Dive Log 1 & 2
DESCRIPTION: Scuba Dive 1 & 2 Open Water Certification testing
LOCATION: Lauderdale-by-the-Sea shore dive/ 1st reef offshore
DEPTH: 12 & 17 feet
August 11, 2015
Man I must’ve been breathing hard. I used up my air quick. I started out with 3500 psi in my tank and by the end of two dives was down below 500. G, my instructor, laughed and said once I get used to it the air will last longer.
After so many delays, I finally passed my first two Open Water tests. Didn’t go too deep. Our two dives were 17 feet and the other to 12.
One last delay happened after my Confined Water tests in the pool because I gashed my shin pretty bad one night on my bike pedal. You don’t want to go in the water with an open wound. Like G says, you don’t want to attract something haha. And I also don’t want flesh-eating bacteria taking my leg off!
We parked in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, put the BCD vests with the tanks on, and after doing safety checks, walked out across the beach and into the water for a shore dive like Navy Seals. At least that’s how I imagined it.
It’s August and the water is the warmest of the year. That also means jellyfish season. Moon jellyfish. You have to swim out below them. Translucent, they pulse and hover just under the glassy surface like a sea life version of the Very Large Array, those radio astronomy dishes on the Plains of San Agustin in New Mexico. Sun streamed all the way down through the water and I kept looking up at them.
In Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, you can swim to three reefs offshore, at varying depths the farther you go out. We swam out to the first one.
The surface was calm. I can just imagine rough water days. I can imagine getting overwhelmed by the sea. There’s a lot ahead out there.
At first, bobbing on the surface, I had some difficulty keeping control of the inflated BCD vest, and it kept trying to push me face first or roll me to one side or the other, sort of like a “horse that don’t want to be rode”.
G told me we’d practice mask removal again, hand signals, use of our weight system, buoyancy control, switching to your buddy’s alternate air source should you run out of air, and more. I also had to practice towing him in to safety, as if he had become incapacitated.
So – the underwater world. What can I say? People say diving is like going into outer space. Even this close to shore, where there are just a few minor reefs, it’s pretty weird and beautiful.
When I first came to Florida for this literary project, I said I would change my life. Change everything. And scuba diving would be my mainline. For a few years now I’ve felt burned out and a little toxic. I think a lot of activists and socially-conscious writers struggle against becoming overwhelmed by all the serious problems and lunacy in the world. Even as I enter the sport (or theology?) of diving, I’m trying hard to do so in gratefulness, rather than under the constant threat of doom from climate collapse and death of the oceans.
I think the bottom of the ocean is an expression.
There is the sand bottom, with its wave action ripples paralleling the shore like a sand dune (a good way to tell which way shore is if you ever get disoriented), and the rocky areas and corals. Even though I didn’t even see a whole lot of creatures on my first two shore dives, I wanted to stay. There was this one big purple blob coral, sort of like a cross between a 6 foot tall melted purple volcano and a 6 foot tall melted purple Gumby. And it was alive. I’m not into TV but my son used to watch SpongeBob all the time and it reminded me of that.
Some loose-limbed corals waved in the south current like from a wind blowing. A trumpetfish swam by, basically a long tube of a fish with pucker lips. I was very careful not to touch or fin any of the corals, because doing so can harm them.
We swam over small hand-sized fish and I stared at them and they turned on their sides flashing their flanks to stare up at us.
For a moment my temper flared at the same time my gut felt punched.
How insane and unfair it is that the big polluters are close to killing our world. But again I forced the thought from my head.
So it was the beginning of an alien outpost right here on Planet Earth.
On the bottom I found a bright pink Got God? bracelet and a plastic wrapper for a Hostess® Artificially Flavored Vanilla Cake with Cream Filling. I “reverse-littered” them.
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