by Watt Key
Even after hundreds of dives I still get nervous when I can no longer see the surface or what’s below me. I also get nervous as the sunlight is filtered away and the water grows colder. That’s when you know you’ve entered the danger zone: another world, an aquatic wilderness where humans are not meant to be.
Despite my fears, I knew the feeling was a lot like the sensation I get inching up the first big hill of a roller coaster. It’s scary, but I’ve done it before and I know I’m safe. And the reward beyond makes it all worthwhile.
As the water pressure built against my eardrums I stopped, pinched my nose, and blew against the inside of my ears until I heard them squeak and clear with escaping air. I had to do this about every five feet to keep my eardrums from bursting.
Another fifty feet down I saw a dark blur that I assumed was the north tank. The Jordans were moving along the seafloor now, slowly working against the current, heading for the south tank, where, mysteriously, the fish column seemed more concentrated.
I descended ten more feet and paused again to relieve the pressure on my ears. The tank was clearly visible now, a strange, ghostly relic of war that was both enticing and fearsome. The giant steel body, the gun barrel, and even the tracks were still intact, like the tank had driven into the water and parked there on the endless plain of rippled sand. I finally felt oriented and safe and allowed the thrill of the adventure to sweep over me. I thought about all the tourists in Gulf Shores, their cars loaded with skim boards, float toys, foldout chairs, coolers, and sun umbrellas. They parked alongside the highway and lugged their equipment out onto the beach. They splashed at its edges and stared out across the vast expanse of it, but that was as much of the water as they’d get. Most of them never even dreamed of going to the places we went, miles out beyond the curve of the horizon, into the mysterious depths of a silent, colorful world.
But my excitement was short-lived. Fear crept over me again as I dropped closer to the tank and saw the anchor. It was resting behind the gun barrel on top of the hatch cover, an unlikely drop. When I reached it I noted that it was barely clinging to a thin lip of steel. I could see it shifting and hear the points of the flukes scratching against the metal. The strange noise explained why the fish had fled to the other tank. But I wasn’t concerned about the fish. If any pressure was taken off the rope, the anchor could fall out of place. And with the boat straining against it, the dangers of resetting it were too great to risk. The heavy steel hardware could spring back and stab me with its sharp flukes or knock me unconscious.
Had the Jordans been with me, I would have signaled an immediate ascent. If the anchor pulled, Dad would be adrift, trailing our lifeline with him. He wouldn’t have time to make another drop before we needed to surface. Certainly not by himself. And without the anchor rope to guide us up, we’d be swept away with the current.
I contemplated resurfacing without the Jordans, but that option seemed no better. Even if Dad and I could reset the anchor in time for their ascent, we’d never be able to drop it in the same place and it was likely they’d never find it.
There was no easy answer. All I could do was try to keep an eye on this new problem and the Jordans at the same time.
4
I pulled myself down to the lee side of the tank to get out of the current. Then I knelt on the seafloor, grabbed my gauge console, and got a reading from the compass. Once I got my bearings I withdrew my knife, held it before me, and kicked toward the other tank. The current was coming at me sideways, so I had to keep my stomach low and stab the knife into the sand to keep from getting swept away. In this manner I managed to locate the south tank after a few minutes. It was clouded with snapper, grouper, triggerfish, and smaller reef fish of all sizes and colors. There could be no question that the Jordans were getting what they paid for.
I saw what looked like Mr. Jordan about thirty feet away, taking a lane snapper off his spear and running his fish stringer through its gills. I didn’t see Shane. I was anxious to get back to the north tank and keep an eye on the anchor. I searched the blue haze around me again and thought I saw a trace of bubbles off to my left. I started that way and it wasn’t long before I saw Shane chasing an amberjack. I stopped and tapped my tank with the butt of my knife, but he didn’t look at me. I checked my watch and gauge console again. I’d been down nine minutes and I had two-thirds of my air left.
Plenty of time, I told myself.
I watched Shane shoot and miss. The gun resembled a crossbow, except in place of the bow were three rubber bands as thick as my thumb. These bands propelled a four-foot steel spear that was attached to a fifteen-foot-long cable. Shane retrieved the spear and reseated it on the gun. As he struggled to re-cock the rubber bands I made my way over to him. I tapped him on the shoulder and he looked at me. I pointed down at my watch and signaled seven minutes with my fingers. He ignored me and turned his attention back to the speargun. I didn’t know what else to do, so I decided it was best to return and keep an eye on the anchor.
I could no longer see the north tank from where I was, so I studied my compass and tried to work backward to get an accurate heading. I knew I’d gone south and then angled off to my left, which would have been east. So I determined I needed a northwest heading for my return. But as soon as I started in that direction I realized I’d underestimated the current and I was almost swimming directly against it this time. I kicked furiously and stabbed my knife into the sand to pull myself along, but it was nearly impossible and I felt myself breathing heavily and using up air at an alarming rate. I stabbed and kicked, stabbed and kicked, until finally I had to stop and rest.
I looked at my watch. Sixteen minutes. I had four minutes to get back to the anchor and start up.
Not going to make it.
I began to play out scenarios in my head, visualizing what it would be like if I had to surface without the anchor rope. I could be swept a mile away while I was making my safety stop. If I could even control my safety stop. It was hard to maintain a certain depth without something to hold on to, especially in such a strong current. At the moment I needed to calm down and try to make it to the anchor.
Despite all my years of scuba diving, this was the first real emergency I’d ever faced. But it was situations like this Dad had trained me for. And I suddenly found my life depending on everything he’d taught me.
The number-one rule in a diving emergency: Don’t panic. The more you panic, the more air you breathe and the more bad decisions you make.
I told myself to calm down and focus on reaching the anchor.
I began moving my legs steadily against the current and plunging my knife into the sand in a methodical way. One foot at a time I made progress, my eyes trained on where I thought the tank should be. And slowly it came into focus. Once I saw it I got a burst of energy and kicked with everything I had. I knew I’d be outside of twenty minutes, but as long as I had the anchor rope to hold on to I could control additional stops.
My mind raced as I tried to recall exactly how long we’d made our safety stops on a deco dive last summer. But then I was distracted by something else. When I was about twenty feet away I realized all my fears about the dive that day were coming true. The anchor was gone.
For a moment I was in disbelief. I thought maybe I’d circled back to the wrong tank. I jabbed my knife into the sand and grabbed my gauge console. It showed I was still heading in the right direction. Then I looked up again and studied the seafloor down-current of me. I saw faint drag marks in the sand telling me for certain that the anchor had sprung loose.
I glanced at my watch. Thirty minutes had passed. My body was surely saturated with nitrogen gas.
I checked my air gauge, and my heart skipped a beat when I saw that three-fourths of my air was gone. I had to start my ascent immediately. And I had to try not to panic.
I looked for the Jordans, but they were nowhere in sight.
Get out of here, I thought.
I pressed my inflator button to inject air int
o my BCD and felt myself begin to rise slowly off the seafloor. I saw the sand ripples race beneath me as the current took hold and swept me along. I held the gauge console before my face. Ninety feet. Eighty feet. The sand ripples soon blurred into a blank, flat plain of yellowish-brown. I tried not to think about how far I was being swept from the dive site. I kept reminding myself to breathe slowly and maintain a controlled ascent.
As I neared forty feet I decided to make my first safety stop. I let air out of my BCD until I was having to kick to keep from sinking. It was only then that I realized how tired my legs were. But to be certain that all the nitrogen was out of my bloodstream, I knew I had to stay there for at least ten minutes. I checked my air gauge. I was alarmed to see only one-eighth supply remaining.
I put a little more air back into my BCD so I didn’t have to kick so much, keeping my eyes on the depth gauge. For what seemed like an eternity I hovered there. Trapped in a dead zone of liquid space, being swept helplessly farther and farther away. My compass showed I was moving to the southeast. I didn’t want to look at my air gauge again. It would only worry me and make me breathe faster.
When my watch finally showed that I’d stayed ten minutes I kicked up to twenty feet and stopped again. At the shallower depths I’d use my air at a slower rate, but I knew I didn’t have enough to last the twenty minutes I needed. I only hoped the deco stop at forty had been enough.
After eight minutes I felt my air running out. It feels like trying to breathe through a straw. I waited another two minutes until I was practically holding my breath, then I kicked for the surface. I was suddenly transported from a world of clicks and bubbles and hissing air into a world of sunlight and crisp sound.
The first thing that flashed through my mind was that none of my joints hurt. I felt fine. If I had the bends, it was only a mild case or it hadn’t yet set in.
Then I looked around. The Gulf was rougher than I remembered. I kicked to peer above the waves and saw nothing but blue water clear to the horizon in every direction. I’d never dropped a weight belt before, but knew that once I was on the surface it was the first thing to go in an emergency. I had to get as buoyant as possible.
I unclipped the belt and let it sink into the depths. Then I fully inflated my BCD by blowing into the manual inflator mouthpiece. Finally there was nothing to do but float there and wonder what had happened to our boat and the Jordans and how long it would take before someone found me.
5
Rising and falling with the swells, I told myself to stay calm.
Dad will come for me.
I let that thought sit in my head for a few seconds, trying to smother a darker truth.
If the anchor had pulled, as soon as he noticed Dad would have known to let the boat drift. He and I would have traveled at the same speed. And the boat would at least be within sight.
Then I thought that maybe it was too rough and I couldn’t see far enough.
Maybe he’s getting the Jordans out of the water. They stayed down longer than me, so they won’t have drifted as far.
But over it all, I thought about the Malzon tanks. Suddenly the word Malzon sounded sinister and brought forth a flood of painful memories. It seemed like everything started with those tanks. They were cursed.
* * *
When I was nine years old Dr. Malzon asked Dad to create a private fishing reef for him. Sometimes when his scuba charter business slowed in the winter Dad took unusual jobs like this to make ends meet. So he agreed and spent three days figuring out how to get the two tanks and an excavator loaded onto a borrowed barge. Then he woke me at three o’clock in the morning to help him make the drop.
We used the Barbie Doll to pull the barge out of the pass and into the smooth, inky-dark swells of the Gulf. Dad always added a little more adventure to a situation than some people (like my mom) thought was necessary, but that morning he insisted we needed to complete our mission under the cover of darkness. When building private reefs it’s important that no one sees the drop and steals the coordinates.
Thirty miles out, Dad told me to take over the controls. He instructed me to keep the Barbie Doll dead slow ahead into the wind while he went back onto the barge. As soon as I saw him drop the first tank I was to stop the engines, count to ten, and write down our GPS coordinates. I’d been driving the Barbie Doll since I was six, so his request was nothing unusual to me. And I’ve always been very particular about things, so he trusted me to write the numbers down accurately.
Dad pushed the first tank off the barge with the excavator and it made a tremendous splash that rocked the boat. I shut down the engines as he shoved the second one overboard. Then I counted as we drifted past and they sank to their permanent resting place. I was writing the coordinates from the GPS on a Post-it note when he came back into the wheelhouse. He didn’t even look at my numbers. Someone had paid for them and their secrecy, and Dad is always a man of his word to the extreme.
Not two weeks after Dad delivered the coordinates for the tanks, Dr. Malzon died of a brain aneurysm. He hadn’t paid for the work yet, and Dad didn’t feel it was appropriate to approach Mrs. Malzon about it. As Dad saw it, the tanks now belonged to us.
Mom was angry when he told her he wasn’t even going to ask to be paid for four days of his time and expenses. I heard them arguing about it late into the night. I’d heard Mom express her frustrations with him before, but it was usually over little things like something he forgot or something he was late for. And then I’d catch her smiling at him later like none of the fussing meant much. But this time it was different. This time she sounded like she was going to stay mad.
Somehow Dad got his way with the tanks that night. And I remember the excitement in his eyes as he came into my room, sat on my bedside, and told me of his dream. Like the argument with Mom hadn’t even happened.
“In a year there’s going to be fish all over those things,” he said. “People are going to pay big money to dive them … as soon as I find them again.”
Dad spent the rest of the winter trying to relocate the tanks. He had a chart taped beside the steering wheel lined with a search grid that encompassed five square miles. He motored slowly along the gridlines, studying the bottom plotter for anomalies. The plotter bounced sound waves off the seafloor, and he needed to be directly over a target for it to register on the electronic graph. There is relatively little structure in that part of the Gulf. If you were to drain the water, the seafloor would look like a vast desert, dotted with the occasional artificial reef. If you don’t have exact coordinates for something, you ordinarily won’t find it. On a good day Dad would locate one or two items of interest. Then he’d make note of their GPS coordinates so that he could dive them later.
Even when I hadn’t yet learned to dive, I went out with him on the weekends and stayed on the boat while he suited up in his scuba gear and descended the anchor rope to investigate items of interest from the week before. If there was any kind of emergency I could always radio for help and even drive the boat. Occasionally he found another artificial reef consisting of a rusty car body or boat hull. Most of the time it was an old ghost town of rubble, long since eroded and fished out. Sometimes it was nothing but a bucket. None of it was as large and impressive as the Malzon tanks.
When the diving business picked up again in the spring, Dad and I continued to look for the tanks when he didn’t have a paid trip. In spite of Mom’s reluctance, he taught me how to scuba dive that summer. I made hundreds of dives with him. I was a natural, he said. A regular sea otter. And by the time school started again he figured I’d made more dives than any other nine-year-old in the world. And I could tell he was proud of that thought.
As Dad continued with his obsession over the tanks I began to notice him and Mom arguing more, although I didn’t know what it was about. Then, right before Christmas, Dad told me he was giving up on the search.
“It’s not meant to be,” he said. “Besides, it’s only a couple of tanks.”
The following summer he focused more on his clients’ trips again. I didn’t know it, but Mom had already applied for a position with a law firm in Atlanta. And she’d already given Dad the divorce papers. As part of the divorce deal I would go live with her and spend summers with Dad.
He acted like nothing was happening. Like it was something that he could fix, only he hadn’t quite figured out how. I don’t think he truly believed it was all real until the day near the end of August when Mom and I drove away, pulling a U-Haul trailer packed with our things.
“I have dreams, too,” Mom said to me. “And sometimes it’s hard for two people with different dreams to be married.”
I’d never thought about parents chasing dreams. Maybe because it seemed like Dad was already living his, owning his own dive shop and guiding scuba charters. And Mom seemed content practicing at a local law firm that specialized in insurance work. Now suddenly she revealed she’d always wanted to be a successful corporate attorney and Gulf Shores didn’t have the opportunities for that. But I had a feeling there was more to it.
“How come you never talked about it before?” I asked her on the drive north.
“Just because I didn’t talk about it doesn’t mean I wasn’t thinking it,” she replied stubbornly.
I was confused and angry. I wanted to take Dad’s side, but I didn’t understand how he could let this happen. He was always able to fix anything. And he must not have cared enough about our family to repair it.