After the last pool session, many of us met up at Pizza
Bob’s on Embarcadero Del Norte in Isla Vista.
We sat on the picnic tables and ordered pitchers of beer and pizza to
celebrate completing the class work. We
couldn’t stay too long. County alcohol regulations required all alcohol service to end promptly at mid-night in Isla Vista. The bar staff would swoop in an clear the
tables as the clock was striking twelve.
A few year’s later, Dennis Divins the UCSB Diving Safety Officer and his
wife Sherri purchased the restaurant and continued to operate it until Dennis
retired in the early 2000’s. We used to
joke that he didn’t rename the place because “Pizza Dennis” just did not have
the same ring to it as “Pizza Bob’s.”
I do recall that I expereinced some apprehension about doing my ocean dives and briefly considered not showing up for the boat. I just as quickly dismissed that idea as stupid.
Mike, his girlfriend, Sue, and I shared a ride. I picked up those two in Isla Vista early
enough to ensure we would make it to Port Hueneme in plenty of time. With three people and three sets of gear my "fiesta orange" Ponitac Astre compact was a bit cramped.
Despite making a detour into Channel Islands Harbor (Oxnard) before
being redirected to the adjacent Port Hueneme, we made the boat in plenty of
time.
Sea Ventures had a unique configuration as it had equipment
compartments that extended beyond the outside rail of the boat. We stowed our gear in the bins and set our
tanks into slots behind the benches that ran down either side of the boat. Each dive tank station was assigned a
number. We were given masking tape to
place on the top of our tank and write the station number on it. We became that number using it to charge for
beverages, food and air fills, and to check in and out of the water with the
dive master.
With all the gear stowed we headed out of port for Anacapa
Island. Leaving port we passed
decommissioned U.S. Navy destroyers awaiting their fate as target ships for
weapons testing conducted in the Pacific Missile Test Range and shore based
installations of the Port Hueneme Construction Battalion (Seabee) Base on the
west side of the port.
I must have fidgeted all the way to our first dive spot, East Fish Camp. A certain ‘what am I doing
here, I shoulda stayed home’ feeling had come over me earlier that
morning. I sometimes wonder if I might
have bailed on the day had I not promised to give others a ride to the
boat. I can’t explain the origin of the
mood. It wasn’t a fear of failure; I had
done fine through all the training and exercises. It wasn’t apprehension over the boat trip; the
trip a few years earlier to San Miguel Island and subsequent aquatic activity
provided a certain comfort.
We motored slowly across the Channel. Slow motoring was the only speed that Sea
Ventures understood. She was designed to
haul divers cheaply, not quickly. The
joke was that dolphins didn’t swim in the bow wave because they got bored. If you didn’t like the speed at which the
boat moved, you sure would not like the alternative.
Captain Mickey, Michael De Fazio, was one of the most laid
back skippers I recall, always with a smile and a wry sense of humor. He disappeared into the wheelhouse, only to
reappear to help the divers and fill tanks once we anchored. Underway, the deck fell under the purview of
his deckhand/divemaster who seemed to be constantly checking something.
The trip over was uneventful. We anchored at East Fish Camp on the backside
(southside) of middle Anacapa Island. We geared
up and entered the water for our first dive.
We approached the starboard gate, gave our number to the dive master,
inflated our b.c., put our regulator in our mouth, held on to our mask with one
hand and covered our weight belt with the other, just as we had been
taught. The dive master checked that our
tank valve was fully opened, checked our pressure gage to make sure the tank
was full, and told us “check the area below the boat, and if it is clear, do a
giant stride into the water.” If I had
not been so busy sweating the details I would have been impressed with the
safety of the operation.
The First Dive
Looking down and not seeing any diver beneath the gate, I
jumped into space. I hit with a splash, sank
a few feet, and immediately popped to the surface thanks to the air filled
b.c. We gathered on the surface at the
anchor line and started our descent as a group.
I let the air out of the b.c. grabbed the line and started
pulling myself down the rope hand-over-hand. I got about half way and couldn’t
make any headway. I really tried to get
to the bottom. I just seemed suspended
mid water column. I half rolled and started
down head first kicking furiously to get to the bottom. Steve, the assistant instructor, came up to
me, signaled me to stop, and then motioned for me to vent more air through the
b.c. inflator hose. That did the trick
and I sank to the bottom.
Once established on the bottom in about 35 feet of water, I set
the index on my Seiko dive watch bezel so the index mark was opposite the
minute hand. This setting would make it
easy for me to determine at any point in the dive how long I had been underwater. The length of the dive was defined, in those
days, as the end of descent to the beginning of ascent.
The first dive was a tour around the area. We started
swimming in a line, two-by-two, I about 25 feet of water. The bottom was rocky and flat with strands of
kelp and a lot of urchins. I was in the
middle of the group alongside my buddy.
Dave led the group, stopping to point things out as we went along. Steve
lingered slightly above and at the rear of the group. At one stop, he cracked open an urchin which
quickly attracted a scrum of fish that fed on the exposed innards. The most noticeable fish was the bright
orange Garibaldi.
As we moved along, I felt like I was drifting up. I stopped and tried to vent more air from the
b.c. but only a trickle came out. I
seemed to bounce up and down during the entire dive, often positioned well
above the group.
Twenty five minutes into the dive, Dave stopped, gathered us
around, As hed had done a couple of times during the dive, he signaled each of
us to indicate that were “OK” with by
responding with the same signal, index finger on thumb the three fingers
extended. He then pointed to each diver,
held up his left palm, and made a clockwise motion across it with his right
index finger. This was the signal for
“how much air do you have?” We responded
by holding up the number of fingers that corresponded to the reading on our
pressure gage. During the class Dave had
emphasized “you should always know your remaining air pressure within 100 psi. You need to get into the habit of checking
your air often.”
The dive plan called for us to surface when the first diver
reached 700 p.s.i. tank pressure so we would return to the boat with at least
500 p.s.i. One of the diver’s had a bit
less showing, so Dave held both thumbs up and motioned toward the surface, our
signal to ascend.
We had been taught to ascend at I foot per second, or no
faster than your smallest exhaled bubble.
We rose slowly. Breaking the
surface, we inflated our b.c.’s and returned to the boat.
As I filled our my first log book entry, I noted that I had
started with 3,000 psi and returned to the boat with 700 p.s.i. From my dive watch, I could see that I had 25
minutes of bottom time. I calculated that I was in repetitive group “C” from the
dive table. Visibility was about 20
feet-a number that we arrived at through consensus. Nobody really knew. It could have been more; accurately
estimating visibility is a skill that comes from multiple dives. The notes of my dive are cryptically short. “TROUBLE WITH NEGATIVE BUOYANCY. MUST GO VERTICAL TO DUMP BC. This being my first dive, the Total Hours to Date, Total Hours this Dive, and
Accumulated Dive Hours all indicate “25.’”
The Second Dive
The entry and descent on this dive was a repeat of that
followed for the first. We moved
shallower and entered a small kelp bed, proceeding through it single file. Diving in kelp is one of the aspects that
defines California diving, knowing how to move through it without getting
entangled is an essential skill. For all
the non-divers who describe a drowning as “the body being wrapped in kelp” I
half expected to see skeletons handing from the strands. East Fish Camp did not have the rich, thick
kelp beds that other sites had. The kelp
forest up and down the coast had been heavily damaged in the El Nino storms in
the Winter of 82/83 and had not yet come back to their full thickness.
The rest of the dive was spent demonstrating skills such as
buddy breathing from the alternate air source or the second “octopus” regulator
each diver carried for our buddy as a precaution against an out of air situation. We also practiced buddy breathing as if the
diver donating air did not have an octopus regulator. Finally, we each had to
demonstrate an simulated emergency swimming ascents—a dash to the surface when
a buddy isn’t around and you are out of air.
At several points in the class, Dave emphasized that “this is a
situation that should never occur. Your
buddy should never be that far away and you should always know how much air you
have remaining.”[1]
The instructor watched that we were blowing bubbles during
buddy breathing anytime we passed the regulator back and forth or during the
emergency swimming ascent simulation. In
a real out of air situation that required an emergency ascent we were
instructed to remove and drop our weight belt, keep our regulator in our mouth,
look up and kick rapidly to the surface, exhaling all the way. To many of us in the class, this seemed
counter-intuitive. If a diver is out of
air, why would he exhale the air in his lungs?
As we learned, the air in the lungs expands with the decreasing external
pressure during ascent. Constant
exhalation minimizes the chance that air is trapped in the lungs causing a lung
overexpansion that causes a nearly always fatal air embolism.
The dive was a little shorter this time, with 20 minutes of
bottom time. I had started the dive with
a 2600 psi air fill which was the best that the tank fill system on board could
do under the circumstances.
Back on board, Dave and Steve congratulated us on completing
the dives. My log book entry concludes,
“I’m now certified.”
The Third Dive
“You are all certified divers,” Dave announced. “Go have some fun if you want to make another
dive. Just remember, you are now on your
own.”
Not everyone wanted to make a third dive. Mike, Sue and I buddied up. We decided that as a trio, I would buddy with Mike and Mike would buddy
with Sue. Mike was the lynchpin and middle diver. That way we knew who was looking after who.
The air fill for the third dive was even lower than for the second, 2500 psi. The tank was only about 80 percent full so our bottom time would be shorter. We did a 30 minute dive, exploring the kelp and checking out the fish. We stayed shallower on this dive, about 20 feet average, which may account for our decent bottom time despite a “short fill” on the tank. I did note in the dive log that “I am still sucking too much air” meaning that I needed to control my rate of breathing.
Dave assured me that my air consumption, that is my rate of
air use, would get longer if I continued to dive. He assured me that with the excitement and
tension, many new divers had breathed rapidly.
But that a normal breathing rate could be expected as the new experience
became more familiar. He also pointed
out that taking deep, more frequent breaths, was contributing to my buoyancy
problem.
“You have a built in bc with your lungs. Next time you feel that you can’t get to the
bottom after your have dumped the air in your b.c., try exhaling all the
way. I think you will drop like a rock
when you do.”
As we head back in, I contemplate the three dives and the
one hour and fifteen minutes listed in my log as the Accumulated Dive
Hours. I am tired, a little sunburned,
and pretty sure that my I will be diving again, inspite of my bucket list
intention.
[1]
Divers learned both alternate air source and single regulator buddy
breathing. In the early 1980s, many
divers only carried a single regulator.
The number of divers outfitted with alternate air source (octopus)
regulators was increasingly common. While regulators used in classes needed to
be configured with an alternate air source, rental regulators did not. I recall being offered a regulator without an
octopus when I needed equipment for a post certification dive, despite my
certification card stating that I must have an alternate air source. I discovered that this was a non-enforceable
requirement, that is, a suggestion. A
certified diver has no limitation other than those required by their own good
sense. Many divers observed that an
octopus regulator was the one piece of equipment that a diver carried not for
themselves, but for their buddy. Because
the regulator was viewed as a “backup”
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