Tales from the Logbook--Adrift at Santa Cruz Island

“I’ll see you back on the boat,” was the last thing Bryan said as he let the air out of his buoyancy compensator and dropped beneath the surface.  So here I was bobbing in the swell, alone, entrained in a current moving away from the dive boat and contemplating the best way to kill my soon-to-be ex-dive-buddy.  Definitely one of those “you are probably wondering how I got here” moments.

Just a few months earlier, in July 1984, I had completed my PADI Basic Diver certification and almost immediately signed up for the next course—Open Water 1--because it included compass navigation.  That skill was not part of the Basic Diver certification.  OW1 involved three dives.  We did one at Refugio State Beach in August and two at Anacapa Island in mid-September.  At the time, I was renting the complete package for the dive.  The rental wetsuit I used on the Anacapa dive was a bit too tight.  I purchased a two piece wetsuit (farmer john and beaver tail jacket) when I returned the rental gear.

In all these dives, the instructors had emphasized the importance of staying with your buddy.  I took this as an admonishment that becoming separated from your buddy was like an infraction.  That meant losing your buddy was a misdemeanor.  Abandoning your buddy therefore had to be tantamount to a felony.  

I Meet My Buddy

A visiting engineer, Bryan, overheard me speaking about my experience at work one day and introduced himself as a certified diver.  He was on temporary assignment at our facility and wanted to go diving in California before returning to the home office. 

As it happened, the local dive shop had a charter on board Mickey Defazio’s Sea Ventures out of Port Hueneme that very weekend.  I mentioned that I had already signed up for a spot on the boat as a single diver with the shop’s assurance of being paired with a dive buddy when I got on board.  This situation has some of the hallmarks of an arranged marriage where neither part knows the other.  Some call it “dive buddy roulette” while others call it “instabuddy.”  What could be better by eliminating the uncertainty by arriving at the boat already buddied up?  Bryan said he would sign up and rent all his gear.  With the ink barely dry on my sixth log book entry from my Open Water I certification two weeks earlier, that plan was set. 

Dive Day, September 30, 1984

I picked up Bryan from the Holiday Inn in Goleta for the forty five minute drive to Port Hueneme. About five minutes down Highway 101, Bryan said he forgot his dive mask and fins and we had to go back.  Not a good omen but not a disaster.  We returned to the Holiday Inn, he retrieved his gear and we were on our way.  By now we were running about 15 minutes late.  Mickey liked to leave on time, no exceptions.  Some people have speculated his prompt departure was, in part, driven by Sea Ventures slow speed.  If she didn’t leave on time, it would be a very dark arrival back in port after a three-dive day.  As others put it, “you come to appreciate the art of deliberate slowness on board that boat.” 

We clambered onboard just as the diesel engine started with a deep rumble and a belch of foul smelling smoke from the stack.  That was the signal for the deckhand to slip the mooring lines.  We slowly motored out of the harbor past aging decommissioned naval destroyers with TARGET SHIP KEEP AWAY painted on their rusting hull.  We cleared the breakwater made up in part of the rock covered wreck of the liner La Jenelle.  She ran aground on April 13, 1970 and was incorporated into the breakwater’s structure.  If you looked closely, you could still see the remains of the hull.

We had an uneventful crossing to the east end of Santa Cruz Island.  The anchor holding us securely, we started to gear up.  I was using rental gear including a 72-foot steel tank.  With a working pressure of 2200 psi, these scuba cylinders could be filled directly from a the compressor or a bank of larger air storage tanks on the boat. 

The First Two Dives

We descended down the line to the anchor in about 40 feet.  On the bottom, the kelp leaned with the strong current with about 15 feet of visibility.  We dropped to 55 feet hoping the current would dissipate with depth, but it really did not.  We began our dive into the current.  Divers start a dive into the current until they reach a turnaround point, about half a tank of air remaining.  Reversing course, the diver is swimming with the current until the end of the dive.

 

Kicking strenuously into the current quickly depleted the the air in my tank.  I signaled Bryan by making a circular motion with my finger that we should explore the immediate area.  After only 15 minutes, I had reached 500 psi and we ascended back to the boat. 

The second dive went a little better.  Knowing the current was still strong, we limited our dive to the area near the anchor.  The visibility improved to about 25 feet.  My bottom time increased remarkably and we spent 25 minutes on the bottom, with a maximum depth of 55 feet.

Returning to the boat, I removed the tank from the bc and regulator and placed it in the queue to have it refilled.  While doing the dive limit computations for the next dive, I wolfed down a coke, a couple of hot dogs, and a candy bar.  It was an action I would come to regret.  Bryan and I discussed the next dive and decided to stay shallower, right around 45 feet.

The Third Dive

My logbook entry for this dive cryptically states “CAUGHT IN CURRENT.”  The detail is hard to forget.

After assembling the regulator and bc on the now-refilled air tank, we geared up, did our buddy checks, and got in the water.  Descending down the anchor line, we stopped on the bottom, got our bearings, and started exploring an area away from the anchor.  Visibility had increased to better than 30 feet with only a slight current. 

A few minutes into the dive, I heard a sharp clank from the anchor and the chain seemed to jump at the anchor head. It momentarily got my attention, but I did not give it another thought.  That clank may have signaled the boat swinging 180 degrees with the reversal and strengthening of the surface current. 

The other thing I should have noticed is the kelp no longer rose straight to the surface.  It was being pulled down by the current in the direction we were moving.  Lacking situational awareness, Bryan and I continued on the dive and we soon hit our half tank turn around point.  What should have been an easy swim back toward the anchor became a real effort to make any forward progress.  When my gage registered 500 psi, I signaled Bryan that we should surface. 

Jim Goes Adrift with Others

We surfaced a fair distance from the boat.  I could see a yellow buoy well aft of the stern. The deckhand had deployed the current line.  If I could swim to the buoy, I could pull myself along the line to the stern of the boat.  The ocean swells had increased since the start of the dive. With the snorkel in my mouth and my bc inflated, I kicked furiously toward the boat.  Despite my best effort, I made little progress. 

I recalled my instructor’s advice that if caught in a surface current to descend a little because a current was often stronger on the surface than it was at depth.  Bryan and I dropped down to about 10 feet but made little progress toward the boat against the current.  I burned through the remaining air in my tank.  I nudged Bryan, gave the “low on air signal” and motioned that I needed to return to the surface. 

When we broke the surface, Bryan announced “I still have air and I am going to try to swim underwater back to the boat.   I will see you back aboard the boat.”  Before I could respond, he said, “see you back at the boat,” did a quick pike dive and descended from view.  I was alone and drifting away from the still-anchored boat. 

I looked around and noticed other divers on the surface further down current than I.  I swam over to the buddy team.  “Mind if I join you” I asked.  The two divers welcomed me.  We huddled up together and waited, and waited, and waited a bit longer to be picked up. 

The rental bc rode up on my torso.  The effect was to magnify every bump of the increasingly large swell.  I sensed a very dry and salty taste in my mouth in the instant before I turned away from my fellow drifters and upchucked the remains of my hot dog lunch.  Maybe “erupted multiple times” is a better description than “upchucked.”  I was at once relieved and embarrassed.  As if to add insult to my injury, gulls landed and partook of the partially digested feast.

We were soon joined by two other divers.  The five of us rafted up as best we could.  One of the divers noticed someone swimming on the surface toward us from the boat.  The boat divemaster/deckhand approached us on a boogie board.  He asked, “is everyone here OK?”  We all mumbled “yeah.”  I was halfway tempted to add, “other than the fact we are drifting at sea,” but thought the better of it. 

He shepherded us toward three other divers further down current.  I took a perverse comfort in the realization that I was not the only one who had been hoodwinked by the current shift.  I mean, by comparison I was the closest to the boat.  Surely, “you did not screw up as much as the other divers” from the little voice inside my head is an oblique complement, but a compliment nonetheless. 

The divemaster, astride the boogie board with the calm of a surfer waiting for a choice wave, reassured us that we would be picked up, “just as soon as everyone else was back on board.  Mickey really can’t move the boat so long as he has divers in the water and until the current line is reeled in.”  He went on to explain that a 180 degree current shift in the space of one dive was rare.

After what seemed like an hour, but was probably closer to 25 minutes, the dive boat approached.  Mickey swung the stern toward us.  The current line was deployed and we clung to it as we waited our turn to approach the swim ladder.  Chivalry still lived, the women in the group boarded first. 

Back on board, I slid exhausted into my spot and started to remove the straps that help my bc in place.  I reached for my water bottle to wash out the remnants of salty taste from my mouth.  Bryan stood there in dry clothes with his gear broken down and stowed in the equipment bin.  He said “glad you’re back.  How was it?”  I had to squelch the urge to spit my water at him.

“OK,” I muttered. 

“Yeah, I figured you would be fine,” he said with a grin. “No sense in both of us being stuck out there.”

If ever there was a smirk that I wanted to remove from someone’s face that would have been it.  I was a more than a little ticked off that my buddy left me.  I guess the strongest instinct is for self-preservation.

“Yeah, I guess you are right,” I replied and added “but no one wants to die alone and no one should be left behind.” 

His quizzical look indicated he was a bit confused by my comeback.

The Aftermath

Returning the the rental gear the next day, I spoke to the owner about the ill-filling BC. He suggested that I try a Sea Quest back mounted BC.  “With its continuous web harness, it can be adjusted to your body to eliminate the ride up you experienced with the jacket bc.” A novel design in 1984, the “backmount” configuration became quite common in the 2000’s as the “wings” in the “backplate and wings” style BC favored by cave and technical divers.   I purchased the bc which fit perfectly and would serve me for the next few hundred dives.  

As part of the package deal, I also purchased a state-of-the-art, top-of-the-line  brass US Diver Conshelf 14 regulator and gages.  The dive shop even gave me a retroactive discount on the suit I had purchased earlier.  As the dive shop employee said, “the more you buy the more you save.”  The regulator now resides in my dive gear storage box as a reminder of my beginning dives.

Tales from the Logbook--Divers Adrift off of Ensenada, Mexico, Causes International Kerfluffle in 1987

 

Scramble to Save Divers Led to Diplomatic Snafu caught my attention as I read the Los Angeles Times before work on the morning of July 7, 1987. The article reported on the plight of three divers south of Ensenada, Mexico.  The story described how on the Fourth of July, two of the three divers, Daniel Lavin and George Spaulding, found themselves drifting in a current after a shore dive.  The unnamed third diver made it to shore and asked a bystander to call the Coast Guard for assistance.  He then rented an inflatable boat and went in pursuit of his drifting buddies

As Daniel Lavin explained, after floating for 5 ½ hours “our friend was able to find us and then we ran into a Mexican fishing boat…They picked us up and brought us ashore. We were all fine. None of us were hurt....”

Apparently, someone contacted the US Coast Guard.  An overflight from a USCG Falcon jet spotted the divers but could not stay as the aircraft low on fuel.  A Coast Guard helicopter was dispatched. Just as it was arriving in the area, Mexican authorities said that it could not enter that country’s airspace.  The Mexican authorities said two of their naval patrol vessels would respond.  Lavin watched all the activity from the safety of the shore.  “By the time they got out there, we had already been rescued by the Mexican fishing boat.” 

As Lavin notes, “when I came into work this morning (July 6), I saw the newspapers that I was dead.  So I called the Coast Guard.”

The report of their death resulted from a miscommunication.  When the Coast Guard called the Captain of the Port in Ensenada, which is 20 miles north of the divers’ location, he reported that a private radio communication had been overheard that two bodies had been picked up by a fishing boat.  The USCG then issued the press release documenting the “fatal” incident.

I did notice that the diver quoted in the article, Daniel Lavin, was from San Diego.  I was friends with a David Lavin, also from San Diego.   David and I worked at Delco Systems in Goleta.  When I purchased my home, he took my place with my former house mates.  We played together on company sports teams and so on.  I wondered if there could be a family connection. 

I picked up the phone on my desk and called him.  “Dave,” I said after he answered, “I am reading an LA Times article about a couple of divers from San Diego adrift south of Ensenada…” Before I could finish the sentence, Dave sighed, and responded, “Yeah, that’s my crazy brother.  He was down there for the long holiday weekend.  He gets into situations like that all the time….”

“Wow,”I thought to myself, “remember not to dive with this guy’s brother.”  I never did get to follow up on the conversation for further details.  Besides, I got the impression from our brief phone call he really did not want to talk about it.  Also, I could never figure out why the normally thorough reporting of the Times did not name the third diver.

This story highlighted just how quickly things could go wrong.  It also tapped into a deep seated fear that some divers have of going adrift. In those days a diver’s emergency signaling equipment consisted of a whistle attached to the inflator hose of the buoyancy compensator.  I don’t recall anyone carrying a signal mirror, dye markers, or smoke/flare canisters.  Those items might be found in the emergency kit on a boat, but no diver carried them into the water.   

Not many divers carried any type of surface marker buoy (SMB) in those days.  The primitive SMB of that era was a thin, long, roll up plastic bag open at one end.  A diver on the surface would deploy the marker from a bcd pocket, fill it from the regulator and hold the end tight to keep the air from leaking out. 

Brightly colored gear, which could increase a diver’s visibility on the surface, was rare.  Wetsuits, for the most part were black or dark blue as were many buoyancy compensator devices.  One exception to this trend was the bright orange or scuba blue Scubapro “stab jacket” BCD introduced in 1978.  

Color accents on dive gear, following the neon color trend in ski and surf wear, were just becoming available from the equipment manufacturers.  The change was driven by marketing, in the belief that brighter colors might attract more women to sport diving.  (Tabata USA was a pioneer in in these innovations.) We called it the “neon diver” craze.  However, for the most part, you could have any color you wanted, as long as it was black.  That maxim sticks to this day.

Tanks did come in a rainbow of colors.  By far, the unpainted tanks with their natural steel or aluminum finish were the most common. Yellow, red, blue and black being the other color choices I recall. 

---

Scramble to Save Divers Led to Diplomatic Sanfu.  Gene Yasuda.  Los Angeles Times.  July 7, 1987.  Section 1, page 35. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-07-07-me-1464-story.html

For an example of the erroneous press report, which reported two deceased divers had been recovered by the Mexican Navy, see “Mexico will not let US search for two people.  Escondido Times Advocate, July 6, 1987. p. 6

Tales from the Logbook--A Mom Goes Adrift at Cocos Island

 

I am preparing a series of stories of people who find themselves adrift in the water.  The first story comes from an incident that occured in August 2002 whlile I was on the live aboard diveboat, the Undersea Hunter, in August 2002.  It is purely coincidental that this story appears on Mother's Day 2024.

To say that Cocos Island, Costa Rica, in the Pacific Ocean, is "isolated" is an understatement.  The island, designated  Cocos Island National Park, lies approximately 340 miles southwest of the Costa Rican mainland.  “Middle of nowhere” barely begins to describe this location. Just getting to the island required a 30+ hour boat ride from Punta Arenas on board Undersea Hunter—a top live-aboard dive boat.  I was traveling with a group organized by Brandon and Melissa Cole.  Our group claimed many of the available spaces on the boat; others took the rest.

I had prepared for the remoteness of the location by incorporating into my dive gear, in addition to the whistle permanently affixed to my buoyancy compensator, an extremely loud surface signaling device powered by the compressed air (from my tank), a bright green surface marker buoy, a flashing strobe light and a signal mirror.  I had considered a bright green dye marker pack, but the container could not sustain the pressure of deep water immersion without hemorrhaging the dye.

Diving Safety Briefing

The first predive briefing of the trip, held prior to our first dive, emphasized the conservation orientation of the operators at Cocos Island and what a privilege it was to dive in this unique marine wilderness.  (Only park personnel and scientific researchers are allowed on shore.) The “boat rules” include no intentional interaction with the fish, no feeding of fish, no manta riding, and no pulling the shark’s tail.  One would think these rules need not be explicitly stated given the conservation ethic of diving.  My observation of diver behaviors over the years is to the contrary.  When in doubt, point it out.

The second half of the briefing emphasized safety and the need to follow the diving protocols.  Divers were directed not to exceed the 130 foot depth limit.  The briefer noted that divers were responsible for knowing and not exceeding their individual “no decompression limits.  Other protocols emphasized the need to maintain visual contact with the underwater walls.  Also, since the dive spots are fairly deep, the divemaster highlighted the need to complete the safety stop for three minutes between 15 and 20 feet during ascent with one exception.

“No blue water diving!” the divemaster stressed. “If you cannot see the wall or if you are in a strong current; do not do the three-minute safety stop! Surface immediately,  inflate your bc and marker buoy and the tender will pick you up.  The current will carry you away from the island and the nearest landfall Is Antarctica.”  It is a lesson we learned later that day.

The Second Dive

Our second dive ended as a cautionary tale about diving in the current.  We planned to drop in on the southwest side of Isla Manuelita, and descend as a group along the step down slope to between 60 and 100 feet, while moving north.  The orientation to do that is to keep the wall on the right hand side. We would round the end of the islet and be picked up on the northeast side.

 

After a routine descent, the divers wedged themselves into a ledge along the wall to await the appearance of hammerhead sharks.  I ascended a bit to address an issue and found myself surrounded by fish.  I could not get back to the main part of the group as I was up current of their location. Rather than fight against the current, I continued the dive.  I had done a number of drift dives over the years so I was comfortable doing so.  The current pushed me along the wall.   I am able to maintain visual contact with the wall.  I start my ascent upon reaching my “low air” tank pressure of 700 psi. After completing the three-minute safety stop, I surface.  The panga motored over to retrieve me, as the current kept me from swimming to it.  I am the first one on board. 

Mom goes adrifting

The group had spread out along the wall, with the photographers bringing up the rear.  As the panga retrieved the divers, a diver returned onboard without her buddy.  The buddy pair, a mother-daughter duo, is missing the mom.  The daughter reports that they were in a current as they ascended.  The mom was carried out into blue water and continued with the safety stop while the daughter surfaced.  She did not see her mother surface. 

A search immediately commenced.  We cruised along the current line looking for any sign of the diver, but we found nothing.  Visibility decreased as a squall line moved into the area.  The divemaster’s initial look of optimism at finding her quickly changed to one of consternation.  He alerts the mothership by radio to dispatch the second panga to join the search as soon as their divers are recovered.  The Park Ranger from the island joined the effort from his skiff. 

Time passed.  All eyes on our panga desperately scan the water for a sign of the diver.  We searched for what seems like an eternity moving back and forth along the current line.  Suddenly, the radio sounded.  The other tender reports they have recovered the diver on the surface.  We race over to their location, relieved that the mother is OK. 

Back on board the Undersea Hunter, the divemaster asked the mother what happened.  She replied, “since it was a deep dive, I felt making the safety stop for the three full minutes was very important.”  She insisted that nothing was wrong, seemed unfazed by the whole experience and appeared oblivious to how close she came to going missing.  After a discussion that focused on the critical importance of directly surfacing when in blue water, the incident is closed.  But, the lesson stayed with us for the rest of the dives.

Tales from the Logbook--DeLong Lake Cleanup

 

Anchorage, Alaska features a number of municipal parks with freshwater lakes.  Every year in May, once the winter snow has receded, a city-wide cleanup removes the litter detritus of winter along the streets and trails.  Later that month the annual Creek Cleanup does the same for the city’s urban streams.  No equivalent organized effort exists for the lakes.

In May 2009, at the behest of the Municipal Parks and Recreation Department, Jerry and Lisa Vandergriff organized a handful of divers to remove debris from DeLong Lake near Anchorage International Airport.  The dive was an effort to show that the problem of litter in the environment did not end at water’s edge. 

On Sunday, May 10, 2009, Mother’s Day, the divers assembled on the dock at DeLong Lake at 9 am. (The dock's location is indicated by the star on the map.) The winter ice had recently cleared from the 20 acre lake surface, but the water would still be a chilly 45 degrees F.  The poor visibility at the bottom of the lake, 0 to 5 feet, meant that only very experienced divers were taking part in this “muck dive.” We donned our drysuits and tanks, grabbed our mesh goody bags to bring up whatever we found that did not belong on the bottom and entered the water.

Each diver attempted to swim in a different direction following a compass heading to cover as much as the lake as possible.  I dropped to the bottom and started swimming vaguely aware of a nearby diver on a divergent course. 

The bottom was covered in a layer of decaying organic matter from leaves and tree limbs.  I stuck my hand in the layer and was up to my elbow in the muck without finding a hard bottom.  I did not find this surprising as they are the same conditions I encountered at the nearby Little Campbell Lake.  Hovering just above the layer, I swam along a compass course as a reference in the low horizontal visibility.  

I came across scattered piles of beer cans, bottles, and other debris.  The sites seemed to be randomly scattered with no discernable pattern.  I placed the debris and my mesh bag and moved along.  Upon using half my air supply, I turned to the left, swam about 25 feet and swam a reverse compass course inbound toward the dock.  The entire dive lasted about 45 minutes with a maximum depth of 16 feet.  The deepest part of the lake is reported to be about 22 feet.

Back on the dock, I emptied a half-full goody bag, separating the mostly recyclable aluminum from the disposable trash.  Jerry explained that the scattered piles of beer cans most likely marked the sites of ice fishing huts set up on the lake during the winter.  The fishermen disposed of their cans down the hole.

While I did see river otter and muskrat around the lake, I had no encounters underwater.  Of course, with the barely-able-to-see-your-hand-in-front-of-your-face visibility, the critters could have been putting on an underwater show nearby and I would not have seen it.  Nor did I see any of the fish that are stocked in the lake which include arctic char, salmon, and trout.

I have participated in a couple of water body cleanups over the years.  DeLong Lake is probably one of the more challenging ones.

"Happy Birthday" or "The Ask"

 

“Luke has a question to ask you,” his mother prodded as the scenery whizzed by heading north from San Diego’s downtown international airport to their home in Scripps Ranch.  I was in town to see my brother and his family on the way to a weekend of diving at Catalina Island in April 2014.

“O.K.” I responded looking at my soon to turn 12-year-old nephew riding in the back seat of the SUV with his grandmother.  “Go ahead and ask!”

“I want to learn to scuba dive,” he asked shyly.  I am not sure why he didn’t ask directly.  I guess I can be a bit intimidating to people, especially youngsters. 

“O.K.,” I responded and added, “you have a birthday coming up pretty soon and I will be happy to pay for the lessons and the personal equipment you need.  Of course, we have to find a dive shop in the area that will teach someone your age.  Some places may want you to be a little older.  Let me call around while I am in town and see what’s up.”

He seemed very pleased at the prospect.

Looking back on that moment a decade later, I am very happy that Luke asked the question.  He blossomed into a competent, enthusiastic diver and one of the best buddies a diving uncle could hope for, especially when he totes my gear.  Of the dozens of people I have dived with in the 1,000+ dives over 40 years, only Brandon Cole has more dives with me. 

 We experienced a two-year pause between the “ask” and the “do.”  I guess school, water polo, and other things kept pushing the “do” further down the list of immediacies.  Then, in the spring of 2016, he messaged me, “I am taking lessons this summer in July,”  I rearranged my travel schedule to lay over a few days in San Diego on the return trip from diving in the Cayman Islands.  The stars were aligning for Luke and me to make his first dives together.

A dive-shop-induced glitch in his training schedule nearly torpedoed that plan.  Quick action, a lot of cajoling, and intervention by the shop’s chief instructor got Luke’s open water dives back on schedule. 

Luke and I made his first post-open water certification dive off the dive boat Lois Ann in the Goblin Forest near Point Loma—an area of very thick kelp beds.  Luke learned the basics of boat diving that day.  He followed and led during our two dives.  He also acquired the skill of surface crawling through the elastic spaghetti of a kelp bed without getting entangled.   We followed that dive with lunch at Hodad’s in Ocean Beach. 

Our second boat a few days later was canceled due to insufficient passengers.  But, it all worked out. Luke played his first high school varsity water polo game that day.

Over the next eight years we completed 67 more dives together.  Our shared experiences include diving with mantas and whale sharks during our first trip to the Kona coast of Hawaii, spearfishing for invasive Roi on Maui, watching dolphins stoned on puffer fish venom behaving badly on a second trip to Kona, getting skunked trying to find Giant Sea Bass at Catalina, and wreck diving while helping eradicate lionfish on the coral reefs on two trips to Roatan, Honduras.  Topside, we hiked up a volcano that violently erupted a few weeks later, took in a lot of Hawaiian culture, watched every dive movie in my collection, and enjoyed the Caribbean tropics of Roatan.  I had a lot of fun and learned a lot along the way.  I recently transcribed my dive journals of our adventures—the text runs more than 80 pages.

I think the best insight I felt I provided to Luke scientific diving maxim, “any diver can stop any dive for any reason at any time.” To that  I added Lima’s Corollary,   “if you do call a dive and your dive buddy complains, it is time to find a new buddy.”  The extent to which he took that to heart was demonstrated on a recent dive in Roatan.  Back on the boat after our first dive, I noticed I have muffled hearing in my right ear.  I talked to Luke about the potential reverse block and that I will not make the next dive.  I started to offer Luke the opportunity to join up with other divers.  Before I can complete the sentence, he says “don’t even think about suggesting it, the buddy team stays together.  You would do the same for me.”  I silently give thanks for Luke's keeping the buddy pair intact.  Such above-and-beyond loyalty is rare.

I do believe that if not for a two year hiatus in our diving because of Covid 19 restrictions, we might have reached 100 dives!  A couple of the planned-but-never-started excursions include a dive trip up the California coast to show him locations that I dived, like my “happy places” such as the Anacapa Island landing cove and “Jim’s Reef” at Refugio State Beach.  I had also sketched a road trip down the Florida Keys to replicate one that Luke’s dad and I had done in 1996.  I guess lyrics from an old ABBA song sums up these “what might have beens”

What happened to the wonderful adventures
The places I had planned for us to go?
Well, some of that we did, but most we didn't
And why, I just don't know

 

Don Canestro Brings Underwater Hockey to UCSB

 

Sometime around in the late 1980s, UC Santa Barbara students discovered underwater hockey thanks to the arrival of Don Canestro on campus.  Don was working at the Marine Science Institute as a diver and research associate in subtidal marine ecology.  Don played competitive underwater hockey and was eager to organize the sport at UCSB.  Don was a talented waterman.

Underwater hockey is played using masks, fins, and snorkels.  A protective glove for the puck hand and waterpolo caps for ear protection is recommended but we never used them.There are usually six players on a side.  Each player carries a notched stick, about 11 inches long which is used to push a brass or lead plastic coated disk (the puck) weighing about 3 pounds along the bottom of the pool into the opposing team’s goal.  The rules do not allow contact between players.  The game is very fast paced, as shown in this Youtube Video.  keep in mind, this video is shot some years after we tried the activity at UCSB!

Once a week in the evening the players would meet Don at the WWII-era campus Olympic size pool.  He would review basic strategy and tactics, emphasizing that underwater hockey is a three dimensional game.  He related that team members were constantly descending and surfacing for air while trying to advance the puck or defend against the advance.  Advancing the puck involved handing off possession or passing the puck with a flick of the stick to a team mate.  An attack by the defenders for possession of the puck was as likely to come from above as it was from head on or the sides. 

After practicing our disk passing skills for 15 or 20 minutes, we would split into teams for scrimmage.  Play occurred in about 6 to 8 feet of water with the goal on either side of the 25 yard width pool.  The puck was placed in the center and the teams lined up on either side of the pool.  In his baritone voice Don would call “Black sticks ready? White sticks ready?  At “go” the fastest swimmers would descend rapidly sprinting toward the puck.  Once engaged, the other players would take up positions.  The game metabolically intense pace saw players on both sides breaking away, surfacing, taking a quick breath, and descending to get back into the game. 

I recall one play where I descended rapidly, feeling the pressure build in my ears to take the puck from a team mate.  I was kicking furiously moving the puck toward the goal twisting to shield the puck from the opposing attackers.  I could feel my lungs ache while my brain was screaming for air.  Just as I was about to break off one of my fellow players, John, came out of nowhere and took the puck.  He accelerated like a torpedo, broke through the defenders and scored.  It was something he did consistently at every scrimmage.  It seemed like that man was everywhere! 

John's aggressiveness came as a surprise because on the surface John was so mellow and laid back almost to the point of being catatonic.  In conversation, he spoke quietly with a slight drawl and called everyone “dude” regardless of gender.  John lost a fin on a night dive at Anacapa Island while buddied up with his girlfriend and getting back on the board as though nothing happened.  But he seemed genuinely surprised that no one had a spare fin to loan him.  Whenever I saw him on campus, he was wearing the same Baja blanket hoodie over faded Levi jeans.

Don was a patient teacher who I think really wanted to build a competitive team.  Everyone seemed to have fun playing, but we tended to regularly violate the no contact rule.  Some of the plays looked more like a rugby scrum.   While the game was a natural for spearfishers who had the breath hold capacity to really play, most participants were snorkelers rather than freedivers.  After a few months the number of participants dwindled to the point that it was tough to form teams and the practices stopped. 

It would be another decade or so before underwater hockey teams really began to flourish in California and nationwide.  I recall a team called the Beltway Bottom Feeders formed in Washington, D.C. in the late 1990s.  I thought about practicing with them when I was on assignment in Washington D.C. for six months in 2000, but since I did not have a car it was nearly impossible to get to their practices at George Mason University from my apartment in Falls Church.  Similarly, just before I moved to Alaska in early 2002 more teams seemed to be forming in Southern California.  Within a few years, regional and national tournaments became regularly scheduled events. Still, even today, whenever I mention underwater hockey to people II get the strangest side glances.

As I look over a listing of the dozens of teams in the United States, it appears that many are inactive.  The sport never really established itself at UCSB after Don's attempt.  I find this surprising given the rise of the popularity of freediving over the last decade and the area's reputation as an underwater sports center.

When I first moved to Alaska, I was a member of a dive club and inherited their underwater hockey gear when the club disbanded.  It seems that a few years before they had played on scuba.  I can’t imagine what that looked like.  The wood sticks are old and deteriorating with peeling black and white paint.  The puck is uncoated brass.  The set still hangs from a pegboard in my garage, kept more for nostalgia than for any practical purpose. 

In February 2014, I travelled to the remote Alaska Bush community of Galena on the Yukon River to teach a lifeguard course to local residents.  The community has a very nice 25-yard pool that is six feet at its deepest point.  I discovered a complete and nearly new set of UWH gear along with masks, fins, and snorkels in the pool equipment bins.  I was told by Sandy Scotten, the community’s aquatic director that the school district had purchased the equipment at the request of a physical education instructor.  He planned to organize UWH games as an aquatic activity for the high school students. The activity never really got up and running as the instructor left shortly after the equipment arrived.  Teacher turnover is very high in Bush communities.  Along those lines, the Alaska Boxing Academy in 2022 came into possession of a ring, practice gloves and other equipment when a boxing fitness scheme in Haines evaporated under similar circumstances.

I learned quite recently that Don Canestro passed away on November 9, 2018.  An obituary published on the American Academy of Underwater Sciences website[1] notes that

Don was diving with his friend Dan Richards, in Cambria California. When he surfaced near their kayak, he said he did not feel well, then passed out. Dan got him to shore, performed CPR, and arranged for a helicopter to take Don to the hospital, but Don, who had survived so much before, died from cardiac complications.

It is ironic that Don, a former Dive Safety Officer, died while diving. For so many years, he was the person others relied on because of his knowledge, expertise and prowess underwater. But it is fitting that Don’s last day was spent in the ocean. Don was a dedicated waterman: he ocean swam, surfed, free-dove, scuba dived, and played underwater hockey. He could recite Navy dive tables, rebuild a regulator, and captain a research vessel. And Don knew more about the ocean and its inhabitants than most marine biologists.”

If find that to be a fitting testament to the man who taught us underwater hockey.

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[1] Don Canestro.  No date.  No attribution.  American Academy of Underwater Sciences.  https://www.aaus.org/Shared_Content/News_and_Announcemnts/Don_Canestro.aspx accessed on January 2, 2023.

Learning Buoyancy Control

 

Many divers strive for good buoyancy control.  Doing so enables a diver in full gear to effortlessly hover and efficiently swim through the water.  The graphic on the science of buoyancy indicates a number of factors that affect buoyancy.

I know instructors who slightly “overweight” their open water students to eliminate the up and down movement that many divers experience when first learning to dive.  Divers may equate being slightly “negative” to sink with good technique.  This practice results in divers dragging themselves along the bottom colliding with terrain as they move along or expending more effort than necessary. They figure adding a bit of air to the buoyancy compensator to “compensate” for a couple of pounds of excess weight is easier. 

Learning Buoyancy

Divers learn a rudimentary buoyancy check technique in the open water class.  Wearing full gear in the water, with the regulator in their mouth, the diver vents all the air out of the buoyancy compensator device (BCD), while slowly exhaling.  A properly weighted diver will sink ever so slightly ending up with the eyes at water level and rise to the starting point when inhaling.  If the diver sinks beyond that point, weight is reduced.  If the diver cannot sink to that point, additional weight is needed. 

This approach yields an approximate neutral buoyancy weight for the gear the diver wears during the check.  Different wetsuits, tanks, and other gear have unique buoyancy characteristics.  In the early 2010’s, my gear configuration went through a series of changes, new drysuit, undergarment, and backplate and wing BCD.  Each addition required changes to the weight I used and affected my underwater streamlining.  It took a couple of dives to make everything just right. 

But Wait, There’s More

Divers can fine tune their buoyancy skills after open water certification.  Taking a so-called “peak performance buoyancy “ specialty course provides additional skills.  As the PADI course description states

Excellent buoyancy control is what defines skilled scuba divers. You've seen them underwater. They glide effortlessly, use less air and ascend, descend or hover almost as if by thought. They more easily observe aquatic life without disturbing their surroundings. You can achieve this, too. The PADI Peak Performance Buoyancy Specialty course improves the buoyancy skills you learned as a new diver and elevates them to the next level.

Why these concepts and techniques are an “add on” rather than part of the open water certification course perplexes me. 

My Experience Observing  Peak Performance Buoyancy

I did have a chance to do the in-water skills portion of the course when my dive buddy, Luke, completed the Peak Performance Buoyancy session in Kona, Hawaii in 2018.  At the time, Luke had completed about 10 dives.  I tagged along to help balance the workload between the dive guides and instructors on board the Kona Diving Company boat.  In doing so, I went through the skills as an active participant rather than as a passive observer.

Luke’s PPB required that he complete the on-line e-learning module and two open water dives.  First, our instructor, Hailey, checked that Luke was neutrally buoyant at the surface using the tried and true method described above.  For Luke, 18 pounds of weight did the trick.

Hailey then put Luke through a series of exercises.  She placed three weight pouches on the sandy bottom containing one pound, three pounds, and five pounds.  Starting with one pound, she directed him to approach and pick up the pouch without disturbing the bottom or sculling with the hands.  After a few tries, Luke mastered snatching the one pound pouch.  The exercise progressed to retrieving the three pound pouch and finally to the five pound pouch.  

During the three-minute stop at the end of the dive, Hailey asks Luke to hover at 15 feet both horizontally and vertically.

As the dives progressed, Luke’s skill increased.  The ultimate test of mastery of the skill is to hold the lotus position while suspended mid-water.  Luke held the position for 80 seconds--a commendable accomplishment.

In between exercises as we toured we encountered black triggerfish, butterfly fish, lots of jacks (a symbol of masculinity in the Hawaiian culture), and a white-mouthed eel.  We saw a milkfish, usually a diver-skittish species, and a filefish consuming a jellyfish.  When it was done, it nibbled on Luke’s head.  I guess the filefish confused Luke with a jellyfish with his newly found buoyancy control.

All kidding aside, after a skill is learned it takes practice in order to be ingrained in a diver's technique.  After a few dives, Luke had mastered the art of maintaining neutral buoyancy throught the entire dive.