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Ocean Gladiator: A Deeper Interest
By Mark Ellyat on 5 September 2008
Work as diving instructor can be very seasonal. To stay busy you need to travel to other holiday destinations as the tourist seasons rotate. After a year in Barbados, I felt a return to the United Kingdom was on the cards. Arriving back in London gave me itchy feet almost immediately, and I phoned around for work in various holiday destinations around the British south coast even before my tan had faded. In 1995, I’d had my first laptop for over a year already, but the internet still resembled semaphore and websites where just glimmers in a ‘net-nurds’ eye. Job searches in the diving industry then, and even more so now were best completed in person – by actually visiting various dive shops.
I had arrived in London in June when most summer dive jobs were already filled, so the job search went slowly. While away though, I stayed in contact with an instructor buddy, James. He ran a dive centre on Jersey in the Channel Islands, and often said I should visit. I gave him a call and within a couple of days was on a car ferry to St Helier, the capitol of Jersey with all my diving equipment and my newest acquisition, an underwater metal detector.
Jersey was fantastic, a bit like living in a big city but by the seaside. The dive centre was absolutely huge, with ten other instructors (who never seemed to do any work), and there was an excellent social scene. I soon was busy with work as plenty of the locals had read about technical diving in magazines and now had an instructor offering deep diver training right on their doorstep.
The Channel Islands are smack in the middle of one of the largest tidal ranges in the world. At certain times of the month, the tide could rise and fall nearly 12 metres. This created very fast moving water and amazing drift dives. Mariners too, all through the ages have found these incredible tides an unmatchable force and skeletons of shipwrecks litter the seabed. Local sea charts record somewhere over 300 foundered vessels resting in the vicinity.
The dive centre had a big customer base that went diving as often as they could, this gave me a captive audience to sell my deep diving courses to. Regularly we would organise two boats to take all the customers out to the surrounding islands of Sark and Guernsey for reef dives or, interesting Second World War shipwrecks that still produced brass treasures in abundance. The popular wreck sites were, in ascending order of difficulty; the SS. Schokland, the M343 Minesweeper and the Princess Ena. The daddy of them all was the Jean Marie, locally known as the copper wreck. There were literally dozens of other wrecks nearby, but these were the ones on many divers’ must-see lists.
Technical diving courses were often attended by groups of customers that would complete the entire range of training courses together, with great enthusiasm. As a busy instructor, I still liked to fun dive, but only with people who I am comfortable with. I usually dived alone for fun, but it was always nicer to go with people who could complete dives successfully in the arduous conditions. More often than not, the only time I would dive would be during a training course, and on such dives, my attention was always focused on the job. One group of divers that I felt comfortable to dive with was three friends, Jamie (aka BAZ), Alison and Natalie.
The three amigos finished some recreational courses with me, and then went on to complete various levels of more advanced tech training over the summer. After three months they had graduated as Extended Range divers and were all competent to join the deeper fun dives on wrecks as deep as 200 feet. We would explore wrecks such as the Copper Wreck and the Princess Ena, bringing up ships portholes, ingots of copper and all of the other rubbish that looks like it’s made of divers gold (brass) until it arrives on the boat. It takes a lot of wreck dives to develop proper ‘brass vision’. Quite often the treasure becomes just smelly, rusted ferrous metal as the nitrogen narcosis wears off in the shallows – then it gets thrown back immediately. The summer season is quite short in the UK and by September, the sea temperature drops inversely to the wind speed raising. When it was too horrible to take customers diving, I would join a team of Scallop divers who went out in search of sought-after shellfish in the often unpleasant winter weather. I did enjoy searching and harvesting the seabed, but the weather was becoming more and more hostile and this meant more days out of employment. This was a sign to either hang up your flippers and mask for the winter or migrate. I decided it was about time to move back to pastures warmer.
I planned to go back to Barbados again for the Christmas season and had started seeing Natalie, one of my favourite customers. She also liked the idea of working in the Caribbean for the winter, so we flew back to Bridgetown together. Having a girlfriend who was as interested in deep diving as me was great. We would work all day, she as a Dive master leading groups of divers, and me teaching recreational scuba courses. After work we would go diving again, always deep, just for fun. In no time we had built up quite a little club of divers, mostly going straight to 240 feet or thereabouts, every afternoon looking for antique bottles. Repetitive diving to the same depths each day predictably lost its challenge and allure, so Natalie and myself planned to head deeper still. As the dive depths increased, the group split up – so no one was pressured into doing something they were not ready for. To be successful in deeper diving it’s important to feel relaxed and avoid being pushed into stress inducing depths. As Natalie and I wanted to drop beyond 300 feet every day, it was seldom more than the two of us.
There was this fantastic magnetic feeling that seemed to draw us to extreme depth, like moths to a flame. The sea was always electric blue, and always welcomed us with its warm and embracing tentacles, likely similar to drug taking. We both felt a sense of complete clarity of mind and I would do some of my clearest thinking only when approaching 300 feet. This total ‘meditative’ state was clearly addictive, if pot smokers or heroin addicts only knew about this perfectly legal high, then scuba diving would be the most popular sport imaginable. Unfortunately the side effects of deep scuba diving are every bit as hazardous as drugs and cannot be minimised without considerable practice. Even then, oxygen toxicity is so unpredictable and unforgiving…in this case practice does not make perfect.
One afternoon we didn’t join the usual dive boat out of Carlisle Bay, but made other arrangements for a ‘special’ dive. We headed out into the setting west coast sun on a small fibreglass boat borrowed from the maritime university. Our boat driver was Cally; he worked at the University of West Indies – next door to where I used to work the year before. Cally often drove the boat to take us deep diving back then. He often grinned and joked about how foolish we were for doing these crazy air dives.
When I told him the ‘plan’ for today, Cally repeated his favourite phrase – “You all is nuttier than a squirrel’s breakfast”, I always grinned when he said that.
The boat had no depth sounder, and none was really necessary, as we weren’t looking to land on the seabed and would be disappointed if sand came into view earlier than expected. Cally just headed out, he knew of an area where it was very deep. The spot we dived was rumoured to be bottomless. Even the sea charts suggested up to two hundred fathoms, about twelve hundred feet deep, more than enough.
Natalie and I had been below 350 feet dozens of times, always breathing air in single eighty cubic feet scuba tanks. Today we planned to go to four hundred feet. This translated to 123 metres, the Holy Grail for deep air divers. The effect of Nitrogen on this dive would have an anaesthetic effect akin to a bottle of whiskey or a pile of Ketamin consumed in one fell swoop. Ketamin is a powerful horse tranquiliser proving popular with ravers and scuba professionals alike all across Asia.
As always, the dive could be aborted if necessary. Just before the dive, Natalie said that she might stop earlier than planned, as this was a big step and we were heading into depths that would stun an elephant, never mind mentally challenged diving instructors like us. Think of deep air diving as the Rock n’ Roll of scuba diving, ‘classical’ recreational depths may seem safer but they can definitely send you mad doing them everyday. We dived deep on air simply to stretch our legs.
Rolling backwards over the side of the boat, we floated on the surface. Staring downwards, excited, and at the same time drawn to the spider’s web of the abyss below. Moments spent relaxing here would calm the back-chatter in our minds and prepare the reflexes necessary to overcome today’s gauntlet. This surface wait would help physically slow our breathing and heart rates down, in a similar fashion to that employed by all deep diving mammals, before they attempted their own crazy stunt dives.
Dives like this must begin without any conflicting thoughts or even a minor sense of possible failure, indeed no sense at all can be attached to such endeavours. There was no bottom, no chance of rescue, and no descent line that could be used to halt the descent. I think we thought at the time that dives must be controlled solely by good technique, exertion avoidance and finely honed self rescue abilities. The dive begins the same way as always, we vent the air from our buoyancy jackets, invert and kick towards our goal. We would drop like greased anvils towards the bottom at nearly 200 feet per minute. In diving terms this is the speed at which a fly hits a cars windscreen. Natalie was positioned just behind me, in my slipstream, her left hand would be just on the edge of my field of vision. At anytime a simple hand signal would indicate that all was OK, or all was NOT.
The time spent descending into the darkness and time spent at maximum depth is necessarily very short. Slipping through the ocean for long periods is akin to freefall parachuting, the faster you fall the easier it is to make mistakes or miss the important. My eyes scan from side to side to give better focusing and avoid the head spin effect caused by lack of reference.Dropping down so fast is mentally taxing, trying to steer my body into a stable position, at the same time listening for any abnormalities or change in sensation. Any strange feeling could mean that oxygen toxicity is opening its can of worms must be analysed instantly, it’s the secret of success. Unfortunately Nitrogen is beginning to start banging its drum kit right in the middle of my head. I’m trying to listen for the faintest nuances of escalating impending death due to oxygen toxicity. At the same time I’m overloaded by doom radio at full volume as heavy Nitrogen Narcosis engulfs my auditory senses with its ubiquitous and deafening requiem beat. The infamous Wah Wah tune that has beckoned so many deep divers to their deaths is repeating at a fantastic speed as we pass 350 feet. I signal to Natalie if she is OK and she indicates yes. I stare at my depth gauge and the numbers climb up at a ridiculous speed, I wonder If I will notice when enough is enough. We approach 400 feet and I get the sign to stop from behind me. I start to add air to my buoyancy jacket as this will arrest the descent. I remember that I should have started doing this already and a flutter of anxiety fills me. We break apart still descending and I turn to face Natalie to see what’s wrong. The water still rushes past us and I lose stability for a few seconds, this separates us further. I ask if all is Okay again. Natalie eyes are open but she unblinkingly stares past me. The depth is approaching 420 feet. We have small tanks of air that can be used in emergencies for rapidly filling our buoyancy vests. I reach behind Natalie and open this tank for her. In a second the vest is full and is burping excess air as she moves upwards away from me. I watch as she leaves me, she is inert and ascending out of control, but my mind is blank to these implications.
I reach behind me to operate my ascent bottle. I turn the valve and nothing happens, I turn the valve some more and find that I have unscrewed the small cylinder from the jacket! I bring the mini tank in front of me and open the valve again. This time all the air within just empties into the water. I realise that I am very affected by the situation. I close my eyes to think. Opening them, I look around for Natalie and she is gone, I cannot remember seeing her go anywhere anymore. I look at my depth gauge, it says 428 feet and 5 minutes elapsed time. I blink again and the gauge still reads 428 feet and elapsed time 7 minutes. I look down and see bubbles coming up from beneath me. Maybe she has passed out and gone below me, I stare below and see nothing.
I consider draining my buoyancy jacket of air and dropping down to take a quick look. I won’t leave her down there, not while I can still see bubbles. I look at the elapsed time on my gauge and two more minutes have elapsed. This is no good at all, I have a single 12 litre scuba tank on my back and the tank pressure reads one third full. I will have to perform a series of decompression stops before being able to break the surface. These stops will take longer than 99 minutes according to my computer wrist gauge. I look below and see no more bubbles. I blink again, this time I have somehow moved a bit shallower. The depth now reads 400 feet but I feel clearer and now dread is filling me. I must save myself. The decompression sickness I will undoubtedly suffer soon will possibly give me a stay in execution from the topside tongue-wagger’s accusations. I inflate my buoyancy jacket for the rapid ascent away from death’s jaws but into a guaranteed world of pain. The jacket fills with air and I start to accelerate towards the surface. I leave my bubbles behind me as I’m propelled upwards at a ridiculous speed. Looking at my gauge, I need to know the depth to make the first of my decompression stops. I get the information from my wrist computer display. I don’t have enough air, I calculate, to do all of these stops; I consider that the important ones will be all of the deeper ones starting at 80 feet. These stops will repeat every 10 feet until I get just a long arm reach from the surface. The last stop will be the longest and I know that if I cut the time short there, I will definitely get the bends, but it will likely come after I get out of the water. My breathing is a little fast, if I don’t control it things will be much worse. I concentrate on relaxing, my body going completely limp, just floating, every muscle except my lungs forced to do nothing. The water temperature gets warmer as the surface looms ever closer, the pleasant water temperature reminds me of the complacency a lobster must feel during his journey to the dinner table, a seemingly pleasant ending, but I know my struggle in the final minutes will be more terrifying than a lobster falling unconscious during his hot bath.
The warm fluid that surrounds me now is impassionate about my plight, the sea has taken its harvest no doubt many times today. A few scuba divers foolishly getting too close to the fire will fill a column in a local newspaper, and no doubt a super tanker split open like firewood for daring to match money-saving designs against stormy seas will make the television news. I know I will get to the surface one way or another. I don’t think much beyond that, I try to recall if there was a spare scuba tank on the boat, it was unlikely. I can’t even hear the boat engine come to think of it, this would be the final nail in the coffin, an absent dive boat. I would get to the surface alone, the decompression sickness would strike me an excruciatingly painful blow that would lead to paralysis and death within 30 minutes of surfacing. Without a boat to return me to shore, my final exit from the world will be a fairly unpleasant experience.
I will float face down for a few hours until my buoyancy jacket finally gives up its hold on the surface, then I will drift back down whence I came and take my place in the food chain. These thoughts fill my head for a few seconds, then they disappear. I thought of Natalie, how would she have managed during her unconscious ride to the surface? She could have come around and is now faced with a similar dilemma as me just a stones throw away. The minutes tick by and I complete my decompression stops like a robot. With this style of diving you cannot just decide you have had enough and go to the surface, everything needs to be endured until the end and sometimes beyond this. Extreme scuba diving has no comparisons in the world of crazy pursuits. When a base jumper hits the ground, his adventure is over, much the same as an astronaut. Divers have to wait for hours after a dive before their bodies return to normal and the celebrations begin. This dive has gone wrong and now payment is being exacted. One diver is missing and another about to go the same way. During difficult times it’s easy to get philosophical in the face of hopelessness, for the same reasons the elderly turn to religion, but nothing can change the outcome. Last minute confessions reconcile nothing and certainly don’t lengthen your odds with the bookmakers in the sky.
Its time to replace profound thoughts with rational thinking and problem solving abilities, this is the only process that can help overcome seemingly insurmountable challenges. My wrist computer beeps madly, dragging me from my daze, I look for the problem. The surface looks very close, less than 3 metres. The electronic depth gauge is insisting I go deeper and wait another 45 minutes. I check my air gauge, the reading is so low that it defies measurement. I congratulate myself on buying a cheap air gauge that is very inaccurate, who knows how much air I have left! Some ten minutes later my breathing regulator lets me know exactly the remaining air time…none. I have lasted over an hour with less than 20 percent of a full tank. I cannot breathe now and am forced to ascend the final furlong with over 35 minutes of decompression time remaining. This is bad because my dive computer is known for having little conservatism; I wish I had purchased a model aimed at holiday divers which reflect a trend for incredible safety and conservatism. The decompression time I am missing out on will be very real indeed, there is no padding, a bit like Dolly Parton’s bra I thought surreally.
I hit the surface; I’d made it for now. The sea is totally calm, flat like glass. The sun is very low on the horizon, very scenic but it will make surface searches next to impossible. I spin around and see the boat. Cally the boatman waves and turns to pull the engine start cord. I see the boat engine cough into life.
“I thought you weren’t coming back…mon” Cally said,
“Neither did I, Natalie is still down there somewhere, have you seen her marker buoy?”
“No, mon I ain’t seen nuttin a tall” These words brought the memories of the last hour crashing back. I threw off my buoyancy jacket and climbed into the boat.
“I don’t think she is coming back, it all went wrong down there”
Cally swallowed and went quiet. I scanned the ocean surface for Natalie’s surface marker buoy and saw nothing “We should look for her Signalling balloon” I said trying to add an air of optimism.
The boat started moving. We circled around and saw nothing. Despair was setting in and pain was beginning to gnaw in my hip. I said nothing. The decompression sickness was manifesting it self in my right hip area with a level of pain which was attention-getting but manageable. I was surprised at how quickly the pain had started, but kept a focus on the search for Natalie’s yellow coloured marker buoy.
We carried on looking but the low sun angle was blocking a huge part of the search area. I asked Cally to head into the sun’s direction so that we could see more clearly behind us. Travelling towards the sun I looked behind the boat, the sea was basked in the yellow sunlight, Natalie’s marker buoy was similarly yellow, but again we drew a blank. I thought we would have been closer together at the surface, there was no current to separate us. I imagined the worst but expected the best. The boat stopped, I looked around, and there it was. A yellow lift bag was bobbing on the surface a few hundred yards behind us. The elation for myself and Cally was incredible, we had searched for over 30 minutes with thoughts of doom and despair. The pain in my hip was like a bad toothache now but It didn’t matter. The boat headed over and I jumped over the side with my mask, landing almost on top of the yellow balloon. I looked below. Natalie was there and breathing and smiling. I swam down and joined her, breathing off her spare breathing regulator while she completed the rest of the decompression stops that I had been forced to cut short. We looked at each other shaking our heads and grinning. This had been a close call, with all the trimmings of having to pay the ultimate price. The only lesson to learn was not to do it again.
We surfaced together, spitting out our breathing regulators at the same time, saying “Oh my god, I thought you were dead!”
The boat trip back was frenetic and animated as we both exchanged our version of what happened. Natalie recalled that she started to pass out as we approached 400 feet and signalled me to stop. After we broke apart at 420 feet, that was her last memory. During the ascent the scuba regulator she was breathing from had fallen from her mouth. Natalie had ascended from deep water to around 200 feet without breathing. The air in her lungs had expanded and miraculously harmlessly escaped through her mouth, instead of the normal route that causes irreparable damage to scuba divers lungs due to embolism. She recalled experiencing a bright light all around as she rocketed upwards to the surface. During the ascent, Natalie was aware that the breathing regulator was not in her mouth. Though still unconscious, an automatic response kicked in that recovered the breathing regulator and inserted it back in with all the usual water clearing and choking prevention techniques. As full consciousness returned, she noticed that her ascent speed was too fast so she vented the air from her buoyancy jacket; this stopped the ascent at 190 feet. A cloud of exhaled bubbles caught up shortly afterwards.
Natalie thought that I must be either still down there or had made my own way to the surface out of view. Because of her short time at depth and rapid ascent, this left her enough air to complete far more of her decompression stops than I could manage. We got back to the dive centre just before dark. I assembled the oxygen therapy set and started to breathe deeply. The oxygen started to do its work after 30 minutes and this gave me some pain relief. I phoned the recompression chamber and they were closed. The receptionist said the doctors were resting after performing multi day treatments on a deep water Lobster diver that had spent close on 50 minutes at 200 feet before ascending rapidly. He would not walk again.
The techniques used by Caribbean Lobster divers make my deep air adventures appear positively sedentary. Imagine taking six or seven loose scuba tanks tied together with string, with one breathing regulator between all the tanks. When one tank runs out, the diver simply swaps the regulator to the next full tank. All this happening in deep water with no means of calculating the decompression stop timings, except traditions modified by the number of Lobsters in the area.
The next morning I managed a visit to the local navy headquarters that housed the islands recompression chamber. The diving doctor said that as it was a day after the symptoms had occurred, and more importantly the fact that I had no medical insurance, meant treatment was not necessary anymore. If my discomfort persisted I could contact him in a few days, in the meantime I should chew some pain killers. That afternoon, I took a bottle of oxygen from the dive centre and went for a shallow dive on the Berwyn wreck at just twenty feet deep for eighty minutes. This in-water recompression session did the trick and didn’t cost anything.
Contact
Author: Mark Ellyat
Email: info@travel-dive.com
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