OCEAN'S DAUGHTER

Written by Mark Young

Midnight on the water

I saw the oceans daughter

Walkn'on a wave she came

Staring as she called my name

And I can't get it out of my head

No, I can't get it out of my head

Now my old world is gone for dead

'Cos I can't get it out of my head

-Electric Light Orchestra

Benchley called his brother to tell what had happened to him and to ask a favor. The story is that Bench’s friends were going to the Caribbean and asked if he wanted to come along. He had to get certified, though, because they were going there to dive. Bench kind of always wanted to do that so he took lessons and a month later was with his buddies in the sun having a great time. He did his checkout dives at the resort and told George how he spent the rest of the week doing the most incredible stuff.

The question for George was more like a plea.“I’m going back. You have to get certified and come. I promise you’ll love it because you’re like me. You can’t say no. Leesy too.”

It’s George’s wife Lisa telling me this on the phone. She and George had talked about diving. They like outdoors stuff but the conversations about taking up diving usually stopped with her and a halfhearted, “Yes we should.” The conversation wasn’t going to end there this time. Bench had dragged Lisa and George off on other adventures and they were always fun, especially when he brought along his eternal fiancée (of seven years) who they all loved and rounded out the foursome. She had agreed to be certified too. There was no saying no.

Lisa went on. “I don’t know why I always managed to put it off, whether it was the money or maybe I was a little chicken about doing it — it was easier to shine it on. But we did it. We found a dive store that we didn’t know was here and our class had two other couples and two other guys. There were eight of us and by the second class we were comfortable with each other, and by the end we were at the bars and having a great time together. We became good friends. Diving was our common bond. But that’s not why I’m calling.”

She was calling to say they went off on their adventure with Bench, and that her life hasn’t been the same. She fell in love with the sea. She hasn’t been able get that phrase out of her head from the song by the Electric Light Orchestra. “They were singing about me, the ocean’s daughter. And how odd the title of the song, “Can’t Get It Out of My Head,” because that’s how I’ve been; profoundly changed. I asked her if George became the same way and she said no, that would be impossible. He loves it too but she’s gone nuts.

Most people come into diving pretty unaware. Blank slates, if you will. They know little about the equipment they will be using, are certainly unfamiliar with the skills and knowledge, and I contend that most new divers have never heard of the island of Bonaire. From the minute they first walk in, diving becomes a total learning experience.

The education goes past the bookwork and skills, to way beyond what they think this will be. New divers are soon to find out more than they know about the world’s history, geography and its people. They will learn some oceanography and lots about marine life and diving’s environments. But when they swim alongside of something alive and the size of a bus, or a wall that descends thousands of feet beyond unlimited visibility, they learn quite a lot about themselves. Prior personal experience and their very familiar world expand past something that they have imagined, to discover that it’s more. For many the observance and appreciation of nature on the scale where divers are privileged to be will become deeply personal. What is really coming in the way of learning, for the new diver, is often unexpected. Sometimes quite unexpected.

She called not just to tell me all that, but to ask if we could write something powerful that would entice other Lisas who are on the fence to give this a try. I believe she just did.

AS HISTORY SERVES

Written by Mark Young

On the morning of February 17, 1944, in a surprise attack by the United States, aircraft bombed Japanese warships and merchant vessels in Truk Lagoon, a strategic plot of wartime geography in the Central Pacific. The attack continued the next day and when it was over 52 ships and their crews were on the bottom. The destruction would have been far greater had the Japanese not seen U.S. reconnaissance planes overhead days earlier, anticipated the attack, and moved much of the fleet.

In 1945 the American government relocated the residents of the Bikini Atoll to another place in the Marshall Islands, to create an isolated spot and test the damage that could be inflicted by nuclear weapons. Among the tests, they wanted to see the effects on war vessels, and anchored a mock fleet in the blast area. Among the vessels sent to the bottom were the 880-foot (267-m) aircraft carrier USS Saratoga and, in a blast of irony, the Japanese battleship Nagota, from which Admiral Yamamoto directed the attack on Pearl Harbor.

November 23, 1984. A powerful storm ripped the Mercedes I from its temporary anchor in the Atlantic and landed the 194-foot (59-m) freighter up against a sea wall, literally next door to the Kennedy family’s Palm Beach, Florida, compound. The ship’s owners slithered off, and it took months for the state of Florida to have it pulled off the beach. Because of the unusual stranding, the moneyed neighborhood and the drama around the removal, the ship became a media celebrity. Just a few months later it began service as an artificial reef off the coast of Fort Lauderdale.

Shipwrecks, like people, have stories to tell. They rest where they are because of war, weather, malfunction, accident or by plan. A major allure of shipwrecks, certainly for divers who visit, are their histories. Certainly they all have interesting how-I-wound-up-on-the-bottom stories, but they have others. Many of the military ships that we are privileged to dive served in war. Others patrolled during peacetime to protect their country and the peace of others. Some ended up tracking space launches, or became spies, or were used as movie sets.

There are also very deep personal histories ascribed to each ship. Within each sailor who served, a military ship occupies a place usually reserved for a childhood home. For many it forged the rest of their life. For far too many, the ships became their grave.

And shipwrecks are surrounded by history. The push for America to stay ahead as a war power sent the Bikini fleet down. A total of 242 naval ships, 156 aircraft, 25,000 radiation-recording devices and some 5,400 goats, rats and pigs were subjected to the initial atmospheric nuclear blasts, which eventually numbered 23 over a 12-year period. Topping the chart was the monster of its time, a hydrogen bomb that vaporized three of the islands and spread radioactive debris over 50,000 square miles (130,000 sq km). In many ways the area is still reeling. The Bikini ships and the Ghost Fleet of Truk Lagoon essentially represent a placemark along man’s advancement from being savage to someday becoming civilized.

And finally, each wreck has an aftermath. Beyond any damage of war, or wear, or the sinking itself, ships are profoundly changed by the sea. They become cloaked in living biomass. Paradoxically colorful life camouflages the muzzles of guns as old ships become new environments. That part of a shipwreck’s history — the story to come — is the subject of the article in this edition as Alex Brylske talks about the ecological issues surrounding ships in their role as artificial reefs.

Quite a few ships have recently gone to reef by plan. In July 2000, the HMCS Yukon, a destroyer that served in the Royal Canadian Navy, was sunk by the San Diego Oceans Foundation after nearly 2,000 volunteers spent more than a year gutting and cleaning it for its role as a California artificial reef and dive site. Consider that, and you basically have the story of the USS Spiegel Grove, USS Oriskany and General Hoyt S. Vandenberg, all put down by divers and interests in the state of Florida, and the MV Captain Keith Tibbetts, and most recently the USS Kittiwake in the Cayman Islands. The success of those efforts has fueled the desire to send more mothballed military and other idled ships to the bottom as recreational, financial and ecological attractors. It is something that our diving community will continue to support, for divers to continue to enjoy, as history continues to serve.

LIONS AND TIGERS AND BEARS

Written by Mark Young

It’s scary down there. Professionals in this industry face that every day when trying to entice people to try diving. The people who raise their hands high enough to actually inquire about diving do so at their own peril. We don’t have a shot at the others, who know enough to never ask. Just ask divers how hard it is to convince their friends and relatives to give it a go.

We in the industry know too well about the “Jaws effect.” It’s a metaphor now, referring to what happened to the diving business in the mid-’70s, when the movie made people aware that to become certified was to become chum. Didn’t we hide that fact from the public for a long time? Then the movie came out. Then we had to wait out the downturn in business for the post-Jaws movie generation to come around. Well, then came Blockbuster. No matter. Since then, this sport has become dominated by daredevils. Why else the popularity of shark dives?

Speaking of sharks, we may not have to fear them much more. Along with many of the ocean’s biggest predators, sharks are going away — basically, they are overfished. No wonder; it took from the beginning of time until the start of the 19th century for the first billion people to populate earth, now here we are at 6.9 billion. Fish just can’t keep up.

That’s not a problem for sustainable fish populations, where reproduction exceeds catch limits. But it is a problem when, for example, shark fin soup becomes the culinary rage in very populated places. That dish alone takes out an estimated 73 million sharks each year.

Did I actually say that it’s a problem? So getting rid of the scary stuff, why is that a bad thing? Of course everyone has opinions, and another view is that it’s the predators, not us, that should be in fear. Fish don’t fear so that’s ridiculous. Still, some divers, along with their science buddies, want to argue that healthy populations of ocean predators is actually a good thing. Alright, I misspoke; most divers and scientists believe it. These would be the same people, I suppose, who claim that diving in the same ocean with sharks and big grouper is safe. Still, let’s look at their case.

They argue that predators are essential to the ocean’s (the world’s) ecology. Everything is hunting something, and the “balance of nature” is a theory that ecological systems are basically in a state of stable equilibrium. But other scientists disagree. They point to observations that indicate predator and prey populations instead are in a constant state of disturbance and fluctuation, rather than in balance. They propose that equilibrium is illusory; more like a seesaw, where the size of prey and predator populations constantly change based on the relationship between populations and their food source, and differing external factors. I don’t know. Both theories sound like different ways for nature to achieve the same thing.

Except for one thing. Everyone seems to agree that the external factors are becoming more radical. According to reputable sources like the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, almost 70 percent of the world’s fisheries are fully to overexploited, depleted or in a state of collapse. And, as for the big boys, the ones that keep our potential divers away, about 90 percent of large predatory fish stocks, worldwide, are already gone.

Wait a minute. It is scary down there.

This editorial is in reference to the feature story, “Predators as Protectors,” that begins on Page 30, Dive Training magazine, March 2011

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