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