Headlong (part 2)

Diving Headlong - a collection of scuba diving misadventures

During my open water certification dive at Sherkston Quarry, my dive buddy was Spencer Fox.  Visibility in the quarry was notoriously poor, averaging between 4 and 10 feet and necessitating a buddy line at times.  I experienced quite auspicious beginnings when strange noises in my regulator prompted an initial twinge of panic.  Rotating 360+ degrees revealed only filtered green spookiness and no buddy, caused me to finally flee for the surface.  Upon re-grouping and resuming the dive, I got a little too close to my buddy and had my mask kicked off my face in return for this miscalculation.  Continuing to breathe, however, I replaced the mask and purged it of water, thanks to the effectiveness of rehearsed pool training.  I again caught up with my buddy about 15 feet below me.  Bright red eyeballs from mask-squeeze would be his take-home for the day - a lesson in the uselessness of panic would be mine.

Similarly, getting too close to my buddy on another occasion resulted in the regulator being kicked out of my mouth.  We were at 85 feet and inside the engine room of the Wolfe Islander II, not far from Kingston, Ontario.  Rather comfortable with it at the time, I left the regulator out long enough in an attempt to confront Trevor with the evidence.  I should probably just leave it in and breathe.  Our ascent found the small power boat we had moored to the buoy line well on its way to swamping.  A strong wind had whipped up, pushing 2 foot waves to 4 foot waves in the short period we had been submerged.  Stuart and I bailed while Trevor made for the shore.  We barely avoided becoming a side-attraction to the Wolfe Islander II wreck, and subsequently motored the remaining half-mile or so back to the boat launch where we had left the trailer.

Gotta watch out for the sea life too - while I have seen perhaps hundreds of sharks and dozens of moray eels, these creatures typically don't bother you if you don't bother them.  It's the little guys you sometimes have to watch out for the most.  In Hawaii as a teen I watched our diver master 'feed the fish' by breaking apart a sea urchin.  When I tried to replicate this demonstration myself, a sea urchin spike got lodged in my thumb - ached for days.

A strange jelly fish encounter left similar, lingering reminder of the experience.  I had the incredible good fortune to dive with Ron and Valerie Taylor off Heron Island in Australia in the 90's (Ron and Valerie consulted on the film Jaws, and were featured in many nature magazines including the National Geographic).  Floating at 15 feet for a 3 minute decompression stop I began to feel an odd tingling sensation around my mouth which quickly turned into a burning sensation and bewilderment at what could be causing this.  Removing my regulator revealed an errant strand of tentacle wrapped around regulator mouthpiece; as I brushed it off and it floated away the burning continued to increase as the barbed nematocysts did their thing pumping venom into my skin.  For the next two days I wore a burning clown-face in the form of a thin red line ringing my mouth.

Sean and Cindy, St. Maarten, February 2006

Some can dive without aids to navigation, and many do dive without even a basic understanding of what proper navigation is or how to apply it.  Except for 'which way is up', there can often be real potential for losing one's bearings.  You might get lucky and find the anchor; you might not have a current drawing you away from the shore or vessel you jumped from; you might also end up swimming a long way for the boat or even lost bobbing between successive swells.  Cindy and I were on a charter dive off San Clemente island when I discovered that my compass had stopped working - proper and frequent maintenance of gear is a number one priority (another re-learned lesson - check!).  We proceeded with our dive and had planned to surface within easy sight/swim of the boat.  When we did surface, we were somewhat further away than hoped, but still not many hundreds of yards.  The kelp beds ringing parts of the island can extend 75 feet from the bottom and spread out in thick, stringy clumps at the surface.  It was in the middle of one of the beds that we had surfaced, and remaining there risked entanglement.  But without a compass and accurate bearing it is virtually impossible to swim in a straight line under water.  We had to surface multiple times in order to take a mental bearing on the dive boat, only to resurface pointing 90 degrees off our intended path.  The effect is similar to, but much more magnified than trying to walk a straight line in the woods; the surge, currents and moving kelp stalks defy ones ability to swim a straight line.  Swimming on the surface, however, was fraught with greater risk of entanglement in the kelp.  We were finally able to get from the most dense part of the kelp bed, and closer to the boat, reaching it quite exhausted.  I have not been diving without a functioning compass since.

Did I mention proper maintenance of dive gear?  Yes, indeed.  This came into play again during another wreck dive, this time the 366 ft Yukon destroyer escort in 100 feet of water off San Diego's Mission Bay.  The descent and first 10 or so minutes of the dive went as planned, until my buddy began to experience buoyancy problems.  No matter how much air he put into his BCD (buoyancy compensator device), he was unable to maintain neutral buoyancy, and it seemed to be getting worse.  While attempting to accommodate the problem, his weightbelt loosened and he grabbed it just before it sank to some dark recess of the wreck.  Was he going to sink to the bottom or rocket to the surface?  Deck railing for a hand-hold amounted to the difference at the moment.  Trying to understand his problem and calm the rising fear in his eyes, I grabbed the belt and was in the process of buckling it on when the dive master came by.  Just a pretty lil' thing of small stature and casual demeanor, she quickly snapped to in-charge-mode and damn, she was good!  Losing her camera in the process, she helped to stabilize the situation and see that we were sufficiently capable of returning to the surface by the buoy line.  It would later be identified as a tear in the BCD inner liner that caused it to fill with water as much as it filled with air.  Improper cleaning and failure to stow partially inflated were to blame.  A now-useless piece of equipment tossed onto the pile of gear-maintenance reminders.

There are other stories; maybe I'll add them sometime.  Exhausted diver rescue off Catalina; fin strap breaks; regulator malfunction - and these can literally freeze.  In an unrelated parting word of warning: do not remain down-wind of Trevor when he begins to peel off a neoprene suit after a dive.  Trust me.