Learning to Scuba Dive

In 1968, I made a list of things I thought I wanted to accomplish. Both skydiving and scuba diving were on the list. In college, common sense prevailed and despite the urging of a short-term romantic partner, I never have jumped out of a plane. I did sign myself up for scuba diving lessons as a Junior in High School. The catalyst was my next door neighbor, Rene.

We would share rides to the municipal pool where the lessons were taught, and where Rene was well known as a prospective life guard. The first half of the course was in a school room setting where we learned about the bends, Boyle’s law, and many oceanographic and technical points useful to the scuba diver (a Morrey eel bite can look trivial until you bend the joint and expose a lot of open tissue). The class was taught by an ex UDT (Underwater Demolition Team—later known as USN Seals) diver of Korean War vintage.

I excelled in the classroom. I was in my element. I learned the hand signals that would demonstrate that I was running out of air (a sawing motion across the throat) and how to signal a diving partner (and one always dives with a parter) to turn on the reserve (pointing to the right side over the shoulder where the valve for the reserve was located). I passed all the written tests as only a pre-med student could—for me, near the top of the class.

The second half of the class took place in the evening hours in an Olympic sized pool. At 5” 10” height and 135 pounds, I had negative buoyancy—and my ability to swim was actually a past learning of how not to drown. When tasked with, “Swim two laps to warm up,” I was quickly left behind by the other 12 classmates and alternated my swimming strokes about every twenty yards as I fatigued. I think I was on my back trying to butterfly when over me strode an assistant teacher, a UDT guy of WWII vintage.

“What the hell are you doing?”

I was not sure to what he referred. “I am doing my laps, sir.”

“And that’s how you are doing them?”

A short silence, followed by, “Uh, Yes sir.”

His whistle blew. He pulled everyone out of the pool. Scattered along the side was all our scuba equipment: masks, snorkels, fins, weight belts, and scuba tanks. He had half the class take their equipment to the opposite side of the pool.

A short, very “Seal-like” description of cause and effect was identified. The cause was my being out of shape for a course in scuba diving and the effect was a drill designed to enhance swimming endurance and swimming strokes for everyone.  We had a relay across the pool. The first diver would put on one article of gear of his or her choosing, but it had to be put on incorrectly ie the mask was put on around the neck or the fins around the ankles. One then swam across the pool to a partner who then donned equipment in similar fashion. Each “lap” required one more piece of gear to be added.

The best swimmers caved at the third lap (a mask around the neck and two fins around the ankles is quite an anchor with respect to swimming very far).

While I still could not claim to be an efficient swimmer, I managed to look busy and minimize strokes changes each day we started with the two lap warmup. We moved on the more interesting exercises.

The most loathsome exercise once we were actually using the scuba gear, was a lap underwater without the mask on. It was dark and one followed the pool lights to guide the way. Water came up the nose as one inhaled through the respirator and for me, the effect was just short of waterboarding-cold, dark, water in my airway…….It took practice and more than one instructor had to demonstrate exerting  nasal air pressure and focus on breathing rhythms to overcome an instinctive fear and desire to surface, fast ( a diver never surfaces fast unless there is a dire emergency).

The most delightful exercise was sitting in a circle ten feet down to practice different exercises as a group. We would watch each other take off all the equipment, disengage from the respirator, and then put it all back on without going to the surface. We acquired confidence as this exercise was repeated over days. At some point in the group one night, well into the weeks of training, I realized it was getting harder to draw a breath. I was running out of air! I remained calm. I gently tapped the adult next to me, made eye contact, and made the sawing motion across my neck and then pointed to my reserve. Ten seconds passed. He squinted his eyes and shrugged his shoulders: “What?”  I repeated the drill and he still did not know what I needed. By now, I was really, “sucking air.” The old UDT instructor had seen me and drifted over, ever so slowly,  and opened the reserve. What a relief……….

A not-so-delightful yet interesting and stimulating exercise during the course was CPR. There was no rescusi-Annie in 1968. We practiced mouth to mouth breathing on each other in real time. Happily, I did not draw the old guy who did not know his hand signals but rather, Rene, the girl next door. I think it remains the only time in my life that I felt air from my lungs pass forcefully into a living person, filling her lungs and letting the air out. We had to practice on each other several cycles. Given my future career choice, I remember being able to compartmentalize the experience even then: sort-of-erotic-but-not-really as I was taking my lessons very seriously.

The final day came and my performance on this day would determine my success getting certified as a scuba diver.  Rene’s car, a Cadillac boat car got us to Bird Rock in La Jolla. We were instructed at the waterside to NOT harvest any abalone which could only be done, free diving.

Who knew?

We entered the water and within minutes, I was thirty feet down, with diving partners, in a forest of Kelp. Seals circled us in and out of the Kelp. We saw abalone as well as a wealth of other invertebrates. We saw other divers. As we came back up (always exhaling—remember Boyle’s law!), I noticed my mask was full of bloody snot. We had not had a lesson on bloody snot. On shore, I asked about it and learned about, “sinus squeeze,” the effect decompression can have on the delicate blood vessels in the nose and sinus. It was a nuisance to be tolerated—which was not a problem, but it foretold a future of sinus adventures and labeled me a, “delicate flower.”

The second dive was just short of life-changing and offered a challenge to the sense of claustrophobia. My breathing and heart rates increased quickly inhaling water when the visibility was poor. Just North of the La Jolla cove, we re-entered the water and slowly settled into a deeper dive. I marveled as I looked up from 60 feet how the bubbles just went on forever. We came to Scripts canyon, a deep underwater ravine that dropped off abruptly and no matter how book-learned I was, the sensation of swimming over this abyss, despite not having changed one foot of depth from the surface was incredibly beautiful while also being a little terrifying and disorienting. That sucker went from sharp relief to infinity.

It was a wonderful eduction outside of a classroom, my preferred learning environment. I had one more step to take though.

New Year’s day, 1971: I was a freshman at UC Sant Cruz.  My best study-mate, Tom Roffe loved to scuba dive and we arranged to drive to Pacific Grove and have a new year’s dive. He rented the equipment in San Jose (I was fully equipped but for gloves for $20). We drove his parent’s MGB to Pacific Grove and for the first time—no instructor of any vintage, I took a free dive with a friend. The day was gray and cold. There was kelp off the shore here. It turned out that Tom was a true biologist and the order of the day for him was to look at and categorize as many invertebrates on the bottom as he could. I found this marginally interesting and circled about him (because partners never separate) trying to find something diverting, when something found me: our visibility was at best fifteen feet. It was dark, and just out of sight was something large and dark, circling us. My breathing picked up a bit as I remembered the stories of Great White sharks chomping on surfers in Monterey Bay. I remembered the photo of a dead surfer with a bite mark having taken half his chest out. I kept turning to keep my eye on the motions I was seeing. Our dive was perhaps twenty-five minutes—it felt like an hour. We came out, alive and stimulated. Tom was confident that what I saw was a seal. He stripped down and dried off within minutes. I, on the other hand, was in a pickle. Not having gloves, my hands had become tetanic from the cold and for many minutes were incapable of any function. I could not take down the zipper or peel the wet suit off. I was not going to ask for help as we stood on the side of the road.  My hands thawed and without Tom’s help I would add. As we drove back to campus, I remember thinking that I really was not cut out to be a scuba diver, and likely would never take it up again. We (scuba and RAM) were a bad fit. Claustrophobia with associated hyperventilation was always going to require boxed breathing and focus. Invertebrates and large animals were not the payday making it all worth it.

Years passed. I snorkeled in Hawaii and there had the first experience in water where visibility was extended. The sea life was delightful. By now, my certification for scuba diving had expired. When in Puerto Vallarta, it occurred to me that I could rent scuba gear without the certification. I did so and went on an excursion with other divers. Many many years had passed since 1971. There were no longer weight belts but regulated inflatable devices to confer neutrality of weight in the water. I did not know how to regulate it. No one seemed interested in telling me. Additionally, the added burden once in the water: I had a full beard and could not get a complete seal on my mask.

Despite my best efforts that day, I could get to about ten feet of water before my buoyancy vest prevented further depth. And water kept going up my nose.  Visibility was maybe 12 feet. I returned to the boat, defeated, as all my fellow-divers were down to sixty feet (and they left their diving partner, me, alone) enjoying among others things, movements of octopi dancing on the sea floor. I had a compensatory beer shared with the boat’s crew, and have contentedly snorkeled, with success, ever since.