Diving the Wreck

A dozen or so years ago, I picked up the book by Professor Trevor Norton, Underwater to Get Out of the Rain: A Love Affair with the Sea. He eloquently addresses the nature of shipwrecks and wreck diving in the following passage from the Lost Ships chapter. 

"On land, castles may crumble into romantic ruins, but if they remain reasonably intact we mend the roof then fill them with story-boards and exhibits so that paying customers can shuffle over the ancient but newly swept floors. Sound effects and atmospheric lighting help to create an ambience of ancient times.

Wrecked ships need no such help. They ooze atmosphere and are the eeriest places on earth. The surrounding haze creates mystery and a feeling of discovery. Sometimes snagged nets wreathe hulks in aquatic cobwebs that add an air of witchery. But it is the gloom inside that generates unease. It is impossible to venture into the black heart of a hulk without feeling the below is the darkness something awaits you.

They may also retain the feeling of sudden abandonment. In the cabins of the Hisperia I found a cup with a broken handle, a scrubbing brush beside the bathtub and a lone shoe slowly filling with silt. Down there, these mundane objects became imbued with a poignancy that they could never possess in a museum case. It never occurred to me that they were merely artefacts or souvenirs to be collected; they were still personal items belonging to the crew."

Norton observes that diving on shipwrecks sometimes creates an uneasy feeling for the diver.

“The unease is stoked by the knowledge that wrecks are dangerous places to be. It is easy to become disoriented in a confusion of corridors and decks even when a ship is well lit and afloat, but down here in the darkness amid clouds of silt, it is possible to get lost in the labyrinth where there is no easy escape to the surface. The tenuous artificiality of your existence is emphasized by the precious air expelled with every breath to accumulate as quicksilver pools on the ceiling. The trapped diver is unique among the condemned in that he can see his last breath.” 

I find that last line to be particularly haunting.

Sunken Treasure in Long Beach

Gold from the SS Central America will be coming to Long Beach, California for display February 23 to 24, 2018 at the Convention Center.  The discovery and salvage of the California Gold Rush era steamer, SS Central America, is chronicled in Gary Kinder's 1999 book "Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea."  Most people when they think about the settlement of California by the '49ers imagine covered wagons crossing the plains and the mountains (ala the Donner party).  Lesser known but of greater historic importance is the story of the Argonauts, people who left for California by the fastest means available, ocean travel.  This trip consisted either of taking a perilous voyage around Cape Horn or taking a ship to the Isthmus of Panama, crossing the jungle, disease infested jungle, and taking another steamer to California.  After the miners and others had found their fortune, many did not stay in California, but instead returned home, making the voyage in reverse.  One of those is the fateful voyage of the SS Central America.


As described in the book, the detection of the wreck site and its subsequent salvage is a story of intrigue and technological innovation.  Several claims were made on the ownership of the wreck and the salvaged gold.  Treasure salvage is as much a game of establishing the legal right to the wreck through the courts as it is bringing the gold to the surface.  Not all pirates wear eye patches and bandanas, many modern pirates wear three-piece Armani suits. 


As the article describes, the intrigue and double dealing has continued since the initial salvage, with one of the salvagers now on the lam, a fugitive from justice charged with hiding millions in gold from investors.  You see, the key to successful gold hunting is to use other people's money rather than your own.  This story would make one heck of a movie. 


Treasure from Ship of Gold

Adventure in the Golden Age of Diving

Google’s on line dictionary defines “Golden Age” as “an idyllic, often imaginary past time of peace, prosperity, and happiness” or “the period when a specified art, skill, or activity is at its peak.”

When was “The Golden Age of Diving?”  In our nostalgic driven memories, the 1950’s would get a lot of votes.  Post-war prosperity meant time and money for leisure activities.  Skin diving, in the form of spearfishing, and later scuba diving offered an outlet for many men who still sought adventure after coming of age in the recently-concluded World War Two.  (Others would find it in motorcycle clubs).

By 1952, U.S. Divers was selling its trademarked “Aqualung” double hose regulator which became the icon for scuba equipment.  Other manufacturers were marketing other designs, some innovative and others down-right foolish.  “Sea Hunt” a television series starring Lloyd Bridges as ex-Navy frogman Mike Nelson started its four season, 155 episode run in 1958.  This weekly, half-hour, action-adventure show proved very popular among the viewing public and can still be seen in reruns today.  Many divers who were certified in the 1950s and 1960s cite the show as providing the motivation to take up scuba diving.

Diving became a popular topic for popular press as embodied in men’s magazines.  Any number of covers of these publications featured underwater scenes of men often locked in mortal encounters with sharks, eels, orcas, octopi, squid, barracuda or any other sea creature that might catch the fancy of the cover or story illustrator.  Take, for example, this image from True magazine from August 1954.  It features a diver clutching a knife in anticipation of having to do combat with one of both of the sharks that circle looking for a chance to attack.  

This image of man against nature is one of the conflicts in narrative writing.   The man against nature conflict positions the hero against an animal or a force of nature, such as a storm.  It creates tension which holds the attention of the reader be it Homer's “The Odyssey” Hemmingway's “The Old Man and the Sea,” Jules Verne's “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea,” Melville's “Moby Dick” or many a pulp magazine story.  

Diving on the Kelp Forest

Diving in Southern California means diving in giant kelp--Macrocystis pyrifera.  The thick giant kelp forests that fringe the coastline and islands form a very complex and unique ecosystem.  The analogy of the forest is very applicable.  The canopy of the kelp forest, like that of the rainfotest, seems nearly impenetrable.  Boaters and divers use terms like "tangled up" and "ensnared" when describing encounters with the kelp canopy.  When I sailed on Max Lynn’s Windhover during Wet Wednesday races one of my jobs on the foredeck to keep a sharp lookout for kelp mats along the course, lest we run through one and lose as it wrapped around the keel with a speed-killing drag that would allow the rest of the boats to pass us followed by the merciless teasing at the Yatch Club bar afterward. 

Many a new diver and some old ones, fear getting fatally entangled in kelp; feeling like they may become trapped in a spider’s web of stalks.  More than a few non-divers, including an optometrist I had fit lenses into a dive mask, regaled me with tales of friend who had friends who had friends who drown after becoming caught in kelp.  It had to be, why would fiends three times removed say otherwise?  I suspect that this irrational fear is not borne from experience; rather it grows from their general fear of the ocean particularized to these giant algae.  But it can be that deadly, cute seo otters wrap themselves in it to stay afloat and rest. 

I learned early on when doing a shore dive to descend on the edge of the kelp, which anchors to the hard rock substrate on the bottom.  The kelp marked the rock reef, the location we wanted to dive.  I also learned to terminate the dive with enough air to swim between the stalks of kelp rather than crawl across the top.  The few times I have done the kelp crawl on the surface it seems that I was in the thickest kelp along the coast of Isla Vista.  The kelp at that location seemed to entrain the oil from the natural seeps as nearby Coal Oil Point.  I frolicked through a couple of dozen of a thick kelp stew seasoned with hydrocarbon at that location to get back to the beach.  After that, I never neglected to be on the outside of that kelp bed with plenty of air to get back.

Perhaps the best description of dealing with kelp came in the Simmer 2012 edition of Alert Diver:

“The concern we hear most often from novice kelp divers is fear of entanglement…. Avoiding entanglement requires attention during the dive and some forethought; streamlined gear and at least one cutting tool are important. Paying close attention to your air supply and the location of the boat will ensure you are not forced to maneuver back to the boat on the surface using the dreaded "kelp crawl." Also crucial is remaining calm should you become caught. In other words, avoid becoming the fork in the kelp spaghetti that spins around repeatedly to determine the source of entanglement.”

Do we really need all this dive stuff?

It is a question I ask myself as I look at my collection of dive knives, masks, fins, bc's, regulators, wetsuits, and so on.  It started when I worked for a dive shop in Santa Barbara.  My net pay was usually just enough to cover my equipment purchases.  Since it was a second, part-time job that I had taken to get the experience of working in a dive shop, it didn't matter.  I should really start to sell this stuff off.  But, it took me at least 30 years to amass this collection, so it may take some time to piece it out.  That makes me something of an expert.

 Sport Diver magazine just ran an article on 20 essential accessories that every scuba diver needs.  

The author prefaces the list with the following statement:

"We scuba divers tend to make fun of our buddies who jingle and jangle due to a bunch of accessories attached to multiple D-rings and jammed into BC pockets. But some accessories come in handy and make your dive easier. And in a serious emergency, some accessories could just mean the difference between life and death. You may not need to take all 20 of these on every dive, but make sure you're prepared for the day's dive conditions, and then accessorize appropriately."

Very good advice. What you need, what is essential for an open water rock reef dive is different than a cave dive (where redundancy and reliability are essential).  Here is my take on the list, with my "must have" items for a typical Southern California dive boat day trip marked by an asterisk *:  Remeber, there is nothing as hard on a diver's gear as another diver with an opinion as to what is essential equipment.

https://www.sportdiver.com/20-essential-accessories-every-scuba-diver-needs?

1.  GPS locator—Nautilus Marine Rescue GPS—$179.  Developed by the skipper of Nautilus Explorer, this equipment is more than I need for the type of diving that I do.  A friend of mine who dives in remote locations in pursuit of his underwater photography.  He is very frugal, so much so that as an undergraduate, he would rummage through my used gear bin in the shed and get another 30 or 40 dives out of gloves or booties that I was getting ready to discard as unrepairable.

2.  Knife*—Spyderco Dragonfly Hawkbill—$98  Unlike many divers, I don't eschew big knives as I like the feel and look of a of a large, solid dive knife strapped to the inside of my leg.  Part of that perspective is an artifact of being certified at the end of the "big knife" era of diving.  If the truth be told, in 30+ years of diving, I have seldom used the sharp edge underwater, but have used it on the boat and beach,  On more than one occasion, I did find the line cutter to be indispensable. I have a half dozen or so knives, including a folding knife.  I think of a dive knife as a knife I take diving, so I look for the qualities of the knife first and the fact that I will use it for diving second.  To me, a dive knife is one piece of equipment that represents my self expression and style as a diver.

3.  Dive Light—Scubapro Nova 2100 Spot Flood—$600.  Do you really need a expensive, bright dive light?  Do you do a lot of night or low light dives?  Most of us will not.  I do. My dive lights span from a 25-year-old, eight D-cell battery light cannon to Princeton Tectonic four C-cell battery lights to a small rechargeable light that shines brighter than all the others in my collection.  My lights are functional, they are kept in automobiles and about my house as flashlights in the event of a power failure when they are not diving.  But, no single light is worth $600.  A light is something that gets banged up, dropped, flooded or lost.  When my Princeton Tec light flooded, I could exchange it for a new one, no questions asked.  It was my first light purchase is great as a day lights, for night dives, or as a backup light.  I do tend to carry it now as a backup, since I prefer to use a rechargeable light rather than constantly dispose of batteries

4.  Backup Dive Light*—SL653 Sea Dragon Mini 900 Lumen Dive—$79.  I would use a light like this as a primary light for most of my dives.  

5.  Beacon Light—IST Sports Beacon Lights—$8  Useful as a marker while night diving in lieu of a chemical light.  In my experience, chemical lights (light sticks, cylume, etc.) work well but tend to end up as plastic in the ocean once they go out or come loose.

6.  Safety Sausage*—Divers Alert Network Signaling Sausage—$60.  An essential piece of gear if you are going to dive on a boat.  I don't dive off a boat without one.  This model is mid-price for safety sausages/

7.  Whistle*—Windstorm Safety Whistle—$7  Another essential piece of equipment that we really won't think about until we need it.

8.  Signaling Mirror—Divers Alert Network Rescue Flash Signal Mirror—$5  I carry a signal mirror in my bc pocket when I am boat diving in a remote location, most recently in Fiji.  

9.  First Aid Kit—Divers Alert Network Coast Guard Complete First Aid Kit—$160.  I have had a first aid kit as long as I have been diving. They need not be as extensive or expensive as this DAN kit.  Many divers design their own.  

10.  Alternate Air Source—Submersible Air Systems Spare Air—$270.  This is not a device that I have used.  

11.  Dry bag—Cressi Gara Dry Bag—$80.  I never used a dedicated dry bag.   If I did, the Costco model in the same size is a lot cheaper.

12.  Regulator Bag—Cressi 360 Regulator Bag—$30.  I don't use one.  My rig with two regulators, a console and inflator hoses do not really fit in the bas.  When I transport my gear, I cocoon my regulator with the bc and wetsuit and a towel which provides the protection for the regulator.

13.  Octopus Regulator—Cressi Compact Pro Octo—$130.  I use an octo regulator.  Never had a circumstance where it was needed.  You carry an octo for your buddy.  Good air management discipline should eliminate the need for one.  That said, I consider this an essential piece of life support equipment, not an accessory.

14.  Compass*—Cressi Luminous Compass--$30.  Essential piece of equipment.

15.  Tank Banger—Trident Tank Banger Signaling Device—$6.  I have no use for this device.  If I need to get my buddy's attention, I bang my dive knife on my tank.  Come to think of it, it is the one thing for which I have consistently used my knife over the years.  People I know who have tank bangers tend to use them with an irritating frequency.

16.  Boat Bag*—Cressi Gorgona Boat Bag—$30.  Essentially a mesh duffel bag, which I find indispensable for boat diving.  I use a generic brand purchased as sporting goods stores.

17.  Mask Defog—McNett Sea Drops—$5.  Save your money, use baby shampoo or regular shampoo like many divers or use spit like the other divers I know.  Mask defog is probably the most oversold, overpriced accessory.

18.  Neoprene Patch Kit—Stormshore Neoprene Queen Adhesive and Patches—$10.  I carry it on boat dives.  If you split a seam on a wetsuit on a liveaboard dive boat, you will be glad you had it.

19.  Soft Weights—Seasoft Scuba Seabags—$5/pound.  Soft weights are good, the lead pellets are an environmental toxin if they leak from the pouch and are consumed by birds.  For that reason, aquariums usually don't allow them to be used by exhibit divers.

20.  Mesh Bag—Innovative Scuba Concepts Econo Mesh Bag—$6.  

Total for all 20 items comes to about $1885.00 assuming 16 pounds of soft weights.  My essental list would be $300 maximum and probably less for non-premier branded items.

After you discover a new species, what do you do for an encore?

In case you missed it, in the last few weeks we were notified about the discovery of a new species of giant octopus along the Alaska coast—the Frilled Giant Pacific Octopus.  The species was described as “hiding in plain sight.”

http://www.newsweek.com/enteroctopus-dofleini-frilled-giant-pacific-octopus-alaska-763826

Dr. David Scheel of Alaska Pacific University described the discovery and confirmation of the species in a presentation at the Alaska Marine Science Symposium on January, 23, 2017.  Dr. Scheel explained the physical differences between the newly discovered cryptic species, the “frilled GPO” and more common species of GPO.  He highlighted the differences between the two species using images taken in the laboratory.  He then presented images 12 images of GPO recovered from shrimp pots during a research cruise in Prince William Sound in October 2017.  These octopi were on the deck of the vessel.  He then invited the audience to identify which was the frilled species and which was not.  It is not as easy as one would think. 

A summary of the work can be found at the Alaska Octopus Project webpage

The story is even more remarkable when one considers that the discovery is the result of an undergraduate senior project by Nathan Hollenbeck.  I met Nathan on Dive Alaska’s boat, Bottom Time, about four or five years ago and have had a chance to dive with him a couple of times since.  I knew he was passionate about his work on the octopus project, I now understand why.  It is quite remarkable to be credited with three refereed science journal articles as an undergraduate, much less being credited with discovering a new species of GPO.  This status begs the question “what do you do for an encore?” 

Last time I saw Nathan was at the Cook Inlet Beluga Count activity at the Alaska Zoo in September 2017.  He was enthusiastically doing an interpretive program and loving his job.  Nice work, Nate. 

Anacapa Island Landing Cove

The Anacapa Island Landing Cove is my favorite place to dive and is the genesis of my nom de plume “Covediver”—a moniker that I claimed in 1998 after doing dozens of dives in the cove as a volunteer with the National Park Service Underwater Interpretation Program.  Anacapa Island, one of five islands that make up Channel Islands National Park off the California coast, means “mirage” or “ever changing” in the native Chumash language.  The island seems to change shape from time-to-time, an optical illusion spawned by fog and atmospheric conditions.  Essentially the remains of an ancient volcano, the island rises vertically from the sea floor.  The landing cove is how the island is accessed via the dock and boathouse tucked into one side of the cove and a couple of hundred steps that lead to the summit of the island. 

When I volunteered at CINP in the late 1990s, every Tuesday and Thursday, from Memorial Day to Labor Day, one of three NPS boats, most often Sea Ranger and later Ocean Ranger, would leave the CINP Headquarters and Visitors Center in Ventura Harbor for a quick trip to Anacapa Island. Three divers would be among the passengers—an underwater naturalist/interpreter, a camera operator, and a safety diver/line tender/critter wrangler—which was my role and oh how I loved it. 

Usually, we made two dives in support of the program.  The first dive, a reconnaissance dive checked out conditions and located critters featured on the show.  The second dive, the underwater interpretation program, took place in the afternoon. The naturalist would don a full face dive mask wired for voice communication via short cable to the underwater video camera.  The underwater camera had a 100-foot armored umbilical which connected on the dock to three video monitors and speakers.  The visitors on the island would watch the program on a bank of three video monitors in the wall of the boat house.  The show was also broadcast to the CINP Visitor’s Center on the mainland.  The naturalist and underwater video camera operator worked in unison to show the visitors the wonder of the kelp forest. 

My job consisted of helping the two divers into the water, paying out the cable, donning my scuba unit and jumping into the water to monitor the dive team, locating critters (like lobster, swell shark, or sheep crab) for the show, retrieving the cable as the team made their way back towards the dock, exiting the water by climbing up one of two ladders from the water to the dock, pulling in the cable and retrieving the camera and diver.  We then had about 30 minutes to stow all the gear before departing the island.  The elapsed time from suit up to pick up was typically a little over an hour.  Gee, I loved that job. It was a lot of work, but the audience was always appreciative.

Rarely, I would have an adverse encounter with one of the critters.  I recall one instance when I holding a sheep crab and it reached with one of its long arms and pinched my finger with its claw.  On another occasion, I spied a lobster and quickly reaching into the whole to grab it failed to notice the moray eel behind it.  In another instance, a formation three of bat rays swam into the cove.  Unable to get the naturalist’s or camera operator’s attention, despite flapping my arms (the underwater signal for “bat ray”), I grabbed the camera operator by the shoulders and turned him toward the rays.  He got the shot as the trio of rays turned and swam out of the cove and the visitors learned about their natural history.  One of the magical moments in the enchanted cove.

Gold in them thar waters

Many a diver has the dream of finding sunken treasure.  Most of us think of the search involving a treasure galleon off than sank off the coast of Florida in a long-forgotten and unnamed storm.  Yet, many a modern diver finds "treasure" in recovering golf balls from water hazards at golf courses or retrieving other items of value.  In a previous blog, I mentioned diving the breakwater at Avalon which marks the upland boundary of the marine park.  Many divers scour the nooks and crannies of the boulders searching for dive gear lost by the hundreds of divers per week that use the site.  These divers describe the area as a "submerged dive gear swap meet" including high value items such as cameras and dive computers.  Another friend of mine suggested we scour the bottom of Big Lake, Alaska and recover all the sunglasses lost by inebriated boaters.  The Daily Mail story linked here describes the efforts of Dallas Vega who scours rivers finding all sorts of modern day treasure.


Modern Day Underwater Treasure Hunter

Catalina Dreaming

Catalina Island holds a certain mystique for me as a dive destination.  The underwater park at Avalon’s Casino Point holds memories of great joy and sadness, a bit of an aquatic dichotomy. 

Starting in 1986, and for several years after, I made annual pilgrimages to Avalon with the UCSB Scuba Club organized by Ed Stetson.  The UCSB divers really looked forward to this annual dive trip, usually held on the last full weekend of April.  We would take over a budget hotel on the island and dive every chance we had to dive at the underwater park.  Ed had every move on the trip choreographed from getting to the island, gear transfer between the hotel and Casino Point (and 40 or more divers can have a lot of gear), and getting back to Long Beach on the ferry.  The fun underwater was punctuated topside (and sometimes underwater) by the shenanigans that college students can get into when left to their own devices.  

I fondly remember the great times we had both below and topsides year-after-year.  Before the staircase to the entry point was built, we would scramble down the rocks of the breakwater, carefully timing our entry into the water with a lull in the waves.  Underwater, the kelp forest hosted a variety of sea life.  Structures and wrecks within the park boundary offered places to explore.  But, the sea is not tolerant of error and on one trip in 1994, the first I missed in 8 years, my friend Nejat drown while solo freediving.  I will have more to say about that in a future installation of the blog.  After that year, my visits to Avalon became increasingly infrequent as I started a career and moved from the area.

My last trip to Catalina Island was in 2014 when I dived with my nephew.  (his dad had joined me on one of the annual trips in the previous century).   My nephew learned to scuba dive at the Scout Camp on the island a few years earlier, but this trip was his first to Avalon. Many folks who made the trip in their 20's in earlier years now joined the UCSB students and brought their school-age children.  The trip had become intergenerational over the generation and a half we had been going to the island.  

I will soon be returning to Catalina Island at time yet-to-be-determined.  I have another nephew who recently was certified.  I would like to visit the underwater park and Avalon with him and let him experience some of the wonderful times I associate with the island.  I need to make the trip one more time before I hang it up and the surface interval becomes permanent.  As Leon Russell sang " I just hope you undertand, I just got to get back to the island"

And watch the sun go down (sit and watch the sun go down)
Hear the sea roll in (listen to the sea roll in)
But I'll be thinking of you (yes, and I'll be thinking of you)
And how it might have been (thinking how it might have been)
Hear the night birds cry (listen to the night birds cry)
Watch the sunset die (sit and watch the sunset die)
Well I hope you understand I just had to go back to the island

Adaptability to a changing climate

I have been doing some work recently related to how people will adapt to climate change.  In Alaska, we seem to  be  experiencing change at a faster rate than other places.  Infrastructure impacts, including the need to relocate who communities, are among the more tangible manifestations of the changing climate phenomena. 

I am  currently reading a Health Impact Assessment  from the State of Alaska's Epidemiologist on emerging and potential human health effects from the changing climate.  Unlike many of the "sky is falling" scenarios advanced by environmental interest groups, the State report is a more rigorous and realistic evaluation. 

State of Alaska Health Impact Assessment

Four reasons you should not become a scuba instructor

Interesting article.  I know a youngster that is going the internship route as I write this.  For him, it is kind of the "Gap Year" experience (the traditional year in Europe between completing secondary education and continuing on to University).  We had discussed the pros and cons of the internship approach before he signed on with the dive operation in Utilla. 


I was a divemaster and assistant instructor for many years, affiliated with an instructor who treated me like a certified instructor.  He once asked me why I did not complete the "leadership diving ladder" and get certified as an instructor.  I guess it fell into the category of not wanting to be ultimately responsible for other people as an instructor.  I enjoyed the assisting and divemaster part of the job; just as I really liked being a lifeguard and lifeguard instructor for many years.


I recall that someone in the class I was assisting what the difference was between and instructor and a divemaster.  Before he could respond, I offered "an instructors job is to keep you safe and make sure you have fun.  As a divemaster, I don't care if you are having fun, just so long as you are safe."


Four reasons you might not want to be an instructor

Can Lightning Strike Twice Underwater?

I messaged an old friend and dive buddy, Dave, today, when he posted on line some pictures of a family fishing trip to Mexico. I have not seen him for a number of years, keeping in touch as many people do via Facebook and the annual exchange of Christmas cards.  I related that my next dive trip would be to Hawaii with my teenage nephew.  He mentioned that his teenage son, Cole, wanted to learn to scuba dive for some time, but they just never found the time.  Hopefully, that would be rectified this summer.  My two nephews had similar experiences with a long elapsed time between the discovery of the desire to learn to dive and the completion of openwater certification.  Dave wondered if we might all meetup soon to do some diving around Santa Barbara.

Dave was certified in 1985.  I helped teach the class as an assistant instructor and divemaster.  We did our dives at Arroyo Burro Beach and at Anacapa Island on the M/V Sea Venture. The following year, Dave quickly completed his rescue diver and assistant instructor certification.  A dive club trip to Catalina Island on Derby Day preceded a summer spent together on various diveboats from Ventura-area marinas to the Channel Islands.  I worked the deck as divemaster paired with Dave as the rescue swimmer.  We rotated with another divemaster-rescue swimmer team, working alternating dives.  On three- and four-dive days, each team managed two or three dives.  We harvested and cooked a fair number of bacon-wrapped rock scallops that summer on my Weber Smoking Joe grill.  A year later, 

Dave spent the following summer as a dive instructor at a Club Med village in Mexico.  When I visited him, I taught as a short-term replacement for an injured instructor.

I am hoping that lightning will strike the same place twice, albeit three decades apart, and we can show the younglings some of the places that we visited when we were young and divers.

Cayman Anchor

Dropping down onto the reef, I scan for the anchor which our dive master advised was a feature of this site on the east end of Grand Cayman.  Other than the object’s presence, the dive staff provides few clues on how the anchor came to be at the spot.  The anchor is kind of a mystery wrapped in an enigma.  I spy the anchor, an old style “admiralty anchor” the kind of tackle for a good sized vessel.  Some divers find the anchor an interesting artifact and linger to frame a photo before moving on.  Others pass over it, paying scant attention, as if finding a coral-encrusted admiralty anchor of unknown pedigree is an everyday event.  The anchor is not out-of-place on the reef. The Cayman Islands have a long history of being visited by countless seafarers, seeking a destination for the exploration, refuge, or trade;  a prize for the taking; or a navigation hazards whose reefs could rip the bottom out of any ship venturing too close.  

Treasure Tales--Art McKee and the Claim Jumpers

In the book, “Sunken Treasure:  Six Who Found Fortunes” Robert F. Burgess describes an incident in 1960 when the veteran treasure salvor Art McKee, Jr., fended off a group of competing salvors  trying to plunder the wreck of the Capitana, which McKee was authorized to salvage.   He used a demonstration of force with a bangstick to make the claim jumpers back down.  A  bangstick is essentially a 6-foot long pole with a 12-guage shot gun shell on the end, spring loaded to fire when the stick was thrust into an object, like a menacing shark.  The incident is captured in the Shipwrecks and Sunken Treasure coloring book.

“Naturally, when word got out that McKee held an exclusive salvage lease from the state of Florid to work not only the Capitana, but a number of other old shipwrecks scattered between Cape Canaveral and the Upper Florida Keys, rival treasure hunters bristled.

Eventually, it led to outright confrontations.

McKee had the situation largely to himself for so many years, he was used to the idea that a few rival treasure hunters would by trying their luck of the Capitana the moment he left the site.  This was no real problem until after 1950 when scuba gear became more widely available.  Here now was a simple, portable, inexpensive diving rig that no longer required a compressor on a surface craft.  The diver was free and untethered to dive where he wished. …Now he was daily aware that the growing competition was anxious to move in on his operation.  One example of how extreme the situation became occurred in 1960….

McKee heard some ugly rumors.  He learned that a group of rival treasure hunters calling themselves the River Rats…planned to give McKee some trouble about the Capitana.

McKee had no idea what they were going to do, but he planned to keep a sharp eye on his lease holdings.”

As Burgess tells the story, the confrontation occurred one day when the River Rats boat aboard their boat the Buccaneer, made their move on McKee.

“Looking over the Capitana, he saw that the cannon and the marker (which established his lease with the state of Florida) were missing.  Before he could notice anything else, however, five scuba divers—the whole crew of the Buccaneer—were coming down on him.

As they fanned out and approached, McKee backed up until he was against a huge mahogany timber he had put on the wreck to dress it up for the movies.

Thinking that they were going to pull off his mask and rough him up a bit, McKee did the first thing that came to mind.

He put up his hand like a traffic cop.

The menacing divers stopped in their tracks.

McKee did not want to use his bangstick on any of them, but he patted it.  He turned around, and as he explained…’like a damned fool, instead of getting six feet away, I chocked the pole down to 3 feet and hit that damned timber as hard as I could with it.  It went whoom!  Jammed my mask down and bloodied my nose!’

When McKee looked around, just one diver was left.  All he saw were the fins of the others heading back to their boat.

‘I looked back at this guy and he was still there, crouched down…and I could see a big question mark over his head, you might say, wondering . . .’

‘So I patted this bangstick again.  I only had one shot, but he didn’t know that.  I started toward him and he took off fast.  So there I was.  I had all the confidence in the world, walking on down that wreck.’”

New Techniques for Restoring Coral

For the past few years I have followed the efforts of the Coral Restoration Foundation in Key largo and Rescue a Reef at the University of Miami to restore degraded reefs off the Florida coast by growing staghorn coral before transplanting it to various reefs.  A report on the website Phys.org describes a new technique, whereby researchers "sow" corals over a reef-an effort that appears to be more efficient in transplanting coral. 

"The troubling loss of coral reefs worldwide has prompted scientists and conservationists to assist the reefs' recovery through active restoration approaches. Transplanting corals on degraded reefs aims at increasing coral cover and subsequently promoting structural habitats. Until now, actual restoration has been done manually by divers, who had to attach each coral, whether a fragment or a coral recruit settled on a substrate, individually.

Today, reef degradation occurs at a scale of hundreds and thousands of square kilometers. In contrast, current restoration activities are usually less than one hectare in scale. These efforts are limited by the fact that only labor-intensive, and therefore costly, techniques are currently available. "If we want restoration to play a more meaningful role in coral reef conservation, we need to think in new directions. Our sowing approach is an important step towards reaching this goal since it will allow the handling of large numbers of corals in a very short amount of time at significantly lower costs", says Dr. Dirk Petersen, project lead and Executive Director of SECORE International."


Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-01-corals-approach-paves-large-scale-coral.html#jCp

USVI Coral Damage from Maria and Irma

Extent of hurricane damage to Caribbean coral reefs revealed by scientists

Exploration of seas in the US Virgin Islands reveals habitats devastated by this year's storms


Early investigations of coral reefs in the US Virgin Islands have revealed severe damage resulting from hurricanes Maria and Irma, which struck the region this year.


The impact of the hurricanes that tore through the Caribbean in 2017 was clear, but less obvious were the devastating consequences for underwater environments.


To read the complete article and see video of the survey, please see link below.

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/hurricane-irma-maria-coral-reef-damage-caribbean-islands-us-virgin-a8129961.html

The Problem with Shifting Baselines

“Yellowbanks—good spot for abalone” my fading and barely legible printing in a terse, 32-year-old logbook entry indicates.  It was a fine day of diving on the southeast side of Santa Cruz Island. The log entry fades, but the memory of abundant pink abalone stays in my mind.  A few years later, the “withering foot disease” decimates the abalone populations of the northern Channel Islands, bringing the species to the brink of local extinction.  A new diver visiting Yellowbanks for the first time in the mid-1990s finds a healthy kelp forest ecosystem albeit one that is devoid of abalone.  Since that diver never experienced the area with abalone, that diver’s “baseline” of a healthy ecosystem does not include abalone. Only the scattered abalone shell fragments in the seabed indicate the species was ever present.

The above phenomenon is known as the “shifting baseline syndrome.” Identified in 1995 by Daniel Pauly, a shifting baselines syndrome posits that people measure ecosystem change against their personal recollections of the past and, based on this decidedly short-term view, unknowingly tolerate gradual and incremental change in the ecosystem.

Divers continually establish baselines, a point driven home for me a few years ago while diving the Kona Coast of the Big Island of Hawaii with a freshly-minted teenage diver.  The coral reef with all its life fascinates us.  Our baselines are the same.  While I know from historical accounts that the coral reefs around the island once were more abundant, this condition is counterfactual to my experience.  One is textbook knowledge, the other is experiential, with the latter being the more powerful of the two. 

A recent study examines the loss of coral reefs in the Florida Keys by comparing  240-year-old  British Admiralty nautical charts of the area against satellite data.  The study found overall loss of 52% (Standard Error, 6.4%) of the area of the seafloor occupied by corals.  The study notes

The near-complete elimination of the spatial coverage of nearshore coral represents an underappreciated spatial component of the shifting baseline syndrome, with important lessons for other species and ecosystems. That is, modern surveys are typically designed to assess change only within the species’ known, extant range. For species ranging from corals to sea turtles, this approach may overlook spatial loss over longer time frames, resulting in both overly optimistic views of their current conservation status and underestimates of their restoration potential.

The study, “Ghost reefs: Nautical charts document large spatial scale of coral reef loss over 240 years” can be found at http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/9/e1603155

International Year of the Coral Reef

The third International Year of the Coral Reef (IYOR) kicks off today, January 1, 2018.  Previous IYOR took place in 1997 and 2008.  To celebrate this year-long event, I have started this log to highlight some of my personal stories about diving reefs and other aspects of my diving.  I hope you enjoy reading this blog as much as I will enjoy writing it.