Tales from the Log--Kelp Forest Monitoring in 2000--Part 2

 

Wednesday, July 19, 2000

All the gear on the deck is caked with salt this morning—the residue of last night’s wind-whipped seas. All the equipment is cleaned off and checked as we prepare for the first dive of the day.

The first dive of the day is at the Johnson's Lee-North site. I descend very slowly in and constantly equalize the pressure using the "Valsalva maneuver" which sounds like a military tactic, but simply means, "pinch the nose and blow." I have had a little difficulty equalizing, not enough to keep from diving but enough to keep me from descending head-straight-down. 

My buddy and I spend part of the dive looking for a wayward ARM that has yet to be located. The search proves fruitless; the module cannot be located, part of the rare but not unknown attrition of these structures over time.  I think that anchoring vessels will sometimes snag and drag the ARM, perhaps pummeling it into unrecognizable debris strewn across the seafloor,

We spend the remainder of the dive collecting red and purple urchins at various places along the transect. My partner is a bit more experienced and adept at collecting the critters. His bag is full before mine, but I finish the task before a diminishing air supply causes me to surface. We secure the mesh bags containing the urchins to lines hanging from the boat. This keeps the urchins submerged until we bring them aboard to measure them.

We bring each bag aboard, segregate the urchins by species, and measure them with calipers. We callout the measurements which are recorded on a tally sheet for later entry into the database. The recorder calls back our measurement to make sure it is correct. "43…43, 56…56, 23…23" for a couple hundred measurements. I expect someone to say "hike" at the end of the string or stand up and yell "bingo." As we finish with each creature, we toss it over the side of the boat, returning it to its environment. A diver on the bottom under the boat might experience this "urchin hail" until all the critters are measured. After we finish, I use a pair of sharp tweezers to remove a few urchin spines from my paws. Urchins are the porcupines of the sea. Pick them up and play with them, but, if they don’t like being disturbed, you will be skewered.

On the second dive, each diver in my team measures 60 puffball sponges at various locations along the baseline. This measuring is done in situ (a term, which in this case means, "as they sit on the bottom") using calipers and recording the measurement on a slate. We are warned not to come back without our calipers. It seems that in the past these devices have been lost. I put both calipers and slate in a mesh bag, which will clip to my harness at the beginning and end of the dive. The surge on the bottom makes lining up to measure the orange colonial a real test of buoyancy control. Even though items under water appear 25 percent larger because of the magnification effect of water, I wish I had bifocals installed in my mask to read the increments on the scale a bit faster.

Between dives, we are invited to snack on various victuals place in the galley—chocolate, trail mix, dried fruit, fresh fruit, potato chips which are the hors d’ oeuvre before a fully lunch and dinner. Come to think of it, we are not invited to "snack" as much as we are invited to "graze" or "mow." Scientific diving is much more strenuous than sport diving under the same conditions. It is both physical and mental. It is also more arduous, even if one has the sedentary, or rather sessile, task of emptying, inventorying, and reassembling recruitment modules. Immobility is achieved by station keeping which requires a large expenditure of energy. Paradoxically, because the diver is motionless, he or she seems more susceptible to getting cold. These between-dive snacks provide energy that compensates for the expenditure of energy. We are diving machines, but not perpetual motion machines. At least it provides a great rationalization for scarfing down trail mix laced with plain M&Ms. Yum.

On the third dive, we move to Johnson's-Lee South to do a thirty-minute fish count. We take a long surface interval and check our dive profile as insurance that this slightly deeper dive will be well within the safe diving envelope. I am getting pretty good at these fish counts. Repetition makes for reliability. After dive operations are done for the day, the data is methodically recorded and checked before the slates are cleaned in preparation for the next day’s activity.

This isn’t a cruiseship; we just eat like it is. We might even be able to play shuffleboard if it weren’t for all the dive gear on the fantail. But, after all is done for the day, after the gear is stowed, the meal prepared, and the dishes done, the "card room" opens as some of the crew plays a game of hearts on one of the galley tables while the other table becomes the library or salon where we can enjoy our novels or engage in conversation. It doesn’t last long. Soon the library empties as people say their "g’nights" and retire to their berths below decks. Brushing of teeth on the stern becomes a group activity. There is no formal "lights out" but somewhere between 9 and 10 p.m. the cabins go dark and sleep comes quickly. As the cruise progresses, the "lights off" time seems to come earlier and earlier.

Thursday, July 20, 2000

The morning, still at Johnson's Lee South, we hit the water before 8:00 a.m. in order to beat the current that will surely quickly build. My partner and I descend the stern anchor line to one end of the transect. We are counting the number of stipes or strands on the kelp plants and measuring the diameter of the holdfasts that anchor the kelp plant to the seafloor. My partner finds a juvenile wolf eel at the beginning of the dive, a critter that I have never seen before. True to prediction, the current begins to pick up just as we finish our data collection at the site.

We pull anchor and head for Fry’s Harbor on the front, or north or "front" side of Santa Cruz Island, which means another trip across the Potato Patch. As soon as we get underway, the skipper heaves to and shuts the engine down. The impeller on the engine exhaust cooing system needs to be replaced. We are well off the island. I am asked to keep watch and notify the skipper if we get close to the island. Visibility is unlimited. Still, I recall all the vessels that stranded or grounded on the islands when the Captain left the bridge with explicit instructions to be notified if land was sighted.

One such vessel is Goldenhorne that has lain for more than a century on the bottom just upcoast of South Point. She was engaged in the transpacific trade, coal from Australia to Los Angeles for the railroad line that would eventually end coastwise shipping. She and her two sister ships the Matterhorne and the Silverhorne all came to grief, one at Santa Rosa Island, another off northern California, and the third just disappeared off the surface of the sea, never to be heard from again. Luckily, history is not to be repeated. Repairs are quickly made to the Pacific Ranger and we are soon underway for our appointment with the Patch. Today, the area really lives up to its reputation, making the passage a few days ago seem tranquil by comparison.

We arrive at Fry’s Harbor. Although we are relatively close to the island, the dives will be relatively deep. The profile of the sea floor here is nearly vertical--it gets very deep, very quick, very close to shore. We do the Fish Count. We come to the surface, deposit our slates for later tallying, switch out our tanks and hit the water for our third dive of the day. Recruitment modules need to be taken apart, he critters bagged for tallying, and the bricks reassembled. Marine growth on the bricks acts as cement between the blocks. We need to apply enough force to overcome the adhesion, but not so much as to disturb the smallest of the critters attached to the blocks. Fitting the bricks back together is a challenge, but one that does not require the finesse of the disassembly. I seem to recall a line from the original Star Trek series where ship’s surgeon McCoy states "I’m a doctor, not a bricklayer" when ordered to mend a creature who is essentially a living rock. Well, today I am a bricklayer, not a doctor.

Friday, July 21, 2000

We will finish up this spot and head back to port. On the first dive, my partner and I swim parallel to the baseline and take a census of two species of sea stars. The water is murky and we have to work a bit harder to maintain buddy contact. The water seems a bit colder. The sky this morning was overcast, and while the wind was light, I missed the warmth of the sun.

On the second dive, we swim along the baseline, doing a census of a species of sea star and keyhole limpet. The limpet has an internal shell covered by the mantle so we have to be very careful to feel for the limits of the shell to ensure an accurate measurement.

The trip back is uneventful. We busy ourselves cleaning the ship and preparing for disembarking at Park headquarters at Ventura. Remarkably, not all of the consumables have been consumed. These will be removed and used for the next trip in another week. All other gear that was brought down to the boat from the loading area by small handcarts must now be taken from the boat up to the loading area. But, the tide is in and the ramp from the floating dock to the loading area is not a steep as it might be at low tide. Normally one would not notice the differential, but at the end of a five-day working cruise, we are pleased by the condition that is a bit easier.