November 25, 2002
Monday 7:40 pm

At depth, thoughts come to you in short syllables. It never seems like the topside orientation has much bearing in an environment so alien to human life that if it didn't kill you after the air ran out, it might at least inflict serious bodily harm on the way up. It takes a certain kind of person to harvest commercially. There is a mixed bag of character traits: ego, courage, greed, and foolhardiness, desperation, and stupidity. Seems like new excuses are constantly being invented for the last brush with eternity, fooling yourself into shamelessly tempting fate for a few dollars.

Most divers are walking now. I think the more sophisticated still use fins. This in an attempt to modify depth, thereby increasing bottom time. There is a sense of control that fins give you. The ability to orient the body horizontally to gain a wider viewfield and understand the immediate environment is most divers' initial expectation when finning. But a diver also finds the ability to float at any depth, at any time, a boon to concentration and presence of mind while underwater.

Walking involves wearing 60 or 70 pounds or more for drysuit harvesting. When the walker loses his balance, the likelihood of falling weights-side down means often the walker will find himself on his back, or tending that way. This is known as doing a turtle. Fins prevent this by giving thrust to the kicking which naturally ensues following a loss of balance. Fins are no substitute for the pleasure of directional control which walkers retain.

I finned on a sport dive testing commercial gear a few dives ago with a walker. While the finner has better attitudinal control, the walker happily trudges into currents and surges without having to work too hard. The finner may find himself grabbing at underwater projections and rocks to maintain his position, then using his arms to gain some velocity and begin finning again. That particular dive was quite revealing.

Two of us were trying out a new compressor driven by the boat's main engine. The air was sweet and constant. After forty minutes at about 50 feet, the air stopped coming. I stayed calm, knowing that all the while plenty of air was just above me. I gasped the last bit of air from the line and released my weight belt. To my horror, the buckle on the weight belt snagged in my goody bag, and dangled about six feet below, out of my reach. I started to free associate in four-letter words strung together like popcorn on a Christmas tree. I wanted to go up, not down to the belt buckle! My nose pressed the glass in my full-face mask.

Then, I realized I didn't have to die then or there. I reached behind me and turned the valve on my bailout bottle. Air surged into my mask, freeflowing away into the watery void. I remembered my fins and started to kick for the surface. My frantic movements knocked the belt away and I rocketed to the surface. I yanked off my mask and called over to the deck man to give us some air. He cranked on the cylinder that was incorporated into the lines as a bailout. I put some more air in my suit and lazed over onto my back, kicking towards the boat and breathing in deeply the gases of life.

I reached the boat in just a couple of minutes, handed over my fins, and started climbing out. The boat lurched over hard and I nearly fell back in. The other diver was coming up pulling his air line. Still I scrambled out and turned to assist the other diver. His eyes were all white and huge as he surfaced. He screamed at me to unhook the latex spider that strapped his bandmask to his skull.

After he had finished swearing at the deckman, we all realized how close it had been for him. He was a few minutes behind me, and he had no fins, no bailout bottle, and no communications. His lead was incorporated into his vest, so he couldn't drop it. Worse, when the air stopped coming he couldn't air up his suit and was stuck there at the bottom facing some difficult choices. He had been forced to walk from a pinnacle at about 20 feet to a depth of about 75 feet, then scramble over a rockpile for the final 30 feet back to the boat where he hauled himself out by hand-over-hand ascent wearing 75 pounds of lead.

We went over the situation and decided that there had been only one airtight alternative for him in this the most unlikely of situations: he should have had a bailout bottle on his personal system. When the boat stopped delivering air he had to have a recourse dependent on his wits. Since he couldn't drop his weights and had no other air supply, he was just plain lucky to have a chance to review his situation. He needed to air up his suit and make an emergency ascent, the only alternative to a dead turtle.

Two weeks later I had to make a tough choice. The annual geoduck fishery was opening in the Ketchikan area. I had to decide to walk or fin. After much deliberation, I elected to walk because of the terrain of the geoduck harvest. Geoducks are clams which reside in two to three feet of sand. The harvest shelf where we dove is fairly level and runs between 40 and 60 feet. Since the water pumps used in the harvest generate a lot of silt, walking could not be a hindrance from that perspective.

Unless I am sport diving, I always walk now. One of the clearest reasons this is a realistic approach is the dry suit, which provides buoyancy on demand. In this way the diver can overcome rocks or other obstacles by simply airing the suit a bit and jumping. The umbilical is a tremendous aid for me today. I have married a communications line onto the umbilical which allows essential diver/tender exchanges. Even the most experienced diver will agree that nothing can replace good communications. Even so, a lot of divers still rely on the old line tugs. An independent diver-held air supply can save a lot of wear and tear on the nerves, too.

 

Post a Comment -------View Comments

Submit an Opinion - Letter

Sitnews
Stories In The News