things I have seen gone wrong. Some are comic & some are not. It is my hope that people will learn from these stories & become better divers.