The Blog is Back

Sorry for no posts for the last week or so.  I have been traveling to gather new material, a very successful endeavor.  Please stand by as the blog entries will begin shortly.

To Lisa Vandergriff--A Remembrance

Today the friends of Lisa Vandergriff gathered at Viking Hall in Anchorage to remember and celebrate a very remarkable and beloved friend.  There were many memories shared, stories told, laughter, and a few tears.  We miss our friend.  We didn’t say “goodbye” as much as we said “be seeing ya.”  Lisa’s memory lives on; so does her spirit.  Part of it will be carried in our hearts; part of it will be tangible in the two moorings that will be established on the Kona coast in Lisa’s memory—gifts which will help preserve those spots for years to come.  What better way to honor all the contributions made by Lisa to the oceans that she loved given by those she loved. 

This morning before heading over to the Hall, by happenstance I read a remembrance to a friend written by Eric Soyland, a diver and sailor in Hawaii in a collection of his short stories “Ocean of Adventure” portions of which seem very appropriate to the day's events.

“As I write this story, I know you’re nearby and you and your spirit will always be close to those who love the sea….Take care…we all think of you and know you’re there—Remember, people who are friends always find each other again—even in another space/time….Aloha, my friend."

Searching for Sorensen or The Last White Abalone of Las Flores?

Abalone Recon on September 19, 2001.  (L to R, Herb Leedy, Ian Taniguchi, James Lima)

On Wednesday, September 19, 2001 at 0815, Ian  Taniguchi, a marine biologist with the California Department of Fish and Game, Daniel "Herb" Leedy, a Fisheries Biologist with the Minerals Management Service, and I, acting as the MMS Regional Divemaster, boarded the 32-foot charter vessel Solara, at Santa Barbara Harbor.  During the one the one-hour cruise up the coast to Las Flores Beach, between El Capitan State Beach and Refugio State Beach, the seas were calm and the typical coastal overcast hung over the water and land.  It seemed the perfect metaphor for the nebulous gloom that hung over the country just days after the attacks on the twin towers of the World Trade Center.  


I was familiar with Las Flores Beach.  My friends and I would go diving off that beach.  We would park on the side of the southbound lanes of US 101 opposite the "Refugio Beach 1 Mile" sign, schlep our gear across the railroad tracks, navigate through an opening in the fence, cross the bike path that connected the two beaches, slide down the bluff to the beach, and gear up to enter the water.  Going by boat was definitely easier and much more civilized.



The Ellwood Field, probably in the 1940s. 
From http://goletahistory.com/ellwood-gas-station/

We reviewed our dive plan and rigged our dive gear as we motored up the coast.  As we came abeam the Bacara Resort near Elwood Beach, I spied the extent of the bluff top grounds from seaward for the first time.  I wondered out loud  "why would anyone put a luxury resort in this place."  It was quite a transformation of the former oil field that 70 years before had been once was one of the most prolific producers in California.  Elements of that past still persisted from the Elwood Pier which serviced Exxon's Santa Ynez Unit's offshore oil platforms to the debris of old oil drilling piers on the seafloor.  I had dived that debris field, known to local divers as "The Junkyard," several times, swimming from Elwood Beach following the submerged pier pilings left in the seafloor but cut off below the surface.

Today, we were diving on modern oil field infrastructure--the nearshore rock boulder armor covering of Exxon's Santa Ynez Unit's Platform Hondo to Las Flores Canyon pipeline and power cable conduit.  The offshore platforms were provided power from the mainland electrical grid via the power cable.  This configuation to power the structures had been favored by regulators concerned about the air quality impacts if on-platform diesel generators were the primary source of power.  The power cable had experienced a failure and needed to be repaired which meant the boulder armor rock covering it needed to be removed. Therein lay the problem and the reason for our dive today.

From http://ashtabulatimes.blogspot.com

In August 2001, a pre-construction marine biological survey was completed in the nearshore area for the project.  During the initial survey, a single abalone, assumed to be a white abalone or Sorensen’s abalone (Haliotis sorenseni) found the armor rock in 22 feet of water approximately 50 feet shoreward of the conduit terminus. I was not surprised at the find; this area was colloquially known by local divers as “abalone acres.”  The specimen was not removed but the white peripodium and highly convex shell with three elevated respiratory pores were characteristic of the white abalone.  The abalone has been listed as an endangered species just a few months earlier.



White or Sorenson's abalone (Haliotis sorenseni)

Threaded abalone ((Haliotis assimilis)









Ray deWit, a consultant for Exxon, reported the presence of the organism, but he could not positively confirm the species as a white abalone.  Due to similarities in appearance, many white abalone in situ are misidentified as threaded abalone (Haliotis assimilis).  Also, the reported depth of the abalone, 23 feet, is characteristic more of the threaded abalone rather than the white, the latter of which are usually found at depths in excess of 80 feet. Biologists from the California Department of Fish and Game believed that this report warranted further field investigation.  That reconnaissance was the purpose of today's dive.  That a white abalone would be found in the shallower waters was not surprising to me, local knowledge transmitted by people such as Dennis Divins, the Diving Safety Officer at UCSB, held that white abalone were found shallower along sections of the County's coast.

We head for the marker buoy to start our descent.

Captain Skee Linowitz, Solara’s skipper, placed a marker buoy at the coordinates provided by Mr. Ray deWit.  With Ian Taniguchi leading, we entered the water from the vessel and descended to the bottom following the buoy line. The team then proceeded north toward the armor rock covering which rises several feet from the ocean floor and forms an artificial reef.  I located the abalone, having dived that location many times in the late 1980s to the mid-1990s.  It had moved little from the position described by Mr. de Wit.  Ian observed the abalone and took photographs of the critter while  Herb and I conducted a thorough search of the adjacent armor rock reef for other abalone.  We but found none. While positive identification could not be made without removing the abalone for closer inspection, which would have been a technical violation of the Endangered Species Act, Ian and Herb concluded the organism was most likely a white abalone.  All I knew is that it was not a red, pink, or black abalone.

The entire dive took 32 minutes and we never exceeded a depth of 31 feet.  We had found what we had come for and done what we had planned to do--confirm the presence of what could be a white abalone.  The California Department of Fish and Game and others would decide which action, if any, should be taken regarding further identification of the organism, including possible harvesting for a captive breeding program to aid in the specie's recovery. 

The decision was to conduct an  expanded marine biological survey which was completed in April 2002. By that time, I had moved to Alaska, so I was not part of that effort.  As described in MMS and California Coastal Commission documents, the expanded survey was performed specifically to 1) characterize the habitats and dominant macroepibiota of the nearshore project area and to 2) locate and identify any abalone within two areas. The areas were east and west of the conduit corridor, approximately 825 feet long by 800 feet wide, respectively, and centered on the terminus.

The second survey did not find the initial white abalone; however, an empty shell that matched the characteristics of the shell of the single individual was found near its original location. Matching external characteristics of the shell with video taken during the August 2001 survey and pictures in the September 2001 recon strongly suggested it was the same animal. The shell was retrieved and it has been confirmed that the individual was a white (hybrid) abalone. A single mature sea otter was also observed at the site and it is possible that the sea otter had eaten the abalone individual during the period between the two surveys.  The second survey located 21 additional abalone one of which was thought to be a H. sorenseni. This white abalone was located in about 25 feet  of water about 600 feet from the conduit terminus near the base of an isolated boulder.

I find it interesting that the loss of our specimen was attributed to the sea otter seen in the area.  I don't know if this is story apocryphal a case of "see the otter, blame the otter." At the time,  as it had since the program's creation in 1987, the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) was obligated to capture and relocate any sea otter found south of Point Conception and outside of the San Nicolas Island Otter Translocation Area.  The problem was the otters were moving south to resume occupation of their historic range or swimming north from the translocation zone, much to the chagrin of abalone and urchin commercial fishing groups.   The program was eventually ended in 2012 after FWS determined it had failed, but it was only two weeks age that the Ninth Circuit of the US Court of Appeals overruled fishing groups' objections and that the program should be allowed to expire. 

For me, the story of this one-day activity offers many lessons:

• Cooperation between state and federal bureaus in doing field work to inform decision making is essential.
• An ocean-management bureau should have scientists trained as divers.
• Local knowledge and experience is important in designing reconnaissance parameters.
• Otters and abalone are contrary critters and can confound the best intentioned efforts of lawmakers and bureaucrats. 
• Ocean management is a long-time horizon activity with lots of variability and uncertainty (its not like counting cattle in range management), interest groups and decisions which invite judicial intervention in decision making.
• Nature always bats last.

The area was affected by the onshore pipeline spill in 2015, but that will be the subject of a future blog entry.





My old Seiko Diver

The 6309 Diver from the Seiko catalog. 
This is what it looked like brand new.

Back about August 1982, I was walking through the Sears store at LaCumbre Plaza in Santa Barbara when I spied a diver-style Seiko watch in the display counter with a sign that announced "20% off all Seiko Watches." My diver-style Timex watch had gone missing on a recent trip to San Diego and I needed a replacement.  I admired the style and ruggedness of the watch.  It had heft.  At 150-meter water resistance, with bi-directional rotating bezel and solid rubber strap, the Seiko Model 6309 watch certainly was an appropriate accessory for the life aquatic that I was beginning to craft.  While it would be another two years before I became scuba certified, I has started snorkeling in the shallow inner Mohawk Reef via the Coastal Access path and stairs at Mesa Lane.  

Rounding out my education as a neophyte waterman, I had also purchased a Windsurfer Sport, started crewing on a sailboat for the Wet Wednesday races at the Santa Barbara Yacht Club, and was learning to sail Victory 21's at the Santa Barbara Sailing School. 

Jimmy Rown and I on board Sea Ventures circa 1986. 
Notice the Seiko on my left wrist.

In July 1984, strapped to my left wrist during the pool and ocean dives for my PADI Basic Diver certification at UCSB, the watch fulfilled its destiny as a dive watch.  Little did I know that it would be present for the next 30+ years on nearly every one of the tens of hundreds dives.  I have other dive watches, a pretty modest collection in fact, but the old Seiko is the one I dive with. 

Nearly four decades later, the watch is showing its age due to the passage of time and loving use, and many dives but still works well and keeps good time--kind of like its owner. The luminescent paint on the face is worn and no longer luminesces.  I doubt it ever will, even if staked out and exposed to the blazing sun of a Caribbean beach.  The time markings and numbers on bi-direction bezel are worn.  The bezel is still tight, taking some effort to rotate.  It still resonates with its distinctive clicking.  I wonder how many revolutions it has made to mark the start of descent time or as a means to alleviate my boredom.  The luminescent inset on the triangle reference index was lost many years ago.  Back in the 1990s when I tried to get the bezel replaced, I was told the parts were not available.  I can’t say how many times the strap has been replaced.  I try to use authentic Seiko straps, but availability is sometimes limited (dock strike in Yokohama or a world shortage of quality rubber was the usual reasons given by watch vendors). 

My Seike Model 6309--been with me for 36 yeats

I will keep using the watch.  After all, it is my oldest dive buddy and the one piece of original equipment I still own.  Actually, that is not accurate.  I still have my Conshelf 14 regulator too.  You dance with the one that brung ya.  While dive computers have replaced the need for dive watches and tables to figure a diver’s residual nitrogen time, repetitive group, and no decompression limits, it is a comfortable companion. I see that after market bezels are now available.  Who knows, maybe I will give it a refurbishment as a reward for so many years of faithful service.







Dive Watches Still Rule...

“Does anyone still wear a dive watch?”  This question regularly appears on scuba diving social media sites, such as scubaboard.com and divebuddy.com.  The responses are usually “no, I use a diving computer” followed by the reasons scuba diving watches are obsolete.  The demise of the scuba diving watch, dive watch, or diver’s watch is premature. 

Dan Henry 1970 Automatic Diver Compressor Orange. 
One of the new brands of inexpensive quality watches.
It is rated to 200 meters water resistance.

About 10 years ago, the watch industry was concerned by a trend that found fewer people, especially millennials, buying and wearing analog watches.  Why would they? After all, cellphones had the time and later smart phones that had all sorts of time keeping applications that rendered analog watches quaint, redundant, or obsolete.  The ability to “tell time” one of the first life skills we learned as children would soon be archaic knowledge since time was presented digitally. Then, about two years ago, articles started appearing that indicated millennials did want analog watches under certain circumstances.

If it looks like as dive watch and acts like a dive watch...

First of all, what is a diver’s watch?  Prior to the adoption of the International Standards Organization ISO 6425 standard in 1996, a dive watch was anything that looked like a dive watch, that is, it was big had a rotating bezel and rubber strap, and was worn by someone who participated in scuba diving.  The conventional wisdom was that any dive watch had to be marked “waterproof” or be marked “water resistant” have a depth rating in 200 meters or more.  But if a watch looked like a dive watch and survived a scuba dive, it was a “dive watch” In order to clear up this confusion, the ISO 6425 standard for diving watches specified that, among other things, a diver’s watch:

• The presence of a unidirectional bezel (a bezel that can be turned only one way) with at least at every 5 minutes elapsed minute markings and a pre-select marker to mark a specific minute marking.
• The presence of clearly distinguishable minute markings on the watch face.
• Adequate readability/visibility at 25 cm (9.8 in) in total darkness.
• The presence of an indication that the watch is running in total darkness. This is usually indicated by a running second hand with a luminous tip or tail.
•  Magnetic resistance, Shock resistance. Chemical resistance.
• Strap/band solidity.

Watches meeting this spedification will indicate DIVERS on the face of the watch or case with a depth rating of 100m, 200m, etc.  Watches which meet the Water resistant 200 meter depth certification are considered suitable for skin diving but not scuba diving.

Even with the specification, because testing diving watches for ISO 6425 compliance is voluntary and involves costs, so not every manufacturer presents their watches for certification according to this standard.  Bottom line, many perfectly good watches may be used for scuba diving (and more than a few counterfeits which probably should not be dropped in the water, much less submerged). 

Next:  Dive watches are a means of self expression--Me and my Seiko

Sea Hunt, Mike Nelson, and the Popularizing of Scuba Diving

Sixty years ago, America was introduced to the ex-Navy frogman, Mike Nelson, played by Lloyd Bridges in the television show, Sea Hunt.  

Week after week, Mike Nelson for one-half hour faced all the dangers of the underwater world that the show’s writers could imagine and he continued to do it for four seasons and 155 episodes.  

For most of its run, Sea Hunt was a highly rated show.  Scuba diving was in its childhood  as was television, which in those pre-cable, pre-streaming days, consisted of three networks (NBC, CBS, ABC), a handful of independent stations in major cities, and was broadcast in black and white, sometimes with a very short broadcast day.  So to what extent did Sea Hunt popularize scuba diving?

Gary Knoll, in his book, "America’s Ocean Wilderness: A Cultural History of Twentieth Century Wilderness," writes “the popularity of underwater recreation mushroomed shortly after the war.  The explanation for why so many Americans took to the water defies simple explanation.”  He suggests a number of factors contributed to the popularization including wartime coverage of underwater demolition teams; the growth of spear fishing clubs; the work of artists such as Hans Hass, especially his movie “Diving to Adventure” (a movie about skin diving and spear fishing) and Eugenia Clark’s book “Lady With a Spear”;  the emergence of those other underwater  enthusiasts than spear fishers  “who donned mask and snorkel simply to observe underwater life” and the advent of scuba technology which made ocean depths “a place of relaxed recreation” although he does recognize the element of danger that the activity offered.   According to Knoll, this trend was well underway by the mid-1950s.  Knoll attributes widespread popularization of enthusiasm for undersea exploration to Jacques Cousteau and the advent of his undersea technology. 

Knoll’s analysis indicates the emergence of underwater recreation evolved in three phases: 

1) skin-divers-as-spearfishers and hunters; 

2) skin-diver-as-observer, and

3) scuba-diver-as-relaxed-recreationist.  

Knoll does not acknowledge any contribution by shows such as Sea Hunt, preferring to concentrate on the contribution of films and books in the evolution until the premier of the TV special “The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau.”  Still, for many of baby boomers and beyond, “Sea Hunt” became synonymous with “scuba” just as “Piper Cub” became synonymous with general aviation airplanes.

So what role, if any, did Sea Hunt play in the popularization of scuba diving?  If the “Golden Age” of scuba and television does indeed coincide in the mid-to-late 1950s, would not combination of the two social trends to be very pronounced? While it is difficult to attribute the mainstreaming and popularizing of any sport or activity to any single factor, there is evidence that suggests that Sea Hunt greatly influenced the third phase of evolution described by Kroll. 

Albert Tillman, in his book, "I Thought I Saw Atlantis, Reminiscences of a Pioneer Skin & Scuba Diver," called Sea Hunt, “diving’s visual recruiter.” He posits that while the pioneer divers scoffed at the errors in the show, “the young men and women who would become the fully and truly first generation diving almost exclusively with SCUBA loved it and wanted to be Mike Nelsons.”  He describes Bridge’s character as a “surrogate guidance counselor for the second generation of divers that emerged in the 1950’s.  The old crustacean crowd of skin divers out of the 1940s grumbled….But the new kids on the block glued their eyes to that little screen and wanted to do just what Mike Nelson was doing when they grew up.”

By 1962, Sea Hunt was off the air and on its way to syndication that continues to today on cable outlets such as This TV and the evolution outlined by Knoll was complete.  The instruction manual from U.S. Divers, “Let’s Go Diving” released that year noted, “millions of men, women, and children…throughout all the oceans...and inland lakes and rivers…are playing, exploring, and hunting underwater.”  Note the order of activity, playing-exploring-hunting, the reverse of the three phase evolution.  The guide continues, “skin diving is for everyone.  No matter what your particular interest or situation is, the submarine world offers a challenge, an excitement which cannot be matched on the surface…The variety of interests open to the skin diver are as limitless as the vast expanse of the underwater world itself.” 

Ironically, with the recent popularization of breath hold diving, as captured in James Nestor’s book “Deep, Freediving Renegade Science, and what the Ocean Tells Us About Ourselves,” and renaissance of the skin-diver-as-spearfisher, we may see the re-emergence of the first two phases of diving.  

Diving the TBF Avenger at Anacapa Island

Photo from California Diver, September 11, 2013

Avengers in flight

I was going to dive the Navy TBF Avenger torpedo plane near Anacapa Island as part of a National Park Service dive team and was very excited at the prospect.  Because the wreck was about 120 feet on the front side of the island, the dive had to be meticulously planned.  We had to stay within the NPS Diving Manual requirement which limited this mission to a no decompression limit (air) of five minutes at 120 feet.  So this was going to be what someone on board called a “sneak and peek” dive--get in, get down, take a quick look see, come up. 

This Avenger was lost as a result of a collision during a training mission in 1944.  The pilot and one gunner were rescued, but the other gunner was lost.  The second aircraft was lost with all hands and has never been located, as far as I can ascertain.  Operational losses during training were not uncommon.  The streets of Santa Barbara Airport bear the names of aircrew that were lost during the war when the airport was supported Marine Corps training.  John Wayne, in the movie The Flying Leatherneck, utters a line about being in dusty, dirty, Goleta, the community adjacent to the airport.  For decades after the war, the Santa Barbara News Press would carry an occasional story about wreckage of military airplanes being brought up in the nets of fishing vessels in the Santa Barbara Channel.

Normally, NPS and other government divers were not certified to dive more than 90 feet unless there was an operational need to do so.  Surveillance of this wreck site established our operational need.  While we had a general idea of the location of the wreck, we would need to locate it first.  The team would enter from a live boat (the vessel would not be anchored).  Dropping down to 80 feet, we would swim-search following a compass heading.  Once the airplane’s remains were spotted, we would descend as a group to the bottom, and when the dive leader, David Stoltz, signaled that time was up, we would begin our ascent to the surface, with a safety stop at 10 to 15 feet.  I used at 95-cubic foot tank on that dive.  Otherwise, given my rate of air consumption, the capacity of the standard 72 cubic foot tank and our dive protocol to return to the surface with at least 500 psi might be the limiting factor rather than the bottom time.

The dive went as planned.  Swimming at a depth of 80 feet, we could clearly see the bottom and quickly located the remains of the aircraft.  We dropped down to the aircraft.  I took note of the time on my Seiko dive watch that had accompanied me on hundreds of dive starting with my basic diver training. It seems that time passes rapidly underwater and even faster at 120 feet.  I did a quick swim around the site and then used the rest of the time inspecting the fuselage, cockpit and wings. I then heard the banging of the dive knife on Dave’s tank, the signal to gather up and return to the surface.

As a youth, I devoured every story I could on flying, especially air battles of World War Two.  I recalled the story, made popular in the movie Midway, of Torpedo 8 which sustained 100 percent loss while attacking the Japanese fleet with the TBD Dauntless-the predecessor of the TBF Avenger.  A lone survivor, Ensign George Gay, escaped his shot up airplane after completing his torpedo run and ditching.  He had a front row seat for the decimation of the Japanese fleet by American dive bombers. 

My obsession with aviation led to a Bachelor of Science in Aeronautics.  I worked as a student air traffic controller while in school and later worked on airplane flight manuals and maintenance manuals for the L-1011, KC-135, C-130, and C-17.  But the sky and sea battled for my affection and the sea eventually won.  I was fortunate to be able to document and dive wrecks was part of my later career, first as a Park volunteer diver, then as the Maritime Historian for the Park from 1992 to 1994, and then as a Minerals Management Service diver. I had mapped shipwreck sites, developed a database of more than 125 vessels lost in the area with primary source material, and produced a submerged cultural resource assessment with the Park archaeologist, Don Morris.  Along the way, I met some mighty fine people like Matt Russel, Mark Norder, and the late Patrick Smith.

Several videos of the website by divers are available on Youtube.  

Ancapa's TBF Avenger

TBM Avenger off Anacapa Island (TBM was the designation of Avengers manufactured by General Motors)