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)

Fore: Golf Balls in the Ocean

"Alex Weber takes a deep breath through her snorkel and dives to the bottom of Carmel Bay, a calm coastal cove several kilometers south of Monterey, California. Just meters away, atop the small cliffs that drop into the waves, golfers tread on the emerald greens of Pebble Beach Golf Links. It’s early December—the sky’s blue, the weather T-shirt warm. The golfers swing their way from hole to hole on the famed golf course. Unfortunately, their aim is rarely perfect. Weber surfaces 45 seconds later and drops nearly a dozen golf balls into a yellow mesh bag held open by her father, Mike, who is also in a wetsuit and snorkeling gear. The pair have been in the water for several hours and have collected more than 1,500 golf balls—the fallout of a sport that has unseen, and probably significant, consequences for the ocean."--Hakai Magazine 

As I read this introduction to this article, I recalled diving off of Isla Vista near Santa Barbara and finding a number of golf balls over the years--most of which had painted stripes which marked them as balls that had been reclaimed from water hazards at golf courses and used at driving ranges.  At first I thought they might be from the nearby Sandpiper Golf Course (which sits atop the old Ellwood Oil Field) and moved down the coast by the littoral transport of sand.  But, there were too many and as I recall, Sandpiper did not have a driving range.  As a kid, I had purchased marked golf balls to save money as I sliced and hooked my way through the local par 3 pitch-putt course.  As sport I gave up, by my teenage years.  One of my dive buddies who lived in Isla Vista surmised it was a more local source--student residents of the bluff top apartments using their decks as the tee box for an oceanic driving range.


Finding them while diving nearby Goleta Beach, I figured they might be left over from years used as props in the annual Underwater Easter Egg hunt that the UCSB Scuba Club held there for many years.  In the 1980s, the hunt was a popular event with all the local dive shops donating great prizes.  The presence of golf balls might be fitting as the bottom of Goleta Beach is like a perpetual sand trap, except for the organisms that grow on the sewage treatment plant ocean outflow pipeline that runs perpendicular to the beach, just to the west of the pier.  I guess they would not do that anymore given the attention that plastics in the ocean now receives.

I read today's story in the on-lime Hakai Magazine with great interest.  I  never really thought of the golf balls as a source of plastics in the ocean.  Over the years, I have read stories about divers who make money recovering balls from water hazards on golf course all over the country.  People make a living doing this recovery, sometimes with potential for occupational injury  I guess that is one way to make money on scuba.

As the Hakai article continues, it features the campaign of Alaskan Rick Steiner to close down the attraction of a Fairbanks hotel-restaurant, Pikes Landing, where guests are invited to drive golf balls across the Chena River.  Full disclosure, when I stayed at Pikes Landing while swimming a 5-K race at Chena Lakes five or six years ago, I did try my luck with the driver and a few balls and probably splashed a few.  Next time I run into Rick, which is a couple of times a year, Alaska is a small place, I guess I will have to offer to take a two-stroke penalty for doing so of he may insist that I play it where it lies.  That would add a whole new dimension to the concept of a water hazard. 

Southern California Beach Diving--Getting in is Half the Fun

For people learning to scuba dive in California, beach diving is a right-of-passage, a ticket to be punched, a skill to be demonstrated, and the experience that confers upon the participant the status as an all-around competent diver.   You can complete the entry-level openwater scuba diver course without ever getting sand on your fins, it can all be done from a boat, albeit more expensively.  Conversely, you can complete the course doing dives exclusively from the beach, diving from a boat is not a requirement for certification.  But, beach diving and boat diving are two sides of the same coin; they really do complement each other, making for a complete diver.  But, if you do not or cannot do a boat dive, you are a qualitatively better diver for having done the beach dives. 

California beach diving is more complex than boat diving.  All the latter requires you to do is take a leisurely boat ride to the destination, gear up from the comfort of your station, hop off the boat into the water, and descend—a maneuver made easier by the anchor line functioning as a firmly fixed descent line.  The former requires an ability to cross the beach enter the water, read the surf or get unceremoniously knocked down in the breakers and pushed into the splash zone, all while wearing cumbersome, heavy gear because until we break contact with the bottom, gravity is our enemy.  By comparison, a bear cub in boxing gloves looks as if it has the grace of a ballerina.

Marie DeSantis, in her 1985 book, California Currents:  An Exploration of the Ocean’s Pleasures, Mysteries and Dilemmas, described the following scene:

“Every weekend you can see their cars parked along the highway by the sea, and you can see them on the beach, walking backward into the surf, tripping over their flippers, backward through thousands of years of evolution, trying to keep from getting spit back onto the beach by the breakers that reject and the human form as easily as an old piece of driftwood.  Finally, there is a little lull in the surf, and a dozen black-suited sapiens return to the sea with only the red tips of their snorkels linking them to the air.”

A group of divers, complete with red-tipped snorkels, getting ready to enter the ocean at Sata Barbara's  Arroyo Burro County Park in July 1985.  Backs to the water, they prepare to suffle into the ocean.

I did beach diving for many years in Southern and Central California.  I could be at the beach, geared up, and entering the water within 20 minutes of leaving my house.  They kelp forest beckoned, although it sometimes required surface swimming a good distance while avoiding clumps of tar from the natural oil seeps that dot the seafloor.  But first I had to get into the water, which involved the following steps:

1. Find a parking space close to water’s edge.  If you got to the fog-shrouded, ocean-front park early in the morning before all the other beach goers seized spaces for the duration of sunlight this was not a problem.  Otherwise, you dropped your gear near the edge of the beach and went in search of a space and hoped your gear would still be there once you returned.  An empty parking space next to the sand is called “Hollywood Parking” because most of the time you only see that situation in the movies.  Once while diving an area called “Mesa Lane” or “Mohawk Reef” I parked in a neighborhood near a staircase down to the beach.  Local surfers had a reputation for hassling non-locals, which they defined as anyone who lived on the other side of the nearby traffic light.  Some of them approached prepared to harass me for the transgression of trespassing on their turf.  They relented when they saw me pull the air tank instead of a surfboard out of the back of my truck.
2. Locate a picnic table or space along the sea wall from which you can get into your gear.  Picnic tables at California beaches are nearly as rare as good parking spaces.  Seawalls are usually adjacent to high volume bikepaths, which is about the same as gearing up on a freeway.
3. After doing the SEA of SEABAG dive briefing, gear up trying to avoid getting sand on the inside of your wetsuit, where it transforms “neoprene” into “sandpaper.”
4. Walk across the sand (or rocks) to water’s edge.
5. Put on your fins, one fin at a time.  With one hand on your buddy’s shoulder, bend your knee across the other leg in what is known as the “figure 4” and slip the fin onto the foot securing the fin strap.  You then become the stabilizing post so your buddy can repeat the move for his or her fins.
6. Timing the wave set for a lull, shuffle backwards into the water (it is impossible to walk forward in fins without pitching face first into the sand).  Keep walking backwards giving mutual support to your buddy.  You will feel very clumsy because you are very clumsy.  This maneuver qualifies neither as “walking” or “swimming”.  I have compared it do drunken seals doing the high kicking line dance.  We shuffle to avoid stepping on top of any stingrays that may be lollygagging in the sand. 
7. When waist high, go face down and kick like mad to get through the breaker zone before the lull becimes a non-lull.  If you submerge remember, your snorkel becomes a straw.

After a great dive, you get to repeat the process.  This is not merely a matter of repeating the above steps.  Getting out of the water requires a slightly different calculus that getting into the water.  But that will have to wait for a future blog entry.

Meeting Tyonek

I was escorted into the presence of the beluga calf, Tyonek.  "Presence" is the right word.  He makes quite and impression slowly swimming  in the pool, rhythmically breathing through his blowhole.    For a few brief minutes, I was able to see him up close.  

He was soon to be fed three bottles of formula that appears to have the consistency of liquefied oatmeal.  The mixture replicates as close as possible the nutrients he would have gotten nursing from his mother in the waters of Cook Inlet --including a dash or so of herring.   But, Tyonek is an orphan, found stranded near his namesake village at the end of September2017 and transported to the Alaska Sea Life Center where began the long campaign for his survival.  With the heroic efforts of people at the Alaska Sea Life Center and beyond, and against the odds, he survived and began to thrive.  Tyonek cannot be released back into the wild and will soon be transferred to his permanent residence in San Antonio, Texas.

As I stood near the edge of the pool, Tyonek rolled, first to one side and then to the other, and seemed to look up, his eyes meeting mine.  “What do you suppose he is thinking?” I wondered out loud.  I can only imagine.  Like many people, I tend to “anthropomorphize”—attribute human traits, emotions, or intentions to animals.  It seems to come natural where cetaceans in general and belugas in particular are concerned.  The beluga has countenance that seems to be perpetually grinning as if it knows the secret to perpetual happiness, a secret it would love to share if only we could communicate.   But there is something about the eyes.  Perhaps the eyes are truly “the window to the soul.” 

Prior to seeing Tyonek at the Alaska Sea Life Center, my encounters with belugas had been from varying distance of “afar.”  I have seen them from the roadway along Turnagain Arm where they blend in with the wind driven whitecaps.  While flying as an observer on annual bowhead whale aerial surveys over the Beaufort Sea, I have spied them from fifteen hundred feet by the hundreds along the ice edge, their bright white bodies standing in vivid contrast to the cobalt blue water.  Last September, a couple of weeks before Tyonek stranded, we saw two pods close in to shore at Point Wornzof near Anchorage International Airport during the first annual beluga count. Previously, I viewed Tyonek from the public observation area above his pool where I had once encountered a toddler with his face pressed up against the window singing “Baby Beluga.”  

Many ocean and land conservationists recollect the transformative moment that an encounter like mine had on their outlook towards another species.  I recall a passage by Aldo Leopold in the book, Sand County Almanac, in which an encounter with wolves he and others just shot transformed his worldview.  “We reached the old wolf,” Leopold wrote “in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes.  I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes—something known only to her and the mountain.  I was young then, full of trigger itch; I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean a hunter’s paradise.  But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view.”

Seeing Tyonek was a great experience for me.  What it meant to Tyonek I can never know.  I like to think if I ever see him at Sea World San Antonio, that he would remember the encounter and greet me with a flash me that ever present smile as if to say "Yeah, I remember you standing in that Alaska winter sunlight. Good to see you again."  There goes that tendency to anthropomorphize again.  I don’t know yet how the encounter with Tyonek will affect me in the long run, but it has given me pause to reflect.

All photographs of Tyonek are from NOAA press releases or from the Alaska Sea Life Center Facebook page, no pictures were taken by the author.

Dive Briefing--Unpacking the SEABAG

Before entering the water, divers are encouraged to do a pre-dive briefing.  The challenge is what to include in the predive briefing?  A commonly used mnemonic device (a memory technique to help the brain better encode and recall important information and a real great word for Scrabble) that I was taught by my open water course instructor is SEABAG.

Site Assessment, Emergency Procedures, Activity,

Buoyancy, Air, Gear check and go

Site Assessment

• Name of the location--not every location has a name that people recognize, which is OK unless you have to call for help.  Telling an emergency services dispatcher after calling 9-1-1 that you are at "Depressions" (a local surf spot in Santa Barbara County) is as much of a description of a place as it is a state of mind.
• Entry and exit points--where to we plan to enter and exit.  These may not be the same place, be sure to reconnoiter both.
• Environmental conditions--surf, rip currents, rocks, flooding or receding tide, time of high or low tide, fog or any other factor that may be useful to know
• Other activities in the area such as surfing, fishing, boating. 

Emergency Procedures

• Local emergency response (This could be Divemaster, Lifeguards, Fire/Paramedic, harbor Patrol/Coast Guard) and how to activate the response).
• Location of the first aid kit and oxygen if you have these items on site.
• Location of cellular phone (in my day, it was location of nearest phone and change to make the call).  Nowadays it might be prudent to check cellphone reception prior to the dive.
• Lost buddy procedure if you become separated.

Activity

• What we are going to do?
• General route of the dive.
• Who is going to lead?
• What gear do you need for the activity?
• What signals do you use for descend, ascend, air check or any others you think are good

 Buoyancy

• Are you using a buoyancy compensation device?  Does it fill and release air?
• Do you have the weights?
• Are you weighted for your wetsuit and conditions?
• Check each diver's weight system.  This used to be called a "weight belt." With today's myriad of integrated weight systems, it is nice to know for each diver to know where the buddy's weight is carried and how to ditch it.

 Air

• Is your air on?
• How much of it do you have?
• Do your regulators work?

Gear check and go

• Does your buddy look like a diver?  Do a head to toe scan.  Is the gear properly rigged?
• Do you have everything you need for the dives?  (Computer, depth gage, compass, camera, float and flag, lights, game bag)

When I engage in scientific diving, a formal checklist is used and completed by the dive tender.  Most sport diving experiences do not require that level of formality or record keeping, so SEABAG is a good way to organize the briefing. 

Visiting Underwater Civilizations

This image was my screen saver for a couple of years on my work computer.  It garnered a few questions from my non-diving colleagues like “is that a real place?”  I explained, “no, but it is sure a place I would like to explore.”  The image looks like the ruin of an underwater coliseum or arena, complete with a statue the deity that protected the site.  

If you have ever seen Mysterious Island, the 1961 movie based on Jules Verne’s book, you may recall the “walking tour” that the crew took of the ruins of the underwater city, that at one time hosted a very advanced civilization.  These types of excursions are the stuff that many scuba divers daydream about, much to the consternation of our bosses.

Of course, the grand prize of all underwater civilizations waiting to be discovered is Atlantis.  I am reading a novel by David Gibbons, “Atlantis” that describes the discovery and exploration of the submerged civilization.  The exploration team led by marine archaeologist, Jack Howard, must move quickly yet cautiously to keep the secrets of the lost city from falling into the wrong hands.  It is a plot that is familiar to many readers of “Lost Civilization” stories dating back to a time when submerged cities sparked the imagination of those who sought adventure. 

Underwater sites that spark the imagination do exist around the world.  A wonderful website, Atlas Obscura, https://www.atlasobscura.com catalogs some of them.  

In some cases, natural formations and topography hint at submerged, human-made sites.   For example, the Bimini Road in the Bahamas (conjectured by some to be part of the Atlantis road system) or, perhaps, the pyramid-like structure of Yanaguni-jima Kaitei Chikei  in Japan.

The Sunken Pirate City at Port Royal, Jamaica is one location that is quite real.  The port had been a notorious center of piracy, and for a time one of the largest European cities in the “New World” when on June 7, 1692 when an earthquake and resulting tsunami submerged 33 acres of the city.  Today, the remains of the submerged section of the city is being explored and excavated by marine archaeologists. 

Matt Russell, with whom I worked on projects with at Channel Islands National Park, worked on the excavation of Port Royal while at East Carolina University.  Matt and I had been dive buddies when he was an undergraduate at UC Santa Barbara.  I recall attending an evening lecture with Matt to hear Dr. Robert Ballard, leader of the expedition that located the ruins of the US nuclear submarine USS Scorpion before moving on to find the HMS Titanic.  We also attended a lecture at the old Getty Museum in Malibu (before it moved to its present location) by Dr. George Bass, considered by many to be the father of marine archaeology.  Matt and I worked together through the UCSB Marine Science Institute’s Ocean and Coastal Policy Center to put on a public workshop on California shipwreck preservation in the late 1980s.  

While taking classes at UCSB, he was advised by an eminent archaeologist that “there are no jobs in marine archaeology.”  Since then, Matt’s career has debunked that statement.  He worked mapping shipwrecks as a volunteer and Channel Islands National Park, surveyed a stranded lumber schooner on San Miquel Island as part of his master’s thesis, and went on to earn a doctorate at UC Berkeley.  Along the way, he worked for many years in the National Park Service’s Submerged Cultural Resources Unit in Santa Fe, New Mexico, on projects such as raising and documenting the Confederate submarine Hunley and doing assessments of the USS Arizona at Pearl Habor.  While I lost touch with him a few years ago, I heard a few months ago that he now works as a consulting archaeologist in the private sector.

Exploring Shipwrecks in the Caribbean

I came across this Youtube video of  Frederick “Fritz” Hanselmann tat the University of Miami talking about the breadth and depth of Caribbean shipwrecks and sites and how they represent all aspects of civilization from Paleoindians to World War II.


Exploring Caribbean Shipwrecks


These shipwrecks and sites are part of the culture that developed from centuries of settlement so wonderfully described in the book, Empire's Crossroads: A History of the Caribbean from Columbus to the Present Day by Carrie Gibson.  I read this book as I was preparing for a trip to the Cayman Islands a few years ago.  On the islands one find manifestations of this maritime trade from wrecks to out of the way roadside displays.

Remebering Lisa Vandergriff

I have known many fine people for whom living the life aquatic through diving is their passion which is shared with infectious enthusiasm.  Tonight, the person embodying this spirit who instantly comes to mind is Lisa Vandergriff.  She partnered in that passion with her loving husband, Jerry—the inseparable First Couple of Alaska diving, even when that diving was in Cozumel and Kona.  They were long serving ambassadors of Alaska diving.  Perhaps most importantly, they were the Keepers of the Cove at a time when the cove most needed someone to help keep it.  And they always had fun while doing all of it.

It is with great sadness that I learned yesterday morning that Lisa passed away at home in Kona.  The ocean will seem a little bit larger and the Cove a little more lonely because of her passing.

As a scuba instructor, Lisa certified countless divers in the wintry waters of Smitty’s Cove in Whittier, Alaska.  Smitty’s was Lisa’s office—an interesting place to practice her craft of transforming uplanders into divers.  This is a difficult task made even more challenging when one considers it is being done in cold water and with divers in drysuits---gear that makes some feel like the balloon in Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade.  Many instructors could probably certify divers under these conditions, but few can convince the student divers that they are having fun while learning the skills.  Lisa was one who performed that remarkable feat.  I recall the joy with which she certified her teenage nephew.  While she was always enthusiastic with every student or dive buddy, there seemed to be for her a particular glee from passing on the love of diving to one of her relations.

Whittier lies at the head of a fjord in western Prince William Sound.  In the winter, waters are cold--a few degrees above freezing--and clear, perfect conditions for diving even in Alaska’s low winter sun.  Whittier has a reputation for having a perpetual snowstorm that starts in October and continues until switching over to perpetual rain storm sometime around April or May.   An exaggeration to be sure, but only a slight one.  The sunlight of the lengthening days of summer triggers a plankton bloom which turns the waters green and drives the underwater visibility to from dozens of yards to a few feet. 

These conditions may explain the popularity of referral courses—start the class and pool work in Anchorage, finish the open water portion of the course in Hawaii.  Yet, if you were Lisa-certified in Whittier, you could dive pretty much in any conditions anywhere in the world.  I recall two teenage brothers certified by Lisa went to Bonaire.  They related to me how the resort dive shop owner was reluctant to let these two freshly-minted open water divers venture out on their own. The shop owner asked “where were you certified?”  They responded, “Alaska” and the owner asked no further questions.  Cove-certified divers have one added benefit.  When the weather is clear, the view from the Cove is stunning as one gazes seaward toward glacier-bracketed Canal Passage. 

I recall the order of the typical Cove dive.  For Lisa and Jerry, the routine and the route had the familiarity of walking down well-worn neighborhood paths.  Gear up from the back of the vehicles in the parking lot.  Walk down the ramp to the water.  Put on fins.  Do the gear check. Submerge and head to the first underwater landmark, “the box.”  From the box and with enough air, the divers could make all or part of the grand tour.  As the bottom dropped dramatically, divers  yonder  in loose formation  to the airplane, the sea pen bed, the crane,  the wolf eel in the pipe, sauntering over to the reef balls before heading “up the hill” to the box doing a safety stop at the foot of the ramp.  Lisa and Jerry guided divers through the terrain, taking note of every critter encountered, exhaustively recorded in meticulously accurate detail in their diver log book.  When you approach every dive as an adventure, nothing you find is ever routine.  A second dive followed, but only after a surface interval that cautiously assured no one would exceed the no decompression limits.     

The last act of the day’s ritual was to sign log books over burgers at the nearby Anchor Inn—a social way to decompress with their diving friends.  I do not keep a logbook, so I would sometimes skip the gathering at the Inn.  In doing so, I deprived myself of one third of the dive because the best parts of any dive with Lisa and Jerry were the before, the during, and the after.

The diving and camaraderie were not just limited to Whittier.  Every year during Alaska’s summer, Jerry and Lisa would venture to Cozumel, inviting friends to join them for part or all of their time on the island.  They opened their Kona home to a constant stream of Alaska divers.  Other dives included the spring cleanup of an Anchorage area lake.  Monthly dinners at area restaurants, pot luck dinners with their dive group were events not to be missed.  

Particularly special was the annual Christmas party at their Anchorage residence and the Underwater Easter Egg hunt in Smitty’s Cove  followed by a gathering in Begich Tower.

It was all quite amazing.  I miss my friend.