Sea Stories

Prose, including snippets (mini-memoirs).
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sasha
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Sea Stories

Post by sasha » February 12th, 2018, 12:20 pm

All this scuba talk has dredged up a lot of memories - few coherent stories, just bits of chaff, motes, silt stirred up from the bottom of my mind into formless clouds - isolated impressions & scenes from my times spent underwater.

I was treasurer of our local dive club. Once or twice a year we'd use our dues to charter a dive boat out of Portsmouth NH - a 40-ft lobster boat with a hatch cut into the side gunwale for divers to pass through to and from the water. It would take us to the Isles of Shoals an hour or more offshore where we'd make two dives - one in the harbor, the other in open water.

Unlike our inland lakes, the bottom topography there is complex and beautiful. The lake basins are typically smooth, featureless, muddy bowls no more than 40-50 feet deep. There are exceptions - parts of Dublin lake drop down over 100 ft - but the only visual interest is found in the small schools of bass and the occasional artifact.

But the shoals giving the islands their name are quite another thing. The tides scouring the rocky ledges clean have prevented the accumulation of muck, even 50-60 feet down. Kelp gardens thrive there, great swaying fronds of all colors - green, brown, yellow, red, even purple (though red light below about 30 feet is so attenuated that the reds only show up as a rusty brown). While the variety of fish can't rival that of the Florida Keys, it vastly outnumbers that of the deeper lakes. Lobsters, crabs, stars - to a New England fresh-water diver, this is Paradise.

I remember a time my partner and I were floating above those waving kelp fields when I noticed, almost perfectly camoflaged, a largish fish (maybe 18" long) lying motionless on the bottom. I say motionless - it's fins were large, flimsy, and ornate, and swayed in the current just like the kelp in which it hid. It's skin was mottled, like the variegated species of seaweed around it. It was robust, not slender, with a large, downward curving, thick-lipped mouth. It rested on the bottom atop two limb-like pectoral fins. It was quite possibly the ugliest thing I'd ever seen. In a moment of puckish playfulness, I reached out a mittened hand to tweak its tail - and so intent was it on staying hidden, it didn't react. I ended up grabbing it by the base of the tail and held it up for my partner to see. He grinned (I could see the air leaking out of his mask) and gave me the OK sign. I gently set it back down where I'd disturbed it. It moved forward a foot or so, then settled back down.

We continued on, exploring the nooks and crannies in the granite outcropping. A few minutes later my partner tapped me on the arm. I turned to see what he wanted. He held up his mesh catch bag. Sitting patiently within it was what looked like the same fish. I laughed out loud, flooding my mask. He everted the bag, the fish dropped back down to the bottom, and lay still, none the worse for our boorish behavior.

Robin fish, I think they're called.

Another time we put into a spot the divemaster had told us was about 50-60 feet deep. A group of about four of us got together and vented our BCs to begin the drop to the floor. In the green murk of fertile northern waters, bottom features at that depth should start to resolve themselves at 35 or 40 feet - but all we could see was dark green below us. As we did at 50 feet. And 60 feet. And 70.

Finally, at around 75 or 80 feet we could barely make out shapes. We didn't touch down until we'd reached about 90 or 95 feet. We were so deep the light was gray and dim, like late twilight on an overcast day. And we appeared to be on a hilltop. As we traveled along the bottom, we descended even further, bottoming out at around 115 feet.

For reasons I'm not sure of, nitrogen under pressure is an intoxicant. Maybe it interacts with other elements in the air or with biochemicals in the body to form a nitrous-oxide-like compound. I could Google "nitrogen narcosis" if I felt like taking time out from this reminiscence, but I don't. The short of it is that breathing nitrogen below about 100 ft is roughly equivalent to downing a martini or two.

My training had made me aware of this, and as I felt the onset of a gentle buzz, I made a concerted effort to move slowly and deliberately, and to observe all the protocols I'd been taught. That went out the window when one of my partners tapped my arm. He wanted to show me that he'd placed a starfish on each shoulder, like Velcro epaulets, and was sticking another onto his hood. I almost lost it. I burst out laughing, flooding my mask, and had to pause to clear it.

Another thing about deep diving is increased air consumption. The deeper you go, the greater the ambient pressure, and the greater the pressure, the more air it takes to inflate your lungs. At our depth, it only took about 20 minutes to red-line our tanks. When we got below 1000 lb, it was time to go.

This was before I had an autoinflater for my BC - a trigger valve for a low-pressure line from the 1st stage of my regulator feeding directly into the vest. The vest was inflated instead by blowing into a pleated hose with a check valve. This involves 1) inhaling from the regulator; 2) removing the mouthpiece; 3) exhaling into the vest; 4) replacing the mouthpiece; 5) repeat as needed. Simple enough - unless you've had a couple of martinis.

I took out the mouthpiece and blew, sending one lungful of air as a cluster of bubbles back to the surface. It was like patting your head & rubbing your stomach at the same time, but I eventually got it right and joined my companions hovering patiently a few feet above me.

Once we got up past the 100 ft mark, the symptoms vanished. Back on the boat, Paul was peeling the starfish from his wetsuit and tossing them overboard. "You were narced, weren't you," I said with a grin. He gave me a sly smile. "Nah. You?"

Made a couple of night dives in the Keys - I remember hitting the water and looking down, where the lights from those preceding me looked like street lamps viewed from a 3rd story window on a foggy night - a scene right out of Victorian London. Made an ice dive once - we spent half the morning cutting two rectangular holes through the ice with a chain saw, and shoveling radial paths outward that we could see from below. These were to point us back to the holes in the event we came unattached from our guideline. Once in the water I was so concerned about following all the safety procedures that I really couldn't absorb the experience. The only part I remember is approaching the hole from below - because of the refractive properties of the water, the top of the hole - maybe 18" from the surface - looked so much smaller than the bottom. I remember all the faces ringed around the opening peering down at me as I approached.

Good times, good times... except for the trip we made too soon after a nor'easter had battered the coast. With 5 or 6 foot swells tossing the boat like a toy, I - and a few others - got horribly seasick. I always packed Dramamine after that. Another time a pair of newbies chose to ignore the divemaster's exhortations to follow the anchor line on the outward half of the dive. (The current aligns the boat downstream of the anchor, and gives you a free ride back to the boat.) They surfaced a half mile away, out of air, and had to snorkel back in full gear against the current. The captain was getting ready to raise anchor and go get them - but the divemaster said No. This is a lesson they won't soon forget. They made it back OK, but were so exhausted they tossed their cookies over the railing after they struggled aboard.

It's been almost 20 years now since I've strapped a tank to my back, but I can't really say I miss it. I used to dream about it, but now even those have drifted away into my past. No regrets - I think I'll become that old guy sitting in flannel underwear by a pot-belly stove in the General Store boring all the young folk with my tales. "Ya know, that reminds me of the time back in '78 when me 'n Steve Carter found a sea anchor at the bottom of Lake Nubanusit..."

Which we did. No idea how it got there.
.
"Falsehood flies, the Truth comes limping after it." - Jonathan Swift, ca. 1710

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stilltrucking
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Joined: October 24th, 2004, 12:29 pm
Location: Oz or somepLace like Kansas

Re: Sea Stories

Post by stilltrucking » February 14th, 2018, 5:06 pm

a good read thank you 8)

I think about being buried at sea.

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Terri
Posts: 251
Joined: March 11th, 2008, 9:39 pm
Location: dayton oh

Re: Sea Stories

Post by Terri » April 14th, 2018, 12:35 pm

yes, wonderful story well told
thanks

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