Tales from the Logbook--A Mom Goes Adrift at Cocos Island

 

I am preparing a series of stories of people who find themselves adrift in the water.  The first story comes from an incident that occured in August 2002 whlile I was on the live aboard diveboat, the Undersea Hunter, in August 2002.  It is purely coincidental that this story appears on Mother's Day 2024.

To say that Cocos Island, Costa Rica, in the Pacific Ocean, is "isolated" is an understatement.  The island, designated  Cocos Island National Park, lies approximately 340 miles southwest of the Costa Rican mainland.  “Middle of nowhere” barely begins to describe this location. Just getting to the island required a 30+ hour boat ride from Punta Arenas on board Undersea Hunter—a top live-aboard dive boat.  I was traveling with a group organized by Brandon and Melissa Cole.  Our group claimed many of the available spaces on the boat; others took the rest.

I had prepared for the remoteness of the location by incorporating into my dive gear, in addition to the whistle permanently affixed to my buoyancy compensator, an extremely loud surface signaling device powered by the compressed air (from my tank), a bright green surface marker buoy, a flashing strobe light and a signal mirror.  I had considered a bright green dye marker pack, but the container could not sustain the pressure of deep water immersion without hemorrhaging the dye.

Diving Safety Briefing

The first predive briefing of the trip, held prior to our first dive, emphasized the conservation orientation of the operators at Cocos Island and what a privilege it was to dive in this unique marine wilderness.  (Only park personnel and scientific researchers are allowed on shore.) The “boat rules” include no intentional interaction with the fish, no feeding of fish, no manta riding, and no pulling the shark’s tail.  One would think these rules need not be explicitly stated given the conservation ethic of diving.  My observation of diver behaviors over the years is to the contrary.  When in doubt, point it out.

The second half of the briefing emphasized safety and the need to follow the diving protocols.  Divers were directed not to exceed the 130 foot depth limit.  The briefer noted that divers were responsible for knowing and not exceeding their individual “no decompression limits.  Other protocols emphasized the need to maintain visual contact with the underwater walls.  Also, since the dive spots are fairly deep, the divemaster highlighted the need to complete the safety stop for three minutes between 15 and 20 feet during ascent with one exception.

“No blue water diving!” the divemaster stressed. “If you cannot see the wall or if you are in a strong current; do not do the three-minute safety stop! Surface immediately,  inflate your bc and marker buoy and the tender will pick you up.  The current will carry you away from the island and the nearest landfall Is Antarctica.”  It is a lesson we learned later that day.

The Second Dive

Our second dive ended as a cautionary tale about diving in the current.  We planned to drop in on the southwest side of Isla Manuelita, and descend as a group along the step down slope to between 60 and 100 feet, while moving north.  The orientation to do that is to keep the wall on the right hand side. We would round the end of the islet and be picked up on the northeast side.

 

After a routine descent, the divers wedged themselves into a ledge along the wall to await the appearance of hammerhead sharks.  I ascended a bit to address an issue and found myself surrounded by fish.  I could not get back to the main part of the group as I was up current of their location. Rather than fight against the current, I continued the dive.  I had done a number of drift dives over the years so I was comfortable doing so.  The current pushed me along the wall.   I am able to maintain visual contact with the wall.  I start my ascent upon reaching my “low air” tank pressure of 700 psi. After completing the three-minute safety stop, I surface.  The panga motored over to retrieve me, as the current kept me from swimming to it.  I am the first one on board. 

Mom goes adrifting

The group had spread out along the wall, with the photographers bringing up the rear.  As the panga retrieved the divers, a diver returned onboard without her buddy.  The buddy pair, a mother-daughter duo, is missing the mom.  The daughter reports that they were in a current as they ascended.  The mom was carried out into blue water and continued with the safety stop while the daughter surfaced.  She did not see her mother surface. 

A search immediately commenced.  We cruised along the current line looking for any sign of the diver, but we found nothing.  Visibility decreased as a squall line moved into the area.  The divemaster’s initial look of optimism at finding her quickly changed to one of consternation.  He alerts the mothership by radio to dispatch the second panga to join the search as soon as their divers are recovered.  The Park Ranger from the island joined the effort from his skiff. 

Time passed.  All eyes on our panga desperately scan the water for a sign of the diver.  We searched for what seems like an eternity moving back and forth along the current line.  Suddenly, the radio sounded.  The other tender reports they have recovered the diver on the surface.  We race over to their location, relieved that the mother is OK. 

Back on board the Undersea Hunter, the divemaster asked the mother what happened.  She replied, “since it was a deep dive, I felt making the safety stop for the three full minutes was very important.”  She insisted that nothing was wrong, seemed unfazed by the whole experience and appeared oblivious to how close she came to going missing.  After a discussion that focused on the critical importance of directly surfacing when in blue water, the incident is closed.  But, the lesson stayed with us for the rest of the dives.

Tales from the Logbook--DeLong Lake Cleanup

 

Anchorage, Alaska features a number of municipal parks with freshwater lakes.  Every year in May, once the winter snow has receded, a city-wide cleanup removes the litter detritus of winter along the streets and trails.  Later that month the annual Creek Cleanup does the same for the city’s urban streams.  No equivalent organized effort exists for the lakes.

In May 2009, at the behest of the Municipal Parks and Recreation Department, Jerry and Lisa Vandergriff organized a handful of divers to remove debris from DeLong Lake near Anchorage International Airport.  The dive was an effort to show that the problem of litter in the environment did not end at water’s edge. 

On Sunday, May 10, 2009, Mother’s Day, the divers assembled on the dock at DeLong Lake at 9 am. (The dock's location is indicated by the star on the map.) The winter ice had recently cleared from the 20 acre lake surface, but the water would still be a chilly 45 degrees F.  The poor visibility at the bottom of the lake, 0 to 5 feet, meant that only very experienced divers were taking part in this “muck dive.” We donned our drysuits and tanks, grabbed our mesh goody bags to bring up whatever we found that did not belong on the bottom and entered the water.

Each diver attempted to swim in a different direction following a compass heading to cover as much as the lake as possible.  I dropped to the bottom and started swimming vaguely aware of a nearby diver on a divergent course. 

The bottom was covered in a layer of decaying organic matter from leaves and tree limbs.  I stuck my hand in the layer and was up to my elbow in the muck without finding a hard bottom.  I did not find this surprising as they are the same conditions I encountered at the nearby Little Campbell Lake.  Hovering just above the layer, I swam along a compass course as a reference in the low horizontal visibility.  

I came across scattered piles of beer cans, bottles, and other debris.  The sites seemed to be randomly scattered with no discernable pattern.  I placed the debris and my mesh bag and moved along.  Upon using half my air supply, I turned to the left, swam about 25 feet and swam a reverse compass course inbound toward the dock.  The entire dive lasted about 45 minutes with a maximum depth of 16 feet.  The deepest part of the lake is reported to be about 22 feet.

Back on the dock, I emptied a half-full goody bag, separating the mostly recyclable aluminum from the disposable trash.  Jerry explained that the scattered piles of beer cans most likely marked the sites of ice fishing huts set up on the lake during the winter.  The fishermen disposed of their cans down the hole.

While I did see river otter and muskrat around the lake, I had no encounters underwater.  Of course, with the barely-able-to-see-your-hand-in-front-of-your-face visibility, the critters could have been putting on an underwater show nearby and I would not have seen it.  Nor did I see any of the fish that are stocked in the lake which include arctic char, salmon, and trout.

I have participated in a couple of water body cleanups over the years.  DeLong Lake is probably one of the more challenging ones.

"Happy Birthday" or "The Ask"

 

“Luke has a question to ask you,” his mother prodded as the scenery whizzed by heading north from San Diego’s downtown international airport to their home in Scripps Ranch.  I was in town to see my brother and his family on the way to a weekend of diving at Catalina Island in April 2014.

“O.K.” I responded looking at my soon to turn 12-year-old nephew riding in the back seat of the SUV with his grandmother.  “Go ahead and ask!”

“I want to learn to scuba dive,” he asked shyly.  I am not sure why he didn’t ask directly.  I guess I can be a bit intimidating to people, especially youngsters. 

“O.K.,” I responded and added, “you have a birthday coming up pretty soon and I will be happy to pay for the lessons and the personal equipment you need.  Of course, we have to find a dive shop in the area that will teach someone your age.  Some places may want you to be a little older.  Let me call around while I am in town and see what’s up.”

He seemed very pleased at the prospect.

Looking back on that moment a decade later, I am very happy that Luke asked the question.  He blossomed into a competent, enthusiastic diver and one of the best buddies a diving uncle could hope for, especially when he totes my gear.  Of the dozens of people I have dived with in the 1,000+ dives over 40 years, only Brandon Cole has more dives with me. 

 We experienced a two-year pause between the “ask” and the “do.”  I guess school, water polo, and other things kept pushing the “do” further down the list of immediacies.  Then, in the spring of 2016, he messaged me, “I am taking lessons this summer in July,”  I rearranged my travel schedule to lay over a few days in San Diego on the return trip from diving in the Cayman Islands.  The stars were aligning for Luke and me to make his first dives together.

A dive-shop-induced glitch in his training schedule nearly torpedoed that plan.  Quick action, a lot of cajoling, and intervention by the shop’s chief instructor got Luke’s open water dives back on schedule. 

Luke and I made his first post-open water certification dive off the dive boat Lois Ann in the Goblin Forest near Point Loma—an area of very thick kelp beds.  Luke learned the basics of boat diving that day.  He followed and led during our two dives.  He also acquired the skill of surface crawling through the elastic spaghetti of a kelp bed without getting entangled.   We followed that dive with lunch at Hodad’s in Ocean Beach. 

Our second boat a few days later was canceled due to insufficient passengers.  But, it all worked out. Luke played his first high school varsity water polo game that day.

Over the next eight years we completed 67 more dives together.  Our shared experiences include diving with mantas and whale sharks during our first trip to the Kona coast of Hawaii, spearfishing for invasive Roi on Maui, watching dolphins stoned on puffer fish venom behaving badly on a second trip to Kona, getting skunked trying to find Giant Sea Bass at Catalina, and wreck diving while helping eradicate lionfish on the coral reefs on two trips to Roatan, Honduras.  Topside, we hiked up a volcano that violently erupted a few weeks later, took in a lot of Hawaiian culture, watched every dive movie in my collection, and enjoyed the Caribbean tropics of Roatan.  I had a lot of fun and learned a lot along the way.  I recently transcribed my dive journals of our adventures—the text runs more than 80 pages.

I think the best insight I felt I provided to Luke scientific diving maxim, “any diver can stop any dive for any reason at any time.” To that  I added Lima’s Corollary,   “if you do call a dive and your dive buddy complains, it is time to find a new buddy.”  The extent to which he took that to heart was demonstrated on a recent dive in Roatan.  Back on the boat after our first dive, I noticed I have muffled hearing in my right ear.  I talked to Luke about the potential reverse block and that I will not make the next dive.  I started to offer Luke the opportunity to join up with other divers.  Before I can complete the sentence, he says “don’t even think about suggesting it, the buddy team stays together.  You would do the same for me.”  I silently give thanks for Luke's keeping the buddy pair intact.  Such above-and-beyond loyalty is rare.

I do believe that if not for a two year hiatus in our diving because of Covid 19 restrictions, we might have reached 100 dives!  A couple of the planned-but-never-started excursions include a dive trip up the California coast to show him locations that I dived, like my “happy places” such as the Anacapa Island landing cove and “Jim’s Reef” at Refugio State Beach.  I had also sketched a road trip down the Florida Keys to replicate one that Luke’s dad and I had done in 1996.  I guess lyrics from an old ABBA song sums up these “what might have beens”

What happened to the wonderful adventures
The places I had planned for us to go?
Well, some of that we did, but most we didn't
And why, I just don't know

 

Don Canestro Brings Underwater Hockey to UCSB

 

Sometime around in the late 1980s, UC Santa Barbara students discovered underwater hockey thanks to the arrival of Don Canestro on campus.  Don was working at the Marine Science Institute as a diver and research associate in subtidal marine ecology.  Don played competitive underwater hockey and was eager to organize the sport at UCSB.  Don was a talented waterman.

Underwater hockey is played using masks, fins, and snorkels.  A protective glove for the puck hand and waterpolo caps for ear protection is recommended but we never used them.There are usually six players on a side.  Each player carries a notched stick, about 11 inches long which is used to push a brass or lead plastic coated disk (the puck) weighing about 3 pounds along the bottom of the pool into the opposing team’s goal.  The rules do not allow contact between players.  The game is very fast paced, as shown in this Youtube Video.  keep in mind, this video is shot some years after we tried the activity at UCSB!

Once a week in the evening the players would meet Don at the WWII-era campus Olympic size pool.  He would review basic strategy and tactics, emphasizing that underwater hockey is a three dimensional game.  He related that team members were constantly descending and surfacing for air while trying to advance the puck or defend against the advance.  Advancing the puck involved handing off possession or passing the puck with a flick of the stick to a team mate.  An attack by the defenders for possession of the puck was as likely to come from above as it was from head on or the sides. 

After practicing our disk passing skills for 15 or 20 minutes, we would split into teams for scrimmage.  Play occurred in about 6 to 8 feet of water with the goal on either side of the 25 yard width pool.  The puck was placed in the center and the teams lined up on either side of the pool.  In his baritone voice Don would call “Black sticks ready? White sticks ready?  At “go” the fastest swimmers would descend rapidly sprinting toward the puck.  Once engaged, the other players would take up positions.  The game metabolically intense pace saw players on both sides breaking away, surfacing, taking a quick breath, and descending to get back into the game. 

I recall one play where I descended rapidly, feeling the pressure build in my ears to take the puck from a team mate.  I was kicking furiously moving the puck toward the goal twisting to shield the puck from the opposing attackers.  I could feel my lungs ache while my brain was screaming for air.  Just as I was about to break off one of my fellow players, John, came out of nowhere and took the puck.  He accelerated like a torpedo, broke through the defenders and scored.  It was something he did consistently at every scrimmage.  It seemed like that man was everywhere! 

John's aggressiveness came as a surprise because on the surface John was so mellow and laid back almost to the point of being catatonic.  In conversation, he spoke quietly with a slight drawl and called everyone “dude” regardless of gender.  John lost a fin on a night dive at Anacapa Island while buddied up with his girlfriend and getting back on the board as though nothing happened.  But he seemed genuinely surprised that no one had a spare fin to loan him.  Whenever I saw him on campus, he was wearing the same Baja blanket hoodie over faded Levi jeans.

Don was a patient teacher who I think really wanted to build a competitive team.  Everyone seemed to have fun playing, but we tended to regularly violate the no contact rule.  Some of the plays looked more like a rugby scrum.   While the game was a natural for spearfishers who had the breath hold capacity to really play, most participants were snorkelers rather than freedivers.  After a few months the number of participants dwindled to the point that it was tough to form teams and the practices stopped. 

It would be another decade or so before underwater hockey teams really began to flourish in California and nationwide.  I recall a team called the Beltway Bottom Feeders formed in Washington, D.C. in the late 1990s.  I thought about practicing with them when I was on assignment in Washington D.C. for six months in 2000, but since I did not have a car it was nearly impossible to get to their practices at George Mason University from my apartment in Falls Church.  Similarly, just before I moved to Alaska in early 2002 more teams seemed to be forming in Southern California.  Within a few years, regional and national tournaments became regularly scheduled events. Still, even today, whenever I mention underwater hockey to people II get the strangest side glances.

As I look over a listing of the dozens of teams in the United States, it appears that many are inactive.  The sport never really established itself at UCSB after Don's attempt.  I find this surprising given the rise of the popularity of freediving over the last decade and the area's reputation as an underwater sports center.

When I first moved to Alaska, I was a member of a dive club and inherited their underwater hockey gear when the club disbanded.  It seems that a few years before they had played on scuba.  I can’t imagine what that looked like.  The wood sticks are old and deteriorating with peeling black and white paint.  The puck is uncoated brass.  The set still hangs from a pegboard in my garage, kept more for nostalgia than for any practical purpose. 

In February 2014, I travelled to the remote Alaska Bush community of Galena on the Yukon River to teach a lifeguard course to local residents.  The community has a very nice 25-yard pool that is six feet at its deepest point.  I discovered a complete and nearly new set of UWH gear along with masks, fins, and snorkels in the pool equipment bins.  I was told by Sandy Scotten, the community’s aquatic director that the school district had purchased the equipment at the request of a physical education instructor.  He planned to organize UWH games as an aquatic activity for the high school students. The activity never really got up and running as the instructor left shortly after the equipment arrived.  Teacher turnover is very high in Bush communities.  Along those lines, the Alaska Boxing Academy in 2022 came into possession of a ring, practice gloves and other equipment when a boxing fitness scheme in Haines evaporated under similar circumstances.

I learned quite recently that Don Canestro passed away on November 9, 2018.  An obituary published on the American Academy of Underwater Sciences website[1] notes that

Don was diving with his friend Dan Richards, in Cambria California. When he surfaced near their kayak, he said he did not feel well, then passed out. Dan got him to shore, performed CPR, and arranged for a helicopter to take Don to the hospital, but Don, who had survived so much before, died from cardiac complications.

It is ironic that Don, a former Dive Safety Officer, died while diving. For so many years, he was the person others relied on because of his knowledge, expertise and prowess underwater. But it is fitting that Don’s last day was spent in the ocean. Don was a dedicated waterman: he ocean swam, surfed, free-dove, scuba dived, and played underwater hockey. He could recite Navy dive tables, rebuild a regulator, and captain a research vessel. And Don knew more about the ocean and its inhabitants than most marine biologists.”

If find that to be a fitting testament to the man who taught us underwater hockey.

---

[1] Don Canestro.  No date.  No attribution.  American Academy of Underwater Sciences.  https://www.aaus.org/Shared_Content/News_and_Announcemnts/Don_Canestro.aspx accessed on January 2, 2023.

Learning Buoyancy Control

 

Many divers strive for good buoyancy control.  Doing so enables a diver in full gear to effortlessly hover and efficiently swim through the water.  The graphic on the science of buoyancy indicates a number of factors that affect buoyancy.

I know instructors who slightly “overweight” their open water students to eliminate the up and down movement that many divers experience when first learning to dive.  Divers may equate being slightly “negative” to sink with good technique.  This practice results in divers dragging themselves along the bottom colliding with terrain as they move along or expending more effort than necessary. They figure adding a bit of air to the buoyancy compensator to “compensate” for a couple of pounds of excess weight is easier. 

Learning Buoyancy

Divers learn a rudimentary buoyancy check technique in the open water class.  Wearing full gear in the water, with the regulator in their mouth, the diver vents all the air out of the buoyancy compensator device (BCD), while slowly exhaling.  A properly weighted diver will sink ever so slightly ending up with the eyes at water level and rise to the starting point when inhaling.  If the diver sinks beyond that point, weight is reduced.  If the diver cannot sink to that point, additional weight is needed. 

This approach yields an approximate neutral buoyancy weight for the gear the diver wears during the check.  Different wetsuits, tanks, and other gear have unique buoyancy characteristics.  In the early 2010’s, my gear configuration went through a series of changes, new drysuit, undergarment, and backplate and wing BCD.  Each addition required changes to the weight I used and affected my underwater streamlining.  It took a couple of dives to make everything just right. 

But Wait, There’s More

Divers can fine tune their buoyancy skills after open water certification.  Taking a so-called “peak performance buoyancy “ specialty course provides additional skills.  As the PADI course description states

Excellent buoyancy control is what defines skilled scuba divers. You've seen them underwater. They glide effortlessly, use less air and ascend, descend or hover almost as if by thought. They more easily observe aquatic life without disturbing their surroundings. You can achieve this, too. The PADI Peak Performance Buoyancy Specialty course improves the buoyancy skills you learned as a new diver and elevates them to the next level.

Why these concepts and techniques are an “add on” rather than part of the open water certification course perplexes me. 

My Experience Observing  Peak Performance Buoyancy

I did have a chance to do the in-water skills portion of the course when my dive buddy, Luke, completed the Peak Performance Buoyancy session in Kona, Hawaii in 2018.  At the time, Luke had completed about 10 dives.  I tagged along to help balance the workload between the dive guides and instructors on board the Kona Diving Company boat.  In doing so, I went through the skills as an active participant rather than as a passive observer.

Luke’s PPB required that he complete the on-line e-learning module and two open water dives.  First, our instructor, Hailey, checked that Luke was neutrally buoyant at the surface using the tried and true method described above.  For Luke, 18 pounds of weight did the trick.

Hailey then put Luke through a series of exercises.  She placed three weight pouches on the sandy bottom containing one pound, three pounds, and five pounds.  Starting with one pound, she directed him to approach and pick up the pouch without disturbing the bottom or sculling with the hands.  After a few tries, Luke mastered snatching the one pound pouch.  The exercise progressed to retrieving the three pound pouch and finally to the five pound pouch.  

During the three-minute stop at the end of the dive, Hailey asks Luke to hover at 15 feet both horizontally and vertically.

As the dives progressed, Luke’s skill increased.  The ultimate test of mastery of the skill is to hold the lotus position while suspended mid-water.  Luke held the position for 80 seconds--a commendable accomplishment.

In between exercises as we toured we encountered black triggerfish, butterfly fish, lots of jacks (a symbol of masculinity in the Hawaiian culture), and a white-mouthed eel.  We saw a milkfish, usually a diver-skittish species, and a filefish consuming a jellyfish.  When it was done, it nibbled on Luke’s head.  I guess the filefish confused Luke with a jellyfish with his newly found buoyancy control.

All kidding aside, after a skill is learned it takes practice in order to be ingrained in a diver's technique.  After a few dives, Luke had mastered the art of maintaining neutral buoyancy throught the entire dive.