Diving Research Cruise - Darkness at the Break of Noon.
Underwater science is often dull, hour after hour spent collecting data; data that's not particularly interesting in and of itself, data that becomes interesting only when conjoined with similar data from other sites and times. That is the way of most all science. In contrast, the media stars of underwater science like Sylvia Earle and Bob Ballard reach out from the pages of their glossy books, or beckon from a tightly edited video production, with crisp and seductive images and plotlines that intersect at a precise and meaningful conclusion right there … on the last page or in the last minute.
But real life is not like that, at least not very often. It's repetitious, hour after hour after hour, cold, uncomfortable, usually strenuous and occasionally dangerous. But every once in a while, every once in a long while, there's magic in the water. The universe clicks just right … something really special happens, something that makes up for all that's come before, something really special; really, really special. This is the story of one of those moments.
It had been a hectic, eventful, and slightly bizarre day so far. I'd staged a close escape from a classic bind: the necessity to be two places at once. I had to go out to sea on a research cruise, our ship was leaving the dock with the morning tide, and on the same day, I was scheduled to deliver a paper at the annual American Academy of Underwater Sciences meeting. My Director insisted that both things get done. Jim’s like that, he had been in charge of the Thor-Agena Booster Program for North American Rockwell and NASA and firmly believed in that NASA motto of, "The difficult we do immediately, the impossible takes only slightly longer.” He could turn the most mundane problem into a learning experience, a test of how well you could think and operate, “outside of the box.”
Our ship was leaving Woods Hole, Massachusetts and would be transiting the Cape Cod Canal on its way to the Gulf of Maine. If I could get my talk moved to the first slot in the morning and there were no hitches, I could be back in time to meet the ship at the north end of the canal just after sundown. If I were late, then Plan B goes into effect: a night-time, “Casualty Evacuation Drill” with a USCG chopper a buddy of mine flew out of Otis. That would be the cover for my Plan-B ride out, if I needed it.
Friday was spent stowing the last of my gear on the ship. I caught an oh-dark-thirty flight out of Boston down to North Carolina. A quick cab ride and I was at the podium going over the slides that illustrated a paper I'd authored with Rich Pyle from the University of Hawaii on the use of mixed gas, open circuit scuba down to five hundred feet. Twenty minutes of talk, ten minutes of questions, I shook hands with the moderator, shoved my Certificate of Appreciation into my black Zero-Halliburton, the one covered with dive stickers, and zipped out the back to a waiting cab that took me back to the airport. I ran for a plane to D.C., where I changed to the shuttle to Boston. On the first leg I switched my tan go-to-meeting suit for a pair of 501s, a gray U. C. Berkeley sweatshirt and my Topsiders.
My then work study student, Dave Sipperly (now a famous freediver, spearfisherman, author and Boston Sea Rover himself - do go buy the book he wrote with Terry Maas, I recommend it), was waiting for me curbside at Logan Airport. I threw my leather flight bag and briefcase on the back seat, jumped in front and off we sped; south to the Cape. Highway 3 to 6a, over the bridge at Sagamore and left onto Tupper Road, left again to Town Neck Road and one more left onto Coast Guard Road. There, at the north end of the canal was a small U.S. Coast Guard station. We pulled in between the whitewashed rocks that outlined the circular driveway.
Retrieving my briefcase from the rear seat, I got out. I pulled a set of bright orange CANDIVE coveralls from the top of my flight bag, which Dave would later drop at our office.
We'd made good time, the ship was not due for a good half hour, Plan-B could go by the board. I pulled out my ICOM M5, slid a charged battery pack on the bottom till it clicked into place. I keyed the marine band radio to Channel 16. “Whiskey, Victor, Foxtrot, Quebec. I repeated the call ship's call sign three times and then identified myself, “This is WVFQ Port one, come in.” No response yet. I had some time to kill and the heavy humid air that presaged a thunderstorm was cooling now as the sun dipped below the mainland, west of the canal. I shivered slightly and went into the Coast Guard station.
I found the O.D. and explained that I was meeting a ship out of the Hole, she would heave-to outside the north end of the canal and send a Zodiac for me. The Coasties seemed happy to have something to break their routine; they offered up a mug of hot coffee and asked if I wanted to use their longer range base station to call the ship. The O.D. offered to save us time and confusion by running me out in their rescue boat. I asked them to pass the message to Otis flight ops. "No shark today" to stand down Plan-B.
Now I could see our ship in the canal. I pulled on the bright orange coveralls that CANDIVE's Operations Supervisor gave me when we’d worked with the Deep Rover submersible at the Caribbean Marine Research Center during Sylvia Earle's record dive the year before (but that' too is another story, for another time). We went down to the dock, hopped into an overpowered hard bottom inflatable, and sped out, blue lights flashing, toward the north-bound now oncoming ship. We rocketed past the R/V Endeavor, port beam to port beam, headed in opposite directions. We came about in a tight turn to port and then pulled up alongside of the much larger vessel on her starboard side. Making about eight knots, our boat slid smoothly over to the Jacob's ladder that was hanging amidships on the rail. When the Coxswain shouted, “Go!” I leaped from the port gunwale, out across the narrow black chasm and grabbed on to the Jacob's ladder. The small craft veered off to starboard, throttled back and then came back up alongside. I gripped a treadle with my left hand and leaned out. A Coastguardsman handed my case up to me. I passed the case up over the rail to Mike Emmerman, a fellow Explorers Club member, financial wizard type and diving rescue expert, who was making the cruise with us. I clambered aboard. Not exactly the way I usually start a cruise, I was really having fun with “action movie” aspects of the situation.
Supper was still on in the mess. I had a hot meal and then we all got to work. Contact with Offshore Medical Services had to made and communications with our contingency helicopter evacuation facility needed to be tested, and the compressor van had to be hooked to ship's power and run. The air had to be analyzed and the bank brought up to pressure. Filling whips needed to set up at the ship's waist and a 10,000 PSI Kevlar line run from the compressor up on the O1 deck down to the filling station. All our gear for the next day's dive needed to be unpacked and readied. With everything done, I rolled into my rack about 22:00 hrs and was out like a light.
Four bells in the morning watch. I got up, showered, pulled on my khakis and went up to get some chow. No one else from the science party was up yet. I had a chance to spend some time with the ship's folks. I went over the general dive procedures with the Captain, who had stayed up beyond his usual midwatch so that we could talk. The Coxswain set up the diving Zodiac and we went over the boat and all of its gear. By now it was seven bells and the science party was drifting into the mess, pouring coffee and sitting down in the library and the lab.
We were due on station at Ammen Rock in the Gulf of Maine at the start of the afternoon watch. We were planning our first dive about two hours later. The science party spent the morning setting up their computers and laboratory equipment. Each of the divers got his or her gear unpacked and stowed in the wet lab that had been turned over to dive locker space. As I hung up my black NATO Viking dry suit one of the University of New Hampshire grad students was heard to exclaim, “Oh! No! It’s Darth's waders.”
Dive procedures are pretty straight forward. The Zodiac is on the deck. You assemble your rig and put it in the boat. You put your weight belt and fins in the boat. Then you go and get your suit on. By the time you’re dressed in, the ship's crane has put the loaded Zodiac and the Coxswain in the water and the crew had rigged a Jacob's ladder over the rail. The water is about nine feet down that ladder. The Zodiac is held against the side of the ship with a bow painter and a stern line and you clamber down the ladder into the boat. You put your gear on in the boat while it motors to the site. On the way you run through pre-dive checks and then all it takes is back roll off the inflatable's gunwale.
We needed to service some instruments on a seamount at about 110 feet. It was a great day. Visibility was more than 100 feet. There were immense numbers of herring in the area for their summer spawning. Down we went through the loosely organized school, down to the tide gauges. Ten minutes later we'd dumped the data and reset the gauges; the herring overhead cast enough shadow that we needed our dive lights to see what we were doing.
Our tasks done, we were getting ready to leave, suddenly in the blink of an eye, there was a snap and the world went from an eerie deep green to pitch black. The lights were out! Mounds of herring pressed closely in on me. I was completely blind. No gauges, no buddy, not even my light was visible. I raised my light and pointed it straight toward my mask. The beam burst into a million mirrored reflections off the herrings’ scales. I took a slow deep breath and felt myself lift gently off the bottom and begin to ascend. Carefully I maintained slight positive buoyancy with my lungs and made sure my airway was open. I could not see my gauges. I could not judge my upward progress. If I went too fast I should be able to hear the alarm on my dive computer beep, it didn't.
As fast as the dark arrived it was gone. My eyes were momentarily dazzled. I exhaled sharply and sank back into the blackness. Another breath started me up slowly. This time, just as my head broke out of the tightly packed herring school, I exhaled gently and transformed my ascent to a hover. From my chin down and out as far out as I could see, there was a mass of millions of squirming fish, seemingly black, but each with hundreds of rainbow reflections bouncing off, so closely packed together that there was little room, even for water.
I turned to my left, three-quarters of a rotation. I could see one of my three diving companions coming up out of the roiling mass, maybe twenty feet away. She ascended about ten feet and pitched horizontal and smoothly neutralized her buoyancy. A circular motion of her light indicated she was fine, that she had seen me and inquired as to my status. Such is the rather unique economy of an underwater “okay” signal. I brought my seemingly detached left hand up out of the darkness and responded in kind.
Suddenly, she pointed two fingers at her eyes and then pointed sharply to her left, her arm stiff and outstretched. I swiveled my head right, and there is one of the most incredible sights I’ve ever witnessed. Six giant shapes, dark blue above and gray below, gold flashes glittering off their bodies, bright yellow flashes just ahead of their tails, each longer than a diver with fins on, each as big as a formal dinner table from belly to back, each well over a half ton.
The six Giant Atlantic Bluefin Tuna move toward us in formation, they pass between us. They move fast, yet without apparent effort. They glide past, each with a huge left eye that stutters as it finds me for a fraction of a second and then, not sensing danger, moves on to seek it's normal prey. We watch them almost disappear, circle to our right, and move to the other side of the herring school. They come right back by us, look us over again, and go left to the other side of the seamount.
The black shinny mass beneath us starts to diffuse, the herring resuming more normal inter-individual distances and the school expands upward and outward, once again enveloping me, first in darkness and then the slowly lightening deep green of the start of our dive. I swim up to my teammate and join her in a hover. We move to the down line and ascend to our deep stop. Being out of the lee of the seamount now, the current is rather stiff; we tie off our Jon lines, wait a minute and then ascended to our 20 foot stop and our 10 foot stop.
Decompression complete, we surface and signal the Zodiac, the Coxswain waives us off as he is heading to pick up the other two members of our team at an alternate surface float. Once back in the Zodiac everyone talks excitedly about the tuna. There had been a big school of them working the herring and every one of us had been blessed with a good long view.
Copyright, Phillip Sharkey, 2010, all rights reserved