Thoughts on Diving

Sometimes, a hobby can become an obsession.

I was looking back at the last several blog posts the other day, reflecting on how sporadic and – honestly – heavy my writing has become. Some of it cannot be helped: I tend to view current affairs through the lens of history and that bias tends to become observation tinged with foreboding and apprehension. That, and a slew of real-world stressors makes for noticing the storm clouds at the sake of observing natures’ inevitable beauty.

A friend who recently got into SCUBA posed a question I had been considering that very day:

“What made you want to dive…the one thing that always stayed with you…”

I have always wanted to dive… Ever since watching Jacques Cousteau in the late 70s… I have very clear memories of daydreaming in Catholic school because of his shows – what it would be like if the 4^th grade classroom had started to flood. What would float? Could I stand on the ceiling? Would the glass withstand the pressure? Any large room became an aquarium in my mind, with gravity replaced by problems of buoyancy and momentum. The fact that, not too long before this imaginative age, I had been terrified of water I could not stand up in makes it even more fascinating to me nearly 40 years later.

However, growing up as a city kid in Detroit posed somewhat of an issue. I was well-read enough to understand the problem of currents, temperatures, and pollution to have any desire to test those theories out in any body of water in the area. Moving to Virginia Beach in 1986 really didn’t help foster my sense of adventure, either. The long shelving beach was uninspiring and rather boring; I can safely estimate that my time spent in the Atlantic in depths greater than my hips for the decade I lived there could be counted on both hands with a few fingers left over.

Ah, but Hawaii as a first duty station…

I made up for all of my previous reluctance snorkeling as often as I could. Shark’s Cove, Waimea, Hanauma Bay… even a strange section of Kaneohe Bay where I foolishly pushed my luck with no regards to the currents that might have been problematic for a eager guy heading to “that island over there” by himself… with no one really knowing where I was. If it seemed like a good idea… or even a plausible bad idea… I was out there.

The deciding factor for getting my Open Water certification was odd: the maternal grandparents of my then-girlfriend had passed away and the family had decided to intern their ashes at his favorite lobster hole on the north shore of Maui. Since none of us had the stamina to make it out through the reef and a half-mile from shore, it was decided that we needed to get certified. With an amazing network, we were able to find one of the best instructors on Oahu and, after the classroom, pool, and shore training, we were off to lay them to rest in the most appropriate manner possible.

It was that first dive without an instructor which started what would become a path of adventure, folly, friendships, and – tragically – loss. To state one thing which stayed with me would be to pick one event or experience over others…

Being the last to dump air and descent on the wreck of the Sea Tiger off Kaka’ako and seeing my reflection in the myriad of bubbles which constituted these huge and abbreviated columns of air from the divers who had already passed the upper portions of the ship…

Experiencing nitrogen narcosis at 124’ on the same wreck, blissfully content to start working out the mental problem of getting them to leave me there with another tank while they did the next (shallow) dive slated for later…

Hearing whales on a different trip to the same wreck and, to this day, wondering if I actually felt the calls before I physically heard them due to my memory of stopping and pausing my breathing enough to make out what was so different about that moment…

Getting run over by a pod of dolphins at Shark’s Cove; noting their advance was advertised by what I could only describe as a bunch of 6-year-olds with old flash cameras that had that audible and increasing squeak which indicated that the flash was charged…

Noting the plastic shopping bag stuck on the pectoral fin one of the dolphins from that same pod, but realizing that, once it slipped free from the fin, the dolphin circled back and snagged it again…

Missing the chance to see the same person puke through his regulator on two different dives…

Night dives at Pray For Sex on the northwestern tip of Oahu and marveling at the surrealness of the experience as well as the bioluminescence when my arms were moved as quickly as possible…

Getting freaked out when I hit the water from the boat off the outside of Molokini and seeing nothing but those hues of blue sunlight searching for the bottom several hundred feet below us…

The consternation that the dive guide for another group on that same trip had completely missed that the dive computers for his charges had been chirping for nearly half the dive, indicating that a few of them had gone too deep and blew past either their bottom time, their deco-stop, or both…

“What made you keep going back to it..? Adventure… meditation…marine life..?”

Addiction. Plain and simple.

That’s what kept me going back. That smell of neoprene… the smell of intent. There is no other reason why it would be apparent or in the air unless someone is preparing to go in the water for a purpose.

…The dry taste of compressed air, cold and forced when you are checking your tanks prior to setting up, and then paired with the taste of the regulator as final checks of your setup are being made by you and your partner.

…The god-awful farts later in the day from off gassing, tinged with whatever saltwater has made it into your digestive tract in the process of the dive.

…The stupid scary shit that made you laugh shortly thereafter, whether it be an entry from an 8’ cliff edge that required a 20-minute hike in full gear along a much higher cliff, being part of a gaggle contending with 10-foot visibility on top of a current and in the vicinity of the outflow pipe for the local powerplant, a undefined shape at the edge of your visibility, or the sudden and terrifying appearance of a curious and huge sea turtle as you pull your attention from questionable movement in the distance.

…The challenging exit where, to get out, you have to dump your air, remove your fins and time the waves as they hit one ramp-like scoop on a coral wall.

…And the friendship – you trust your life with the people you dive with; so, you pick your associations very carefully.

Most importantly, however, was the need for calm. Key word. There is a seductive peril associated with the ocean that demands calm and deliberate attention. Even with one of my most terrifying experiences in the water, I miss that reassurance of calm that training and appreciation for the environment requires.

Yes, there was a beauty in diving… and an appeal to either the technical aspects of it or the potential to be as fashionable as possible… but, for me, it was that balance between intelligent calm or stupid fear which drew me in and refuses to let go, even to this day.