Tales from the Logbook--I Learn to Scuba Dive

In the summer of 1984, I was ready to learn to scuba dive.  At the dawn of my interest, I believe scuba was an item to be checked off the bucket list, a one and done experience.  The choice of where to learn was never in question. With my trip up Mount Whitney with the UCSB Outdoor Recreation program fresh in my memory, I decided to take their Basic Scuba Diver certification course.  My other reasons for enrolling in the class were the belief that the course would be more disciplined than that offered by a dive shop and my classmates being mostly college students would be in better physical condition for diving.  UCSB with its Olympic-sized outdoor pool and classrooms certainly offered superior physical facilities. 

A word about “basic” and “open water” scuba certification may be in order.  Under the Professional Association of Dive Instructor (PADI) certifications prior to 1987, there were two entry-level certifications—Basic Scuba Diver and Open Water Diver. The Basic Scuba Diver course had the same classroom instruction and pool (confined water) training as the Open Water Diver course, The Basic course required only a skin diver and two open Water scuba training dives. The Open Water Diver required two additional open water dives and included training in underwater navigation and emphasized calculating surface air consumption to predict a diver’s air consumption for a given depth. 

The First Day of Class

The first evening of instruction, Wednesday, July 1, 1984 confirmed all my assumptions.  We met in a classroom in Girvetz Hall.  Our instructor, Dave Rowell, introduced himself.  He worked in finance and taught diving on the side.  He seemed to be the epitome of everyone’s image of a scuba instructor—fit, tan, shaggy hair, and a playfully adventurous attitude.  I was immediately impressed.  We then introduced ourselves.  My fellow students were all undergraduates either enrolled in summer session or staying in town for the summer.  At 28-years-old, I was the oldest student in the class.  When asked why we were taking the class the most common response was “I just want to try it” but two people stated they needed it for their marine ecology studies.

Dave covered what we could expect in the class.  We met two nights per week, Monday and Wednesday.  Each three hour session would be divided in half—90 minutes in the classroom and 90 minutes in the pool.   We had to complete all sessions, workbook exercises and skills checks and three open water dives to get certified.  The first dive—a skin dive (full gear except regulator and tank) would take place at Arroyo Burro (Hendry’s) Beach.  The open water scuba dive would take place at the Channel Islands on board the Sea Ventures out of Port Hueneme.

Dave then passed around the text book, Open Water Sport Diver Manual, 4th edition released in June 1984, by Jeppesen Sanderson Inc.    We also received the accompanying workbook and rectangular plastic card which Dave referred to as the Repetitive Dive Table.  The card was printed on both sides with letters, numbers, rows and columns.  It looked like hieroglyphics without the benefit of a Rosetta Stone. 

Picking up on what had to be a room of perplexed expressions as we examined the card, Dave directed us to put those away for now because we wouldn’t need them until the following week.  “Don’t lose those,” he cautioned.  “Learning how to use it to plan your diving is probably the most important  information you will get from the lectures.”

The Foreword of the book set the stage and seemed to capture the reason each of us enrolled in the class. 

Welcome to the exciting and spectacular world of underwater diving.  You are going to see and do things that go far beyond your dreams and expectations.  Diving is never adequately described, it must be experienced.

Before we could get to the point of seeing and doing, a lot of book learning needed to be completed and a number of skills developed.  The book was organized around four thematic sections:  Equipment, Diver, Environment, and Dive Activities.  Dave said that we would need to read the equipment section and complete the workbook exercise for that section by the next class.  Thereafter, we would need to read the assigned sections before the first lecture every week and complete the workbook section before the second session. 

Dave wasted no time in getting into the first section of the book, Equipment. 

Dave explained that while the course fee covered the rental of the scuba tanks, wetsuit, weight belt, and regulator, we had to provide our personal gear—mask, open-heel fins, snorkel, and neoprene booties and gloves.  A dive knife was optional, but he highly recommend we purchase it before the open water dives.

“Do not forget to bring your gear every night to the pool, except for the dive knife, and everything to the skin dive and scuba dive,” he said.  “Otherwise you will not be able to participate in the skills and drills.”

Referring to the text, he sequentially explained the function of each piece of gear, how to properly use it, and the finer points of function and fit.  Dave produced examples of each piece of gear from a duffle bag and passed it around as he pointed out its features. 

He mentioned that Goleta and Santa Barbara has several full service dive shops, Bob’s Diving Locker, Santa Barbara Aquatics, and Diver’s Den. 

“The gear you get at the dive shop will do the job.  It is designed for scuba diving.  Do not buy low priced gear at Fed Mart or a sporting goods store.  It is designed for kids splashing around at the beach, not serious diving.”

He continued, “I encourage you to buy your own equipment rather than borrow it from a friend.  If you have your own gear, you are more likely to keep diving. 

Someone asked, “Is one shop better than the others” and “Where do you get your gear?”

On this point, he was neutral.  “Each shop carries certain name top brand equipment, like U.S Divers, Scuba Pro, or Dacor.  They may carry lesser-known brands at lower prices.  I encourage you to visit all the shops and try on different masks and fins.  What’s important is fit.  A mask that leaks because it doesn’t fit right causes you to be miserable for the entire dive. A fin foot pocket that is too narrow could cause you foot to cramp.  If one shop does not have gear that fits you properly, go to another.”[1]

He then provided the obligatory buyer beware caution.  “Each shop is good but they will try to convince you that their gear is best and that the best gear is the most expensive.  This is not necessarily the case.  Higher priced gear usually offers better materials or features.  Whether you want to pay a premium price for name brand gear or one that has all the bells and whistles is up to you.”

I recalled that when I was buying my dive mask for snorkeling, I tried on several different styles before settling on a large sized Dacor mask with clear silicone skirt.  Other masks with rubber skirts did not seal as well or didn’t feel as comfortable.  I had to pay a higher price for it but it was worth the extra expense.  I would be using that mask and snorkel for the scuba class.

“That being said,” he concluded, “Aquatics offers a 10 percent discount on gear purchases to all people in this class.  That is the shop that is providing the wetsuits and scuba gear.  You have to go there anyway before the next class to get fitted for your wetsuit and buoyancy compensator.”

The Swim Test

After the overview of the class, we adjourned to the swimming pool for the swim test which consisted of a 200 yard swim, 10 minutes treading water, and a 25-yard underwater swim.  I had been swimming a bit in the lap pool at the Los Caneros Court Club, so I was confident that I would do fine in the swim. 

After changing into our swim suits, we lined up on the edge of the pool.  Dave announced “you can use any stroke but you can’t stop.”  He said “go” and 10 people hopped into the pool and started swimming the eight width-wide lengths that defined the 200 yards.  The swimming ability of the group varied, some swam like competitive swimmers and others just kind of completed the test using whatever stroke they knew.  I did the entire eight lengths using the front crawl.  I was not really a strong swimmer but I had no problems finishing the eight lengths, although my foot started to cramp near the end.  I had been plagued with foot cramps often when swimming since I was a kid. 

Treading water was easy.  The underwater swim, done without fins, was a bit more of a challenge.  I have never mastered the frog kick, so my underwater swimming style without fins is a cross between a breast stroke pull and a fuller kick.  If I had not quit smoking cigarettes a few years prior, the underwater swim would have been a serious challenge.  About halfway, I got the feeling that I needed to breathe.  That quickly grew to a feeling of near panic of suffocating if I did not get to surface immediately.  I felt a surge of relief when I got to the wall and pushed to the surface. I have since learned that with practice and certain breathing techniques I can push through that feeling that is a real barrier to breath hold swimming

Everybody passed the swim test.    We were on our way to becoming divers!

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[1] I found out a short time later that Dave used U.S. Divers gear purchased from Santa Barbara Aquatics with a handsome instructor’s discount.  He had played golf with the owner once a week with the shop’s owner, Curt Weissner, when they were undergraduates at UCSB.  He explained that all of the diver equipment companies had a program to inexpensively outfit instructors, especially with BCs and regulators as a marketing strategy.  He explained, “new divers want the best equipment.  They figure their instructor has the best, so they are inclined to buy whatever equipment their instructor is using.”

Tales from the Logbook--The Treasure of the Atocha

 

On Sunday, July 21, 1985, I did two “fun” dives from Sea Ventures out of Port Hueneme at Santa Cruz Island.  We sandwiched the dives in between divemaster training sessions on the surface with Curt Wiessner, owner of Santa Barbara Aquatics.  I took a legal-sized pink abalone on the first dive.  Other divers returned to the boat with several “short” (less than legal size) abalones.  Curt gave these divers a very stern but enlightening lecture about taking game, the need to know how to identify the species and size and bag limits set by the California Department of Fish and Game.  The short abalone were taken back to the bottom and placed on rocks in hope they would survive. 

The other “big” underwater story that day, unfolding in a non-descript part of the Florida Keys halfway between Key West and the Dry Tortugas, began to circulate nationally.  On Saturday, divers working for Mel Fisher located a sunken treasure “mother lode”—piles of gold and silver and other valuable objects from the galleon Nuestra Señora de Atocha’s sinking in 1622.  Each of the three national television network’s Sunday evening news broadcasts prominently featured the story.  Greater detail on the extent of the treasure, described as “40 tons of gold and silver… expected to be found” emerged in the following days and weeks.

Something about sunken treasures captures the public’s attention in general and a diver’s attention in particular.  It is a fascination from which few are immune.  I recall as a kid seeing stories of sunken treasure in magazines like Argosy that I thumbed through while waiting in the local barbershop for a haircut. They transported me to exotic locales. Today, sunken treasure stories still do.

Over the next few weeks, the story of the Atocha fascinated me.  My dive buddies and I spoke of it often in conversations that started “if I had found it…” Like all breaking news, the story eventually fades from the headlines and attention wanes only to be rekindled from time-to-time.  The other big underwater story of that summer was the discovery of the wreck of the Titanic by undersea explorer Robert Ballard in early September.  Shipwreck and treasure fever seemed to grip the public’s attention.

A paperback book rekindled my interest in the Atocha when I found, Treasure, by Robert Daley at the Front Page bookstore on Calle Real in Goleta shortly after its release in April 1986.  Originally published in 1977, the book tells the story of Mel Fisher’s long search for the wreck..  The cover of the 1986 paperback re-release screams “FOUND THE SHIPWRECK FORTUNE OF THE CENTURY.  The book essentially updates the 1977 edition with details of the find.  The story fascinated me.  I reread my copy until pages started to separate from the binding.

I consumed nearly all media related to the Atocha.  Several other books followed the discovery, most of which I purchased and read upon their publication.  My parents made a videotape recording of Dreams of Gold: The Mel Fisher Story, a made for television movie starring Cliff Robertson and Loretta Swit broadcast on November 15, 1986.  As much as I wanted to see the production, I was at UCSB that evening attending a lecture by Robert Ballard about the discovery of the Titanic.

Following the inventory and appraisal of the raised treasure, investors in Mel Fisher’s company, Treasure Salvors, received a share of the treasure proportional to their annual investment in the endeavor.  Many of the silver bars started appearing on television home shopping shows as the investors sought to monetize their treasure.  Some of the bars were melted down and struck into replica coins.  I purchased one of these coins through an advertisement in a scuba magazine in the early 1990s.  I still wear it to this day.

The fascination with sunken ships as historic sites kindled by the Atocha and Titanic led me to become a volunteer diver with Channel Islands National Park mapping shipwreck sites in 1989.  I spent hours underwater searching and mapping shipwreck sites.  I was hired by the Park as the maritime historian in 1992.  I recall reviewing Sunken Treasure by Gail Gibbons. The children’s book, which tells the story of the Atocha, was being considered for sale in the Park’s Visitor Center gift shop.  While I thought the author did a fine job, the book was not offered for sale because 1) it had no connection to Channel Islands National Park and 2) it cast treasure hunting in a positive light which is contrary to the NPS’s preservation orientation. 

On a scuba diving road trip with my brother in June 1986 from Key Largo to Key West in June 1996, we visited a couple of shipwreck and diving exhibits but did not see the Mel Fisher Maritime Museum. We visited the Hemingway House but I seem to recall the Fisher Museum was not open.

Over the next 30 years I would be involved in various aspects of shipwreck detection, site assessment and preservation as an element in my job.  I never dreamed that an event like the finding of a treasure ship would have such a profound effect on my life.

Tales from the Logbook--Diving Beneath the Arroyo Hondo Bridges

The most “haunting” dive I remember took place at Arroyo Hondo under the old US 101 Highway bridge and railroad trestle.  I find recalling the details nearly four decades later still makes me a bit uneasy.

The late-Sunday morning of January 6, 1985, was foggy, damp, and cold.  Mark Bursek and I geared up on the edge of the old highway bridge that spans Arroyo Hondo. 

We were adventurous, neophyte divers eager to discover the numerous pullouts along U.S. 101 west of El Capitan State Beach that led to some pretty awesome dive sites.  We could see sections of thick kelp from the highway; beds so thick that kelp harvesting vessels regularly worked the area.  Without a boat, we could only access these sites by pulling off the highway, finding a trail and “mountain goating” down the coastal bluffs to ocean’s edge.  Most of these pullouts were not marked save for an occasional car or truck pulled off and parked the side of the highway.  That was not the case for Arroyo Hondo marked by not one but two bridges.

We looked over the edge of the embankment from the highway bridge and saw the path that would take us under the adjacent railroad trestle to the rocks at water’s edge.  Mark had heard about this place and wanted to check it out.  It was my 15^th dive and only my third shore dive.  We planned on following the exposed pipelines to see where they led.  These pipelines connected offshore components of the Shell Molino natural gas field to its onshore processing equipment on the opposite side of the highway. 

I preferred to make the trek from parking spot to entry point fully geared up.  Mark did the same.  I wore my lug-soled sneakers for traction on the path carrying my mask, fins, and snorkel and booties in a mesh goody bag.  Mark led the way down the path.  We soon made it to the bottom.  No one else was around.  Even though we could hear cars on the highway above, we were alone.  Not even a troll could be found.

I exchanged my shoes for the neoprene booties, placing the shoes among rocks above the tide line.  We scanned the area and determined the best entry point would be near where the pipelines transitioned from the beach to arroyo. The intertidal area had a lot of large rocks and other geological features tthat could trip us up.  We did our buddy checks, entered the water and swam out through the breaker zone.  I set the bezel on my Seiko dive watch to record our descent time, 12:10 p.m., as we dropped beneath the water.

We started following the exposed pipeline into deeper water.  Navigation was easy, just follow the pipeline.  Little light penetrated the fog and haze.  The deeper we swam the darker it seemed to get.  Many swell sharks lazed in the gap between the pipes and the seafloor.  They seem unfazed by our passing by.  We continued on into the thick kelp bed, which sometimes concealed the pipeline.  Visibility was good, enough for me to see Mark in the lead, and a little beyond him.  We stated to hear a “bang-bang-bang” at regular intervals.  It sounded like someone hitting a 55-gallon drum with a mallet. 

In about 20 feet of water, we came across the remains of a gull, nothing but bones and a few feathers. A sense of uneasiness overcame me.  We continued on, and the banging got louder.  At a depth of about 25 feet, my air pressure gage indicated I had consumed half a tank of air.  We turned around and with me leading made our way back toward the exit point following the pipeline.  Once again, we passed over the gull’s remains.   I couldn’t figure out whether it represented the final resting place of the gull or whether it was the remains of some other critter’s lunch.  I did not stop to do a post-mortem.

None of the swell sharks seemed to have moved. 

We surfaced near our descent point.  My watch indicated the dive lasted forty minutes bottom time.

Back beneath the trestle, sitting on the rocks, we both remarked how “spooky” the dive felt.  We figured the reaction resulted from the combined effects of darkness, finding the carcass, and the banging noise we heard throughout the dive.

Over the next 10 years, I would check out many of the turnoffs, but I never returned to the spot beneath the twin bridges. Of the hundreds of dives I made over the years, this experience stands out in my mind. 

I wonder if anyond dives this site today from the shore  The Molino Field infrastructure was decommissioned in the late 1990s.  The plan evaluated by the State Lands Commission called for the pipelines to be removed from landfall shoreward to approximately a 15 foot depth.  Beyond that point (about 600 feet from shore) the lines were to be cleaned, capped, and abandoned in place.  Lines in Arroyo Hondo would also have been removed. The beach is accessible from the old highway bridge.  The path down the hill and the entry sounds like it hasn't changed much since Mark and I did it on that January day.  

On a clear day, the kind of days that foster website images of Arroyo Hondo, the vistas are stunning.  On that foggy, cold January day it was spooky.

Divining The Signs

This spot was unknown to me so it was approached with curiosity and caution.  I was a new diver, who didn’t know what I didn’t know.  I usually experience a little bit of anxiousness before diving a new location similar to the “butterflies.”  Good dive planning, checking equipment, being with a good buddy minimizes this feeling.  Most of the time, any residual butterflies take flight as soon as I hit the water. 

Then there is the effect of finding the remains of the damn bird.   As a recent Thayer Birding blog[1] related:

“Seeing dead birds may symbolize something tragic or coming to an end, but does not always foretell death. Also, not every receiver obtains the same message when seeing a dead bird. At the end of the day, it is mainly the witness’s personal background that determines what might come about tragically or be brought to an end. However, that doesn’t mean dead bird omen is negative all the time. There are still a few circumstances where dead birds are a sign of the beginning of something exciting….the meaning of dead birds is varied and mostly turns out to be negative and upsetting. It can be a severe health risk, loss of freedom, dreams interruption, threat signals and worst of all, death. Still, hopefulness and encouragement do exist even in the darkest time. It can be a useful reminder for you of being careful of danger around or motivate a new adventure of your life.”

The effect of seeing the gull’s remains was not unlike the feeling I experienced while diving with my brother Andy and Brandon Cole from another roadside entry point near the Butterfly House in Carmel, California on September 16, 1990.  We were swimming through very thick kelp when we came across a very dead shark on the bottom.  At about three or four feet, it was a good sized animal with very prominent bite marks across its body.  I immediately thought food chain with a bigger shark biting a smaller shark.  Needless to say, we kicked a little faster to get back to our exit point.

When it comes to the sedentary swell sharks, as the Aquarium of the Pacific website Species in Detail notes:

“Swell sharks…prefer a boulder and rocky reef type substrate with liberal growths of algae, especially kelp. Although this species has been reported to a water depth of 457 m (1499 ft), it is most commonly found in water 5 to 37 m (16.4 to 121.4 ft) deep. Well-camouflaged, they frequent caves, shallow rock crevices, and crevices around kelp forests….Poor swimmers, these fish tend to lead a rather sedentary life style. Their daytime hours are spent resting, while hiding in crevices, caves, holes, and under overhangs where they sometimes stack on top of each other like cordwood.  Their solitary feeding activities take place during night hours and are rather passive in nature as these animals prefer to let food come to them, rather than chasing after it.”[2]

Lastly, the mysterious drum-like banging.  We both seemed put off by it.  We could not figure out where it originated.  We saw no vessels in the area.  In later years, I formed a hypothesis after investigating the effects of noise from seismic surveys on divers.  The effects are mostly physiological.  The sound can cause a stress response that can lead to a feeling of uneasiness in divers, particularly inexperienced divers.  Years later I was told that there were no active seismic surveys in the area, but I am not sure that every type of survey would have been permitted under the offshore oil and gas regulations written at the time.  The sound also could have been from a pile driving.  There was a great deal of marine construction and other activities going on in the area related to offshore oil and gas during that period.  Whatever the source, the sound contributed to an unsettling effect on us.

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[1] What Does a Dead Bird Mean? Ominous or Not?  October 2, 2022.  Thayer Birding.  https://www.thayerbirding.com/what-does-a-dead-bird-mean/ Accessed November 25, 2022.

[2] https://www.aquariumofpacific.org/onlinelearningcenter/species/swell_shark accessed June 11, 2024

Tales from the Logbook--Diving the Junkyard

 

Living in Goleta in the 1970s, I knew of Haskell’s Beach just past where Hollister Avenue and Calle Real terminated at Highway US 101.  It was a surfing spot, so I never really paid much attention to it.  For beach going activities, Goleta Beach was much more accessible.  After I got certified as a diver in 1984, I started to venture to Haskell’s Beach. 

I first learned of the diving conditions off Haskell’s Beach from Mark Bursek, a dive buddy who worked at Santa Barbara Aquatics and studied Marine Technology/commercial diving at Santa Barbara City College. Mark referred to the location as “The Junkyard” because of all the oil pier debris that littered the ocean floor.  He explained that many of the kelp patches off Haskell’s Beach were not anchored to rock substrate but rather the steel and other solid surface debris that was sunk when the oil field piers were abandoned. 

I eventually got around to inspecting the area off Haskell’s Beach.  After crossing US 101 to the access road, I pulled into the dirt parking lot, geared up out of the back of my truck and walked down the path to the beach.  The kelp patches were a short distance from the beach.  At many of the kelp beds along Santa Barbara County’s south coast, such as those at Refugio State Beach, divers could enter the water, make the short surface swim to the edge of the kelp and drop down.  I discovered at Haskell’s and some of the nearby dive sites, that dropping down a few feet just past the breaker zone and swimming underwater following a compass heading (usually due south) minimized contact with ever present floating tar patties.

Rusting pier footings marked one of the entry points.  I dropped down and quickly found myself swimming between pairs of deteriorating underwater pilings that rose off the ocean floor and terminated about 10 feet beneath the surface.  These pilings were remnants of the pier pilings and marked the way to the large debris field.  “Junkyard” was a spot on accurate description of the myriad of debris that covered the bottom.  Steel rails that normally would have run straight were bent into spaghetti jumble.  Remnants of decking and other material were strewn across the area as if a two year old had scattered building blocks during a temper tantrum.  Sharp rusting spikes poked up through the debris.  All this wreckage provided a hard bottom for kelp holdfasts.

The hard bottom and kelp combined to create a habitat that was mush like many of what I called "patch reefs" that dot the coastline.  I saw a lot of senorita fish, a few kelp bass, dungenous crabs, spider crabs, and a few lobster.  There was also a fair amount of smaller sessile and mobile invertabrates.

In California, prior to 1955, any wells drilled to access oil deposits beneath the seafloor had to be drilled from upland locations or from piers that extended offshore from the shoreline.  The Ellwood Oil Field, discovered in 1928, extended from Coal Oil Point west beyond Haskell’s and today’s Bacarra’s Resort and was developed using both upland locations and piers.  Over the years, as the wells played out, the piers were no longer needed and were removed, sometimes using explosives.  Such destructive means would explain the bent rails and scattered debris.

I only made a handful of dives at The Junkyard between the late 1980s and early 1990s.  Two dives stand out in particular in my memory.  The first is a night dive that I did with Brandon Cole.  The second is a dive that I did with Bill Grandi.

The dive I did with Brandon was largely uneventful in its execution.  After exiting the water, we headed up the dirt path in the dark using our handheld dive lights to illuminate the way.  All of a sudden a bright spot light pierced the darkness, illuminating Brandon and I.  Just as quickly, the light was extinguished.  I expected to encounter a California Department of Fish and Game officer as we approached the parking lot.  We found no game warden, but passed by a group of people, none of whom said anything to us nor did I stop to ask why they had lit us up with a spotlight.  I was hoping we had not stumbled upon a water-borne smuggling operation.  The group was not belligerent but I did get a “don’t mess with us” vibe as we passed. We shed our gear and quickly cleared the area, still not sure what was going on.

A few weeks later I found the answer.  An article in the local paper announced the arrest of an individual who had been caught digging up sites associated with the two large Chumash villages that once occupied the area.  As described by Tom Nodugmo in the Haskell’s Beach webpage at the Goleta History website:

“Archaeologists have studied this area through the years, and several different village sites dating back thousands of years were located around the mouth of the Tecolote creek. Unfortunately, in the late 1800’s, pillaging village sites for profit was quite common. Tons of artifacts were taken and sold to private collections and museums all around the world. The looters not only took valuable relics, but also damaged the sites so badly that it was nearly impossible for twentieth century scientists to interpret their findings properly.”

Buried artifacts still remain and archaeological sites dot the area.  The newspaper article explained that  members of the American Indian Movement group were assisting the Sheriff’s Office in conducting site surveillance in the area.   I can only imagine what the reaction was of these guys when they caught the sight of two wetsuit clad divers with full dive gear in the light’s beam.

The dive I did with Bill Grandi was, in part, research based.  Bill was an Environmental Studies major at UCSB, a scuba diver, fellow member of the UCSB Scuba Club and the short-lived UCSB Ocean Rescue Team.  I spoke with Bill and his collaborator John, also a diver, in 1990 or 1991 about The Junkyard being created from oil field debris.  At the time, I was studying the development of offshore oil and gas in the Santa Barbara Channel as part of my Ph.D. dissertation.  For a class term project, Bill and John wanted an issue that would really stand out in its originality. 

I suggested they profile the consequence of earlier abandonment of the offshore portions of the Ellwood Oil Field as evidenced by The Junkyard.  This project had ongoing relevance as the last vestiges of the Ellwood Field were starting to be “decommissioned” (“abandonment” has a negative connotation).  Outside of initially showing Bill the dive site and providing some background material about the field, I really did not interact with the two students.  The two dived in the Junkyard and produced a report complete with underwater photographs of the debris.  As I recall, they received an “A” on the report.

Shortly after graduating in 1994, Bill did some wildland fire fighring and joined the Peace Corps and went on assignment to Honduras while I moved to Alabama to teach at Troy University for three years.  We reconnected in 1997 when I moved back to California. After an attempt at US Marine Corps Officer Candidate School, Bill pursued his teaching credential at Cal State Northridge and taught middle school science classes in the Los Angeles Unified School District.  He was engaged to be married. I regret that I lost contact with him just as I was moving to Alaska.  My attempts to locate him once I got settled in Alaska were fuitless. He seems to have vanished off the face of the earth.  He used to tell me about his dream of having a traditional lifestyle in a tropical location.  Maybe he made it.  I like to think he did.

Tales from the Logbook--Salvage Fever

 

After getting certified, I did a fair amount of diving; more than twenty five dives in less than a year.  I had approached scuba diving as a bucket list activity—get certified, check it off the things to do list, move on to the next.  Purchasing my own gear removed the largest hurdle to continuing to dive—the hassle of renting gear, some of which I learned early on did not suit me, and running to the shop to pick it up and return it.. 

“I can’t find anyone to go diving with” is the often given reason by people who don’t continue to dive.  Lack of buddies was not a problem for me living in the Santa Barbara area.  I did dives with people I knew and a few that I did not.  I joined the UCSB Scuba Club even though I was not a student but was welcomed as if I were.  Plentiful nearby shore diving sites meant that I could wake at 7:00 a.m. and be in the water 90 minutes later. So what I thought was going to be a “one and done” experience soon turned into an activity that I did frequently.

My in-water skills slowly improved.  Repetition reduced my awkwardness underwater. My air consumption needed improvement, many of my dives did not exceed 30 minutes of bottom time.  Early on a buddy tagged me with the nickname “Hoover” because “I sucked air like a vacuum cleaner.”   I learned a lot by doing, night diving, spear fishing, abalone and lobster hunting or just checking out new locations.  Some of what I learned came from more experienced divers who did not mind being paired with a much less experienced diver.  Steve McCollough, the assistant instructor in my certification course, showed me how to properly identify, remove, clean and prepare abalone. 

Diving from La Jolla Shores

So it was, with 20 dives in my logbook,  I joined with members of the UCSB club in mid-February to travel to San Diego.  Bill, a past member of the club, graciously invited us for a weekend of beach dives and dives from his beach-launched zodiac inflatable boat.  I took a couple of hours of vacation from work to get an early start for the four hour drive to San Diego.  Many of the club members were crashing at our host’s house in nearby Claremont Mesa, while I was staying with my brother in nearby Lake Murray.  We planned to meet up at the Kellogg Park beach access point adjacent to the La Jolla Shores Beach and Tennis Club the next morning.  Little did I know that I would experience potentially disastrous consequences on my first dive that turned out to be an epiphany!

La Jolla Shores--Saturday, February 16, 1985

Warm and sunny, clear skies, the kind of day that brings winter weary Californians to the beach.  At this point in the calendar, the days are getting noticeably longer, much of the winter rain has fallen, and it is starting to get warmer.  A friend who worked selling memberships at a health club in Ventura once remarked “these are the happy times.  People who have put on a few holiday pounds and lost their tan put on beachwear and are shocked when they look in the mirror.  They immediately run to join the gym and it shows in my commission check.” 

We got to the boat launch area of the beach early and wheeled the zodiac onto the sand. The seas were nearly flat with a bit of a beach break —ideal conditions for launching the boat.  The zodiac could only take out two divers at a time.  I volunteered to do the first dive with a UCSB student, Chad.  We geared up, dragged the boat into the water, hopped in and were soon bouncing across the water on our way to the nearby dive site. 

We got to our dive site off of La Jolla Cove.  The plan was to have a look around the kelp bed and rock reef about 60 feet below.  Chad and I completed our buddy checks, and did a back roll off opposite sides of the boat.  We popped up to the surface, signaled the zodiac we were “OK” and started our descent.

Conditions were near perfect.  The water was clear with nearly 50 foot horizontal visibility.  We swam along the edge of the rock reef, approaching our deepest point of about 75 feet just before we reached our ascent point.  We had seen many lobsters hanging out under rock ledges.  Lobster season had a few more weeks to run.  I figured we were looking at those that had survived so far.

Contracting Salvage Fever

Then, on the ocean floor, I spied a Shakespeare fishing rod and reel.  The rig appeared to have recently arrived.  It was clean, with no encrusting apparent.  The reel mechanism turned freely.  I let Chad grab it.  I do not fish, so I had little use for a rod and reel.  A bit further on, I spotted a small boat anchor sitting out in the open.  I wondered if we went further if we would find a small boat sitting on the bottom!  No need to look, I contracted a bad case of “salvage fever” upon circling the anchor.  Symptoms of that affliction include clouded judgement and tunnel vision to retrieve the object.

On closer examination, I recognized the Danforth style anchor, similar to one that had graced the bow of a friend’s 22-foot Catalina sail boat.  It had about 20 feet of chain attached to it.  I speculated with the proximity of the fishing rod to the anchor if these items had been accidently dropped overboard.  It did not matter, Chad had the rod, I wanted the anchor. 

The problem was how to get it to the surface.  The anchor probably weighed about 10 to 15 pounds.  I did not have a lift bag or line to attach to the anchor.  If I surfaced, I feared that I would not be able to find my way back to this spot.  So, in my own addlepated thinking brought on by the salvage fever, I figured I could swim it to the surface by filling my buoyancy compensator with air for extra lift. 

Now these devices are called “anchor”—a device that serves to hold an object firmly—for a reason.  I grasped the chain and started furiously kicking toward the surface but made no progress.  Chad hovered nearby holding the fishing rod and probably trying to figure out what the hell his buddy was attempting.  I tried to raise it off the bottom by pulling the chain hand over hand; that did not work.  So in about 60 feet of water, I fully inflated my bc like it was a lift bag.  I felt I would make some progress although I was breathing hard as I worked against the weight.  Then, I drew a labored breath from my regulator.  I was running out of air!

I had the presence of mind to dump air from my fully inflated bc before letting go of the anchor.  If I had not, I might have rapidly shot to the surface causing a fatal arterial gas embolism.  I executed an emergency swimming ascent exhaling the air out of my lungs as I swam for the surface.  I got a couple of breaths of air from the regulator just before I surfaced near the zodiac which had been following our bubble trail.

Taking the Cure

As I bobbed on the surface waiting to heave myself on to the boat, the fever instantly subsided. I realized what a very stupid mistake I made.  I cursed myself, wondering how I could be so dumb.  This 30 minute dive may have been my last.  In that instant, I resolved to become more disciplined about my approach if I planned to continue diving.  I dismissed my foolhardiness with a terse logbook entry, ALMOST GOT AN ANCHOR.

Within two months of the dive I completed dive rescue certification course taught by Dennis Divins and Ed Stetson.  By the end of the summer, I had completed a Assistant Instructor course and Divemaster training and had completed more than 50 logged dives.  I learned a lot and became a much better diver.