The monkey made me do it

Underwater wonderland

The Edmonds Underwater Park is like a scuba Disneyland, minus the mascots (unless someone can find a way to make Ling Cod cute) and theme music (if you don't count the hiss of your own exhalation and inhalation in your ear and the occasional ferry horn blast). It was begun long ago and far away by what seem to be a bunch of hippies (it was the '60's) with scuba equipment, a bunch of crap, and a dream. They took the crap and started making a series of underwater sculptures, including giant piles of rocks called the Cathedrals, concrete tubing piled to look like Stonehenge called Tubehenge (what can I say, they were high), a giant spiral of something called the Spiral (the "of something" is implied), and random little things here and there like a discarded torpedo and a cash register that has achieved legendary status based on its resistance to being found. Also, about 5 shipwrecks. It is now acres wide and has been established as a marine sanctuary, which means that divers come from all over to swim its rope "streets" to the attractions and the protected Ling Cod and Capascan fish have grown to monstrous proportions.

I chose the UWP as the first dive site for my lil' scuba club because it has very little current, easy navigation (hello, they have ROPE STREETS), and I really really wanted to see Tubehenge. We had a great group, with three of them being extremely experienced divers and three being completely new to the sport. How new? Just-finished-certification new, and in addition finished-certification-a-while-ago-and-certain-to-forget-important-things new. For example: we hopped into our gear, hopped into the water, started confidently swimming out to the buoy marking the edge of the streets, and my fins fell off. I guess I'd accidentally put the heel straps too low. Then once I got going again my weight belt suddenly slipped down over my hips and I quickly caught it in the crook of my knees. My BCD vest kept me afloat, but now I was stuck 10 yards out in the water beyond the point where I could stand up, and couldn't kick my legs to get myself back without dropping the weight belt. My dive buddy PJ came to my rescue and got the belt off me, and we both swam back to where we could stand up and I worked to get the belt on as tightly as I could (PJ was pulling with all of his might and the thing still slipped again at the end of the dive. Stupid nonexistent hips. Stupid man-designed-for-man weight belts. grrr.). Then PJ lost his fins (he's another newbie). Then the third novice was scared to go under. Then my vest started leaking. The poor experienced divers were waiting for us to get our stuff in order for over half an hour! When four of us finally made it out to the buoy, we decided to go under and let the other couple go on their own.

Here's where it got fun...

I put my regulator in my mouth and grabbed my vest deflater and pushed the release button, confident that I would slip under the water as easily as my compatriots were doing and slide all the way to the sea floor with my deflater raised over my head, like a strange underwater elevator that you had to raise your arm to activate. That's how it had worked every other time I had dove. This time I raised my deflater, pushed the button, sunk exactly six inches under the surface of the water, and stayed there. I kicked down, I swept my other arm upward to get the process going, and still bobbed just under the surface like a leaky pool toy. The other three were far below me now, but one of the experienced people came back up when she saw I was having trouble. She told me I was underweighted when I got my rental equipment and that I should just swim back in, since even if I got underwater I'd be fighting to stay there. The other two came up and had a lively debate about if I would stay under better if I was down deeper, and just how deep the dive site was and if it would make a difference, and if anyone had any extra weights (I scored an extra 2 lbs. off PJ but he couldn't spare any more). All the time they were arguing I was fighting to get my head deeper under water, shooting up our of the water to see if I could get some extra depth, adapting my kick to try and get that extra foot or so of depth that could get me under... it wasn't pretty. Lots of flailing. What I should have remembered at the rental shop is that I am a very buoyant person (shut up) and that even in class I had to have extra weights to keep me underwater. It's not fat, you evil people, it's something else about a person's body composition that makes them float or sink like a rock. I don't remember what it is, though. Bone density? Muscle percentage? Lung capacity? Anyways. I float. I have friends that are larger than me that sink. I'm not fat. I hate you all.

Here's a list of the war that was going on between myself and my gear:
Things that were sinking = Weight belt with 28 lbs. of weight, tank (very heavy), assorted gear
Things that were floating = Wetsuit (they are slightly buoyant), me (parts - I refuse to believe that my liver floats anymore).

I would be proud to win (with the meager help of my wetsuit), except that in this battle I wanted to lose, and lose badly! After agreeing to swim back if I couldn't get under in the next five minutes, they submerged and left me at the surface, scheming. Finally I rocketed up in the air with the help of my very fancy swim fins and plunged under, jackknifing mid-descent and swimming with all my might for the sea floor. This is not a traditionally acceptable way to descend. You're supposed to take the leisurely elevator ride down, stopping every so often to clear out ear and nose pressure buildups, not rocket straight down headfirst and only stop when your face is about to hit kelp. I grabbed the buoy base and cleared my ears violently (they hadn't liked my choice of descents very well) and pulled all the emergency deflating devices on my vest just to double-check that it was empty. It was easier to stay down at 25 feet under sea level, but just barely. I found that I had to swim diagonally, with my fins far above my head pushing me down, and if I stopped too long to look at something I'd go drifting up to the surface again. I stayed under for quite a while in that manner, hovering with my feet kicking madly over my head and feeling for all the world like one of those freak-of-nature sea creatures that you see on the Discovery Channel and feel very sorry for, even though you don't really know why. It was a great dive, we saw ship propellers (though no ship - the visibility was bad and we couldn't find the main wreck) and milk crates covered with sea life, we saw the Cathedrals (I almost ran headfirst into one due to my misaligned viewing angle and tendency to look at the sea floor), we saw some sort of wreck that was so covered in kelp and anenomes that it was near impossible to piece together if it was a boat or car or just a jumble of unrelated things. We saw a Ling Cod that was over 5 feet long, and swam next to some other little rock fish that seemed very curious about our dangling gear. Then my air started getting lower and the tank began to join the "Things that were floating" side. Not a good idea. I had to kick with all my might to stay down, and then even with my hardest effort I started to rise and waved goodbye to my friends at the bottom as I slowly floated up to the surface to begin the long swim back to shore.

An aside: NOBODY looks cool in scuba gear! James Bond only did because he wasn't wearing all the dorky parts. You have a hood and mask pushing your face every which way, a bulky vest and tubes heading everywhere, and a wetsuit that doesn't do anyone any favors. When I waded up to the beach with it's playing children and sunning moms and couples strolling along in their finery, I felt like the creature from the black lagoon emerging from the water. All shiny and black and tube-y and with a slightly pink tiny bit of face from the cold of the water, plus staggering under the weight of the gear and walking gingerly on exhausted legs. A crippled, slow, weaving creature from the black lagoon. With bad hair. But that was under the hood so at least only I knew of that part.

After lunch and a break, I managed to convince two of the guys to go down again with me in a more adequately weighted state so we headed out into the water again, me staggering with the added 10 lbs. strapped around my waist (I have bruises today - I think I may have overdone it the second time). I sank like a large, properly-heavy grateful rock and we set out to see whatever we could, checking out a couple more of the features (I have no idea what they were pre-submergence, they were so overgrown), petting the wildlife, and finding the strangest looking little sea creature I've ever seen clinging to a leaf of seaweed. It was probably only 2 inches long and roughly caterpillar-shaped, but it was covered with strange protuberances and bright white with purplish stripes zig-zagging across its body. I tried to get my fellow divers to touch it but I think we were all scared it would either grab us with its tentacles or explode like some alien octopus/caterpillar bomb.

Another aside: Arguably the best part of scuba is being completely weightless in the water. Working the weight/air balance out so that you can stay perfectly still and suspended in the ocean, watching the world go by. Also, flips are really easy. I couldn't do the splits because of wetsuit inflexibility (2 layers = walking around like the wrapped-up kid in The Christmas Story) but was rolling and twisting around like a sea otter on crack.

PJ has a boat, so expect many more Scuba Adventure Dive stories in the future, hopefully with less dropping of things and more seeing of alien life and backflips.

posted by LadyJay @ 5:47 PM