The reason for my trip

Finally, the big day. It was time to get in the water. My first challenge: Waking up successfully at 6am. I set my travel alarm. I set my cellphone. I had my dad wake up and call me. I still barely made it.

At the store, I pick out my rental gear; everything rings with an aura of familiarity. I assemble my tank and regulator on muscle memory. The wetsuit fits snugly, even if it takes me awhile to realize the zipper is on the back. Things are looking up.

We drive our gear down to the docks, load up, and take off. I ask about my lack of diving buddy. Naturally, as the youngest one on the boat, they pair me with the oldest; he’s been diving since 5 years before I was born. However, I view this as a good thing. He should have great technical and navigational experience, right?

The ride out takes an hour. We all sit on the top deck and contentedly let the salt fill our noses. I secretly and shamefully slather myself with sunscreen belowdeck first, but I figure after years of exposure, my arms ceased getting sunburned, so I leave them bare. My hypothesis has since been rejected. Ow.

The people are generally helpful and friendly: There’s the old couple who’s been to Australia, the old spearfisherman, the guy with the ridiculously oversized camera/flash rig (he cant be compensating too hard, his kid was with him), the aging hippie cave diver, the crusty old captain… basically everyone was old except me and the dive instructor. Oh, there was this young woman (28?) who lived in my town. I enjoyed chatting about high school and staring at her ass. I also chewed the shit with the young deckhand, and stared at his ass. Ultimately, I’m predictable.

People were friendly and helpful. Too friendly and helpful. Everyone treated me like the little kid who didn’t know his ass from his tank. I resented it; maybe I didn’t have years of experience, but I was certified and had 8 dives under my belt. Still, I couldn’t help feel a twinge of nervousness they may be right. When the time came, I jumped in.

I had trouble equalizing my pressure. I couldn’t operate my borrowed dive computer. I couldn’t even tell where the wreck was. My buoyancy was completely out of whack, and my kicks felt slow, difficult, and fruitless (as I shortly discovered, I was in a current). Basically, I was out of my depth and getting panicky. My breaths came quick and scared, like I could never sap enough air from the tank. I was trying to solve every problem at once and failing.

I hit the bottom with surprising gentleness considering the circumstances. Once there, I righted myself, began tinkering with my buoyancy, and simply accepted I had no dive computer and was dependant on my dive buddy for navigation, diving depth, and bottom time. I followed him, like a lost puppy, struggling to get my balance and breathing under control.

I managed to control my body and calm my nerves after 10 minutes. But my fight cost us; we would only get about 25 minutes before I ran short on air. Still, it gave me time to large schools of shimmering baitfish make oddly geometric shapes, changing from sphere to plane smoothly and organically.

The wreck itself was entirely not like I expected. There was no ship. The large boilers of the tanker were recognizable, but everything else was scattered junk thickly encrusted with calcite and coral. It looked like the Barrier Reef, only far less colorful. My dive buddy collected some things from the bottom, but agreed later that he too was disappointed with the site. We surfaced.

People were sympathetic rather than judgemental, but I resolved to make the second dive much improved. I sought advice all over the ship, from the attractive deckhand to the unattractive photographer. I even managed to scare up a pair of ratty torn-up diving gloves to prevent ratty torn-up hands. I was ready. The boat wasn’t.

See, I discovered later that carrying divers is only supplemental income to this boat. Their real job is salvaging metal from these wrecks to sell for scrap. That may not sound like much, but copper is 3 dollars a pound, and they pulled hundreds of pounds of pipes and bars from the bottom. It was so lucrative today that the crew decided to stay at this site all day. I was quite resentful, but one of the salvagers gave me a small bronze battery terminal he picked off the bottom, a thick loop on a solid pedestal about two inches long. I was gracious, but I wanted to find my own treasure.

When the time came, I suited up and strapped on my gear, my jaws set in determination. However, I’d forgotten to put on my weight belt, and had to take it all off and do it again. Nice start.

I jumped in, and again couldn’t seem to equalize my ears. But I stayed calm, breathed slow and deep, and worked at it. After a minute, success. I kept myself negatively buoyant and settled down on the bottom, where I could fill my BCD with air until I just began to float. How could I have forgotten that it takes so much more air to float after 50 feet? The rookie mistakes I made in Australia were coming back to me, and I wouldn’t make them again.

My dive computer still wouldn’t work, so I was still dependant, but this time we worked as a team. We fought against the current, my legs now remembering how to kick right with flippers, and made our way to the far part of the wreck. We could now float back to the boat with the current at our leisure. I began to root around on the bottom for things. But not copper or brass; I wanted to find animals.

And find animals I did. In addition to the baitfish, I saw small gobies, cleaner shrimp, scary looking toadfish waiting to take a finger off, and coral polyps languorously waving in the flow. Above us were larger spadefish, anglerjacks, cod-looking things, and long barracudas. These living torpedos were as long as I was. Usually they kept their friendly distance, about 10 to 20 feet, but one or two of the smaller ones decided to investigate my face as a potential meal. Unsure what to do, and knowing I couldn’t outswim a barricuda, I held my ground and held a cocked fist ready to fight underwater. It never came to that, as they saw, smelled, swam away at 3 feet.

I found some pretty sweet clam and nautilus shells. I poked my head all around the wreck, and slowly began to mentally assemble a ship in my mind. At first I held on to any perch I could find, but slowly I learned to hover, even in the current. I had managed to surpass even my top form in Australia.

Needless to say, that’ll all wear off by tomorrow and I’ll have to learn it all again. But that’s a care for later. For the moment, I swam off into dreamland as the boat motored home.