Steller Sea Lions: The Movie

 The Steller sea lion encounter in the Inian Islands left an indelible impression on my diving psyche.  I really did not relish another encounter in the wild.  But, you can’t really dive the border of the Gulf of Alaska without running into the critters.

Specifically, the area of the Gulf of Alaska where I do my open water diving, Resurrection Bay and Prince William Sound, is populated by the Steller sea lion Western Distinct Population Segment (DPS).  This DPS is listed as “endangered” under the Endangered Species Act,   (The Steller sea lions in the Inian Islands are part of the Eastern DPS, which was listed as “threatened” until 2013.  Their removal from the list is a conservation success story.)  As far as my encounters go, east versus west, are pretty much the same.

I was diving in the area of Mary’s Rock at the entrance to Resurrection Bay in May 2015 from the M/V BottomTime when I had my second memorable encounter with a large group of Steller sea lions.  At first, they were quite curious and playful, as shown in the accompanying video taken with a GoPro Hero 3+.  What the video does not show is how quickly their behavior became more aggressive as they started tugging on my gear and mouthing my hooded cranium.  They may have been bored because this encounter was much shorter than the one in the Inian Islands. 

In October 2014, I started as a volunteer exhibits diver helping to maintain the Steller sea lion, seal, and bird habitats at the Alaska Sea Life Center in Seward, Alaska.  As my participation in the science diving program at ASLC increased, my open water dives in Alaska dwindled to zero.  Nowadays, my 15 to 20+ a year dives in Alaska are working dives in the confined waters of the three habitats. 

The Steller sea lions are removed from the habitat for the duration of our maintenance dives, usually an hour or so.  My encounters with Steller sea lions today occur with them on the wet side of the habitat’s glass and me on the dry side.  They are magnificent creatures no matter how you encounter them.  I will note that ASLC divers will wear helmets when doing open water dives near Steller sea lion habitats.  I think if I ever again dive with the critters in the wild, I will do the same.  It seems like the prudent thing to do.

Steller Sea Lion Encounter--Inian Islands

 

Note:  This story is a revised and updated version of that published in as different blog.  This versions had more graphics including video.

Scuba divers encounter California sea lions often in Southern California.  They dart around divers with a mesmerizingly dizzy choreography.  The liveliest encounters that I experienced with the critters occurred at Anacapa and San Miguel Islands

Dale Sheckler writing in California Diving News observed:

Underwater, these animals are very fast moving, precocious, and prone to mischief. They will zoom in right at your face, sometimes blowing bubbles, roaring all the way. It is all at the same time frightening, exhilarating, and fun.

Such encounters are truly special but often don’t last long enough for elaborate study or photography. The best sea lion encounters are those that last an entire dive. But that is tough to do. Sea lions bore easily. They move in quick, check you out, then move off. To keep them around for an entire dive you need to first go where the most sea lions are and, more importantly, better understand their behavior and keep the attention of these flighty speedsters of the deep that seem to be forever suffering from “attention deficit disorder.”

This narrative pretty much describes most of my encounters.  One memorable encounter happened while mapping the wreck of the Cuba at San Miguel Island.  One of them came from above and tugged on my fin as a held a tape measure in place.  I turned expecting to find my dive buddy only to see the sea lion disappear into the kelp as if to say “gotcha” in an aquatic version of ding, dong ditch.

When I moved to Alaska, I had a brief encounter with one of their larger cousins, the Steller sea lion. While diving with a group at Smitty’s Cove in Whittier a solitary Steller did a quick swim by.  If I had been looking in a different direction, I might have missed it.  Little did I know that was not how most encounters with Steller sea lions unfolded.

Saturday, July 21, and Sunday, July 22, 2007, The Inian Islands, Southeast, Alaska

We anchored in a pass between two of the five islands that make up the Inian Island group just outside Glacie Bay Naional Park and north of the community of Elfin Cove.  The scenery this clear July morning is nothing short of spectacular.  I awaken early, grab a cup of coffee and head topside of the MV Nautilus Explorer to enjoy a wonderful panorama of the heavily wooded islands and the mountains beyond.

The amplified chimes ring and the loudspeaker announcement “good morning, dive briefing in the main salon” invites still sleepy divers to the early morning dive briefing. In these latitudes the day dawns early, so the sun is well into the sky as we haul ourselves into the salon to learn about the dive. We will not be disappointed. Today’s dive will take us to a reef in the Inian Islands and an area frequented by Steller sea lions. As a result, the skipper cautions that we will be subject to scrutiny by the sea lions. The plan is to anchor up in about 30 feet of water, descend to the bottom, hunker down along the rock ledges, and let the sea lions initiate contact. The behavior we expect witness will start out with curiosity and progress to aggressive posturing to possible “mouthing”—what I call “play chicken and chew.” We would descend and ascend in groups, after all, there is safety in numbers. While the briefing thoroughly covers the contingencies, the abstraction of the description does not quite equate to the reality of the situation.

I am no stranger to marine mammal encounters having been joined by California sea lions on numerous dives. These experiences and critters are not similar, not even close. The similarity ends with the words “sea lions” in their name. (Steller sea lions are the only living members of the genus Emetopias; their closest living relatives include other sea lions in the genus Zalophus which includes the California sea lion.) Compared to their lower 48 west coast counterparts, Steller sea lions are larger, more aggressive, and seem to have an attitude that goes along with being the biggest and toughest critter on the rock.

A little description sets the stage. Males can tip the scales at 2,500 pounds and measure 11 feet in length, although the bachelor bulls we may encounter will most likely weigh less than half that maximum (whew, that’s a relief). Females can weight up to 800 pounds andmeasure 9.5 feet in length.   The bachelor Steller sea lion is still larger than most full-grown California sea lions. To put it in perspective, a half-ton Steller sea lion exceeds the capacity and cargo space of most full-size pickup trucks. One guide book describes the behavior of the Steller sea lion as “the species roars and growls deeply rather than barking; sometimes swims by to inspect divers” and goes on to describe California sea lions as “darker and smaller” than their Alaska relatives.

After the dive I concluded that the author of that book has a gift for misunderstatement. If what I witness on this dive is a “swim by” then the Luftwaffe fighters going after 8th Air Force bombers did a “fly by.” To top it off, there is no agreement as to their name, various sources identify the critters as Steller sea lions, Stellers sea lions, and Steller’s sea lions.

The First Encounter

I enter the water with the last third of the divers reflecting more my station at the back of the skiff rather than the luck of the draw. When I get to the bottom, I find a rock in the kelp and used it as cover. Trouble is, at least two other divers want to use the same rock so we get stacked up; but we decide to play well together and take turns alternately cowering and looking up. This rock seems to be a valuable piece of real estate and I consider selling it in a time share scheme. Cautiously at first, the sea lions began to work the outer perimeter of our group. Looking up, I see what looks like dozens of sea lions darting around above in a quite stunning choreography of fur and fat. I take random pictures with my Sony Cybershot digital camera as the situation allows, but in the turbid green water figured all I would get is “shadows” of the sea lions as they climb, dive, and loop-the-loop about us. I notice my buddy’s tank band has come lose and the tank slipped down. I point out the situation to another diver closer to her and he quickly repositions the tank and cinches the band tight.

Instantaneously, as if on cue, the sea lions’ actions change. They move closer, abandoning any pretense of turning away at the last minute. As if to “count coup,” the critters begin “mouthing” the divers. The sea lions seem to mouth anything that is exposed, which in the shelled up position most of us have assumed seems to leave just our heads. The critters seem to come in waves rather than in a constant frontal assault. The scene is a melee of cowering divers and plunging sea lions. We are surrounded and outnumbered and I begin to wonder if this how Custer felt. 

I see a diver in front of me get mouthed on the top of his neoprene hood, a situation that reminds me of checking the ripeness of melons in the grocery store produce section. I get the same treatment a few times on the noggin, these are equal opportunity stalkers. One tugs hard at my regulator hose; now it is getting personal; which means it is time to leave.

I join a small group of divers heading to the surface. We make no safety stop. A few of the sea lions detach from the main body and follow us up, although whether they do so as an escort or to pick off stragglers I can’t say. They play a Border collie role in that they keep the flock together.

A pretty stiff current is running at the surface and some of us begin to drift away from the skiff. The crew directs us to “swim toward the boat” as they are plucking other divers out of the ocean. Kicking against the current, the best I can do is slow the drift and wait for the skiff to motor over for the pick up.

Back on board the Nautilus Explorer, I peel back my drysuit and discover the polar fleece undergarment is damp. I figure that in craning my neck to watch the sea lions, a trickle of water entered through the neck seal.

The Second Encounter

The next day, we do an afternoon dive at a location the skipper has named “Bad Girls Wall.” In the dive briefing, the skipper surmises that we will probably see more sea lions on this dive, just not in the number we encountered the day before. As we drift along the wall, the sea lions approach and dart away, seemingly more curious and not exhibiting the belligerent aggressiveness evident on the previous day’s dive. Except for their size, I would speculate these California sea lions that strayed up the coast. My illusion and complacency startling shatters at the end of my safety stop. A sea lion zips in and mouths my forearm as if being offered the drumstick of a Thanksgiving turkey. (I should probably be thankful he didn’t want a thigh or breast.) I am startled as its oral cavity encompassed my drysuit-clad arm. I feel the squeeze but not much pressure. He lets go and is gone as quickly as he arrived. The incident, which lasts all of one or two breaths doesn’t last long enough for my surprise to progress to astonishment.

Back on the Nautilus Explorer, my dive buddy Lynn tells me that by happenstance he captured the encounter up to the point of connected of the sea lion’s mouth around my forearm. The video camera was running and he turned it off as we broke the surface. As I watch the replay, I see the critter approach mouth wide open as if it were about to rip into a salmon. I am pleased and relieved it knew the difference. The last frame of the video is just prior to the point of contact, making for a very dramatic visual.

I resolve to sit out a dive that goes back to the rookery.  Steller sea lions have a reputation for being “the grizzlies of the sea” and I don’t feel like poking the bear.

A few days later, a visit to the Whale Museum at Telegraph Cove, British Columbia, dramatically reinforces this point. The docent compares a Steller sea lion scull side-by-side with that of a brown bear (as in grizzly bear for those of you who don’t speak Alaskan or BC). The Steller skull dwarfs the brown bear’s skull. She highlights another anatomical difference—the brown bear has both incisors and molars reflecting his omnivore diet; the Steller sports only incisors. Fortunately, I can look at the skull and teeth before me with the disinterested detachment of someone who has looked into the jaws of the living animal.

Is any of the foregoing an exaggeration? If there is any doubt, I suggest you take the plunge and find out for yourself.

Nejat Ezal Memorial

A memorial plaque mounted on a huge boulder lies in the shade of the kelp beds of the Casino Point Dive Park, Avalon, Catalina Island.  

NEJAT B. EZAL, 1969 – 1994.  Dreaming of Orcas.  Friends Forever We Will Be

Nejat was my friend.  Today marks the 40^th anniversary of the accident that claimed his life.

A diver sharing a report of his dives on Scubaboard in August 2010 remarked “visited the Sue jac (an old wreck that marks one corner of the park)…the Cousteau memorial. I came across a small memorial plaque to "Nejat B Ezal" mounted to a rock in the vicinity of the Sue jac but shallower. Can anyone share the history of this? I didn't see anything about it elsewhere.” 

One reply simply stated “Nejat B Ezal suffered a shallow water blackout while freediving in 1994 and died. He had just turned 25.”  Another referred him to the memorial page at nejatezal.com. 

Many years ago...I met Nejat through his brother, Kenan.  We all worked at Delco Systems Operations in Goleta, California, but it was outside of work that I got to know them.  In 1984, I got certified as a Basic Scuba Diver in a class at UC Santa Barbara and quickly became obsessed with all things diving.  I would swim with fins along the swim buoy line at Goleta Beach to stay in condition for diving.  I encountered Nejat and Kenan launching their sailboard from the beach one afternoon.  Prior to learning to dive, I too had done a fair amount of sailboarding on my Windsurfer Sport.  We struck up a conversation and quickly bonded over our love of the sea. 

The brothers also did scuba diving.  Nejat advanced to become a divemaster through a course taught at Santa Barbara Aquatics.  I recall advising him that despite the real frustration he might experience during the course, there was no better instructor for potential divemasters than Curt, the owner of the shop. 

In 1987, I started a Ph.D. in Political Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The degree provided the vehicle for me to change fields from Aeronautics to Ocean and Coastal Management.  A few years later, Nejat asked me about my experience using graduate work as a means of changing fields.  He wanted to move from engineering to marine biology.  He easily made the transition. 

I would see Nejat around campus and when I was jogging along the dirt trails of Ellwood Mesa.  He would fall in with me allowing me to set the pace.  He was much faster than I.

At UCSB, Nejat quickly built a reputation among the professors and researchers as a friendly, highly competent, and resourceful graduate assistant.  I recall one story when Nejat was on a research cruise to the Antarctic to study krill when the expedition scientists discovered a shortage of test tube stoppers.  Using the machine tools onboard the vessel and rubber bar stock, Nejat produced the needed stoppers. 

He continued to dive as a UCSB scientific diver through the Marine Science Institute and as a member of the UCSB dive club.  The latter included camping/dive trips to Point Lobos State Park, Anacapa Island and the annual dive weekend at Avalon, Catalina Island.

I recall, in particular, a series of four dives that Nejat made over the 4^th of July weekend in 1992.  On Friday, July 3, I was working on my dissertation with the radio tuned to a local station.  The station featured an on air marketplace.  I heard the announcer offer two spots on a Sunday dive boat out of Ventura at half off the regular price.  I immediately called the dive shop and reserved the spots.  I called Nejat to ask if he wanted to go.  Luckily, I got ahold of him.  Of course, he said “yes.”

I picked up Nejat at his nearby apartment early Sunday morning and we headed for Ventura to board Spectre.  We settled in, rigged our gear, and after a quick trip across the Santa Barbara Channel arrived at Anacapa Island.  Conditions for diving were ideal, calm seas, partly sunny skies, and great underwater visibility.  We did four dives that day at three different locations to typical depths for kelp forest dives: 60 feet for 37 minutes; 40 feet for 45 minutes, 50 feet for 40 minutes; and 50 feet for 40 minutes.  Normally, I would only have done three dives.  To do four dives on Spectre a diver had to rush given the tight schedule for opening and closing the gate. I usually enjoyed a more leisurely pace. However, given Nejat’s enthusiasm, I did make all four.  When Nejat told others at Santa Barbara Aquatics, their incredulous response was “Jim did four dives?!?”

The Day 30 years ago...The UCSB Scuba Club has made an annual end of April pilgrimage organized by Ed Stetson to dive the waters off Casino Point since 1979.  I first attended the Catalina Island trip in 1986, then in its 7th year.  I continued to make the trip annually as one of the divemasters until 1993 and have made the event sporadically since 1998.  I did not make the trip in 1994.  My position as a lecturer teaching a course in Public Administration during the UCSB spring quarter prevented me from going that fateful year.

Sunday morning, April 24, found me home at the kitchen table grading a stack of term papers when the phone rang.  I still remember Nejat’s girlfriend, Claire, tearfully informing me that the day before Nejat had drown while freediving.  I was stunned and shocked with a dose of disbelief.  After the call, I drove to the nearby Santa Barbara Aquatics dive shop to see if anyone had further details.  From what they gleaned, Nejat had made multiple solo free dives in the vicinity of the Suejac, probably succumbed to shallow water blackout and drown.  Everyone was in a state of shocked disbelief.

The following Saturday, family and friends gathered at the Cliff House overlooking the Pacific at
Coal Oil Point for a celebration of Nejat’s life.  During a poignant slide-show narrated by Nejat’s dad, I was overcome with a profound sense of grief.  While I was there to help comfort the family, they ended up consoling me. 

Within a few months, people endowed a number of scholarships in Nejat’s memory.  One of the scholarships supports Marine Diving Technology students at Santa Barbara City College.  Nejat’s friends organized a Dive Rescue Workshop in the following years that trained divers in rudimentary dive rescue techniques with the goal of reducing tragedies like the one that took Nejat.  

A short time later… How the metal plaque came to be placed at the site is something of an local legend.  It seems that Avalon had a policy against installing such monuments.  Shortly before I left Goleta to take up a faculty position at Troy University in Alabama, Kenan, queried me about how such a plaque could be affixed to an underwater rock.  I suggested that a waterproof epoxy adhesive much like one used to repair a swimming pool might work but I was not certain.  As I heard the story sometime after.  It seems a number of Nejat’s friends, many who went through the Santa Barbara City College Marine Technology program, clandestinely installed the plaque during a couple of night dives.  The marker is not only secured using adhesives.  They drilled into the rock and secured the memorial with fasteners.  The plaque is permanently affixed to the rock!

A few years later…A sunny, warm, and partly cloudy late April morning, the kind of day that makes the annual trip to Catalina Island legendary.  On the calm surface, surrounded by kelp, Kenan and I check the line-ups using the peak of the Casino with one of the dome’s flag poles and another landmark.  We drop down and start searching the boulders for the plaque, which we quickly locate.  I have the honor today of cleaning up the marker to remove any algae or marine growth that may have accumulated on the plaque.  Our tools are simple, white nonabrasive scouring pads (sometimes refered to as “magic erasers) and other implements for removing more stubborn encrusting organisms.  Cleaning the plaque was a privilege. 

More years later…Since moving to Alaska in 2002, my trips to Catalina with the UCSB Scuba Club have been fewer and fewer—2004, 2014, 2022, and 2023.  On some of the trips I locate the memorial on others I search but don’t find it.  The lineups to geographic references are meticulously recorded in a travel journal that disappeared from my bookshelf.  I knowthe plaque is there, other divers reported seeing it in 2022 and 2023. The plaque stands as a testament to a man who loved the sea and the wonders he found in the deep.  

I think inscription of “Friends Forever We Will Be” most eloquently sums it up.  I miss my friend.

Nejat's memorial page can be found at www.nejatezal,com

 

My First Experience Teaching Scuba--The Beach Dive

The graduation dive took place at Hendry's Beach near Santa Barbara. The weather reruns from the previous day.  I suspect we will have the same tomorrow. The beach offers all the attributes for a great dive, lots of parking, an area for gearing up, easy access to the water, a decent rock reef with kelp close to shore, freshwater showers, and a good restaurant for the apres-dive debriefing. It also offers a beach break large enough to show students how to do surf entries and exits but not so large as to knock them down in the process.

Fins on and shuffling backwards, we enter the water in a line. Ed takes one end of the line and I take the other. We act as choreographers for what looks like a line of drunken sea lions doing the cancan. Only Dave, who carries the dive flag, float, and anchor, is excused from the dance. I think if I started doing the conga, all would follow my lead. The line breaks as students stop and brace for the two-foot wave that comes in. At chest-deep water, we roll over and kick out. At this point, I play border collie, working to keep buddy pairs together and the pairs together as a group, reminding divers that the slower swimmer sets the pace for the team.

We drop down into 25 feet of water on the edge of the reef. I stay on the bottom while Ed brings the divers down one-buddy-pair-at a time. Visibility, a spotty 20 feet, gets driven lower if the students begin to thrash around. These kids are pretty good. Ed goes down the line doing final skill checks with each student--mask removal and replacement, regulator removal and recovery and so on. I'm an outrider, swimming back and forth in the event that anyone needs assistance. After the checks, we break into two groups. I show the divers how to use sand ripples for navigation. We see many crabs and kelp bass. We even get checked out by a bat ray, who undoubtedly came by to apologize for being absent from Bat Ray Cove the day before.

The dive ends uneventfully. We hold our dive debriefing. We pose for the obligatory after-dive photos. Today's dive will be number 47 in my log book. I was certified as a basic diver one year ago to the day.

Dave hosts a graduation BBQ at his apartment that night.

He pulls me aside and asks, "who's this guy Mike Nelson that you guys keep talking about? Was he a student of Ed's who had really screwed up?"

I mention that Lloyd Bridges played super diver Mike Nelson in the TV show Sea Hunt.  “Every week, for four seasons, Mike would get into some situation underwater that only his skill could overcome.”

“When was that on TV?” Dave asks.

Just then I knew that there was a generation gap, even though I was only nine years older than the person asking the question.  I had seen Sea Hunt in reruns on after school afternoon TV. 

Teaching scuba is a lot like love affairs. They come and go, they last a short period of time (but what a wonderful time), and while you may forget faces and names of the participants after a few dozen, you will always remember most the details about your first, even though it was the most awkward. So it is with mine. So it is with mine.

The saying, "a journey of a thousand miles begins with a small step," appropriately describes my life path that began in that instant. Over next decade-and-a-half, I helped as an assistant instructor/divemaster in dozens of scuba diver certification courses. At times this underwater activity has been a hobby, a vocation, a job, and an obsession. I have met a lot of interesting people along the way and it’s been a lot of fun. I've also met a fair number of people for whom diving was a bucket list activity; they never went diving again.  But that's another story.

One of the divers in this story, Dave, went on to become a very good friend and an excellent dive buddy. We took the UCSB dive club trip over to Catalina for a weekend that is still talked about. He became an assistant instructor and went on to teach one season at the Club Med in Playa Blanca, Mexico. I visited him for a week at the Club. When I walked in, Dave and the Chief of Scuba asked if I would be interested in staying for two weeks and teaching scuba, since they were unexpectedly short-staffed at the end of the season. Despite the tempting offer, I could not accept since I had an obligation to get back to in the states. I did work as a dive guide for that week on the morning dives, which allowed the regular dive staff a little relief time. When I flew out at the end of the week, Ed flew in to finish out the one week left in the season.

 

My First Experience Teaching Scuba--The Boat Dives

The honor of breaking me into the rewarding career of assistant scuba instructor fell to Ed Stetson, a diver and waterman without equal. Ed taught an assistant instructor certification course to several proto-instructors just a few weeks before. When he put out a call for volunteers to help assist a class offered through the Outdoor Recreation program at the University of California, Santa Barbara, I immediately volunteered.  It was the same arrangement that certified me as a basic scuba diver one year earlier.

Dive classes are divided into three parts--classroom instruction, pool skills training, and open water dives. The class took advantage of all the facilities a university has to offer, a good classroom, an Olympic-size swimming pool, and in the case of UCSB, the Santa Barbara Channel for open water dives. Ten students enrolled for the four-week-long class. During the swim test, we discovered that while ability varied, they were all competent swimmers. Some would swim like dolphins, the others just kind of paddled along. None swam like an anchor, for which we silently thanked Poseidon.

Students did not comprise the entire group.  A mother-daughter pair enrolled in the course.  Joy, the daughter, worked on campus.  Gladys, her mom, was doing the course because she thought it would be fun.  She was the trouper in the class and became something of a “den mother” to the group.  She was adventurous and very well-traveled, striking out on all kinds of treks around the globe.  She told me that she went solo on many of these travels because her retired Air Force husband just did not want to leave Santa Barbara after so many overseas assignments during his career.  One of the youngsters told me after the class “when you see Gladys going through the drill without complaint, you just kind of suck it up and do it.”

The group of ten soon coalesced into a class. We rotated buddies throughout the pool skills sessions. The class met two nights a week, with each evening session split evenly between classroom and pool skills.  The classroom exercises covered essential knowledge in a typical lecture format.  To emphasize a point, Ed would occasionally make reference to a hypothetical diver who thought he knew everything as "a real Mike Nelson.”

The first pool session consisted of showing the students how to hook up the scuba gear and then monitoring as each worked with a buddy to assemble their rig, practicing various entries and surface dives, swimming with the equipment and essential skills.  We watched to make sure that each diver adjusted the equipment properly and did each skill correctly. We emphasized the importance of working as a buddy pair.  We also made sure that each diver was paired with a different buddy for each session.

Confident of their abilities, the class was ready for the scheduled open water dives at Anacapa Island for July 26 and a beach dive for July 27--one year to the day that I was certified as a basic diver.

You may know the typical July Southern California weather pattern--low clouds and fog, with partial clearing along the coast in mid-afternoon. (In fact, people speculate that one reason our TV weather personalities are such clowns is that they have to be entertaining since the weather seldom varies.) We boarded the M/V Captain Midnight owned by Jerry Shapiro, attorney-turned-dive-boat-owner, and skippered by Capt. Don MacIntyre, from whom I learned a great deal about reading the moods of the sea. The crossing from Channel Islands Harbor in Oxnard to Anacapa Island went very smoothly, the seas behaved with little swell.

First Dive--Bat Ray Cove

The appropriately named "Bat Ray Cove," scene of our first dive, did not live up to its billing on this day, at least for my team. Ed asked me to take four students on a tour. Jurgen was an exchange student from Germany. Bruce graduated a few weeks earlier and spent the summer tying up some loose ends in his academic record before moving on. Dave, in his third year of Pre-law wanted to learn to dive so he stayed around for the summer session. Bill, a temporary refugee from urban Los Angeles, came to UCSB for summer school to escape USC.

When we got to the site, Ed gave the class an overview on conditions and the purpose of the dive.  After the briefing, we told everyone that they could gear up, cautioning them to don their gear from their station.  We asked that they not to spread gear all over the deck as it not only constituted a tripping hazard, but inevitably someone’s gear always came up missing from a pile.  Luckily, the boat did not rock much at anchor.  Gearing up on a pitching deck can present a real challenge for student divers.

After carefully checking each student's gear at the gate, we entered the water one at a time, faced the divemaster and gave the "OK" sign. We dropped down the anchor line and began our underwater tour. The marine life cooperated; we examined sea hares, identified scallops and the plentiful abalone, and tried to play tag with an octopus that really didn't want to be "it." The twenty-five-foot visibility made the dive seem effortless, the group stayed together. We surfaced near the stern of the boat, climbed aboard the swim stair, shed our fins, and boarded the boat. I learned working with later classes things do not always go so well.

Second Dive--Barracuda Rock

After recovering all the divers, and taking roll call to make sure, we moved the boat to Barracuda Rock. This time the location lived up to its billing. My team consisted of the same four divers with the addition of Mattius, another German student. I check each diver's repetitive group computation. We visited a nearby underwater arch, but had to cut the excursion short when the first diver with 750 psi of pressure signaled "low-on-air." We stay longer, 30 minutes, and go a bit deeper, 30 feet, on this dive. On the way to the surface, we spotted the silver torpedo-like silhouette of a barracuda. On the surface, we practiced the kelp crawl--a necessary skill to learn.

If you dive in California, you will eventually find that a rather large kelp bed positioned itself between you and the boat or the beach during your dive. Also, for some unexplained reason, you will not have enough air left in the tank to drop down and swim through the kelp. If you can't go under the canopy, and can't go around it, you have to go through it. The boat will not come and pick you up. California divers relish telling horror stories about how "man-eating" kelp drowns unsuspecting divers when they become entangled in the algae, akin to the Sargasso Sea trapping ships. My own optometrist related how he quit diving after finding the body of a diver wound into the kelp at Catalina. Don't believe it! To listen to these stories, one would conclude that the kelp beds are littered with bodies and that more divers are attacked by the kelp than are certified in any single year! Crawling through kelp can be a pain-in-the-ass, but if done correctly is a mere nuisance. The secret is not to panic, keep air in the BC, pass over it, and next time plan your dive a little bit better!

When we got back to the boat, I mentioned to Dennis Divins, the UCSB Diving Officer, that we saw barracuda. He grabs a spear gun and hops into the water. Next thing I know, he comes back with a fine specimen for the evening's dinner.

Third Dive--Barracuda Rock

We don't move the boat for the third and final dive of the day. On this dive, I show two divers around the area. Both divers adapt well to the ocean, but the look in the eyes of one of the divers makes me a little more cautious on this dive. Despite the OK sign, I see in one of the divers the onset of wide-eye apprehension. I do what my training tells me to do, I stop the tour, evaluate the situation, and decide on a course of action, which means getting the diver to the surface. The situation did not turn into limb-thrashing panic nor was it likely that it would have. I still have a conservative approach whenever I work with new divers.

We again took roll-call. In the decade that I worked as a dive master, I always had an irrational fear of leaving someone behind. Can you imagine coming to the surface only to see the boat sailing away? Can you imagine getting a call from the Coast Guard as your boat pulls into the slip inquiring about the one you left behind? 

I always insisted on positive verification that all the divers were indeed back onboard before we pulled the hook and headed for the barn. That habit started on this trip and has served me (and my divers) well. Not only have my boats always returned to shore with the same number of divers, they were same divers who got on board the boat that morning.

Celebrating Diving Milestones

 

On a trip to Kona in 2023, my buddy Luke logged his 50th dive. We also logged our 50th dive as a buddy team.  I christened the event,  “Hawaii Double Five-Oh, 50th in 50th” I took a picture of Luke signaling his 50th dive at the boat ramp. The dive itself was very memorable for it was the manta encounter night dive.  Back on board we removed and stowed our gear before heading back toward the harbor.  I mentioned that this was Luke’s 50th dive.  It elicited congratulations from our fellow divers but a “meh” from the crew.  I was a bit disappointed by that response.  On past trips with that operator I have seen similar milestones result in a moment of recognition by the dive leader and crew.

The next day we did our 50^th dive as a buddy team.  I snapped a picture of Luke giving me the “5-0” underwater.  Not a bad accomplishment for the two of us.  We have been diving together since Luke got certified in 2016.  The narrative of those experiences runs to many dozens of pages when transcribed from my dive journal.

Humans customarily mark various milestones or accomplishments with ceremonies, rites and rituals.  Aviators practice the tradition of cutting off the shirt tail of a student pilot upon completion of the first solo.  I recall the entry hall to the Civil Air Patrol building at Santa Barbara Airport in mid-1970s decorated with the shirt tails of several cadets.  The khaki shirt tail of my friend, Lee Ross, featured his name, date of solo, flight instructor Ernie Gabard’s signature, and the phrase “Jim missed his boat.”  That phrase alluded to me kidding Lee that the day he soloed I was going to be on a boat getting away to safety and that it would be a “damned crowded boat.”  When he called to tell me he soloed, I was greeted with “you missed your boat.”

Sailors crossing the equator become “shellbacks” with on-board ceremonies ranging from simple to elaborate. Scouts advance from “Tenderfoot” through “Eagle Scout” in formal ceremonies done before the entire troop.  Fraternal organizations conduct elaborate initiation ceremonies.  Head coaches get doused with Gatorade upon winning a football championship.  Military officer candidates choose from whom they receive the “first salute” upon commissioning.

What rituals does sport scuba diving use and for what accomplishments?  Not many come to mind.  I suppose receiving the initial certification or completing a new rating might qualify.

My instructor, Dave Rowell, upon completion of our basic diver course called us to the back of the boat, congratulated each of us, handed us our temporary certification card, and took our individual pictures with a Polaroid camera for our permanent card.  He then announced “you may now make a dive on your own with a buddy.  You are responsible for monitoring your repetitive group, depth, and time.” We all paired up, geared up and made our first dive.  It felt really good to be cut loose that way.

I recall Ed Stetson in Santa Barbara hosting a “meet and greet” with local dive instructors when his students completed their assistant instruction certification.  Other instructors I know host social events when a class finishes an open water certification course. 

The folks at CocoView Resort in Roatan use the Friday night dinner to recognize the accomplishments of guests during the week.  These events include specialty courses completed, certifications earned such as master scuba diver, and dive milestones such as the 100th, 500th dive and so on.  The enthusiasm of the awards is kind of infectious.  Everyone likes to be recognized by their peers.

Today, savvy dive shops and operators announce completion of certification classes via a social media post.  However, with few exceptions, most post certification milestones need to be individually or collectively planned among dive buddies.  You need to toot your own horn because no one is going to toot it for you.

Brooke Moreton of PADI noted that “doing something special not only helps you remember the hallmark dives, but also builds excitement moving forward.”  She suggests trying a new skill, like a night dive; diving a new location, documenting the dive with photos, making a souvenir, celebrating at dinner; and telling buddies and friends about the event.

On a trip to Catalina Island in 2001 with the UCSB Scuba Club, one of the members passed the 100-dive milepost. She made the Century Club at the turn of the century. (Yes, I am one of these purists who believe the millennium did start in 2001 A.D.) In a sport where most participants quit before their number of logged dives equals the age of majority, achieving five score dives is an accomplishment to be celebrated. 

While we did not have a brass band playing or even the Catalina barbershop quartet singing "I did it my way" upon her exit from the underwater park, you can see from the picture that the threesome dive team does have that infectious enthusiasm for the sport. If you look closely, you will see they are holding up fingers to form the numbers 1-0-0. I learned something about photography that day. Hands in black gloves do not contrast very well with a background of black wetsuits. Still, look at their expressions. This is one happy trio celebrating individual achievement.

So why can’t everybody have that kind of experience?