Thal's Dive Stories

[thalassamania]

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 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?