Scuba diving first became a sport when military divers returned to civilian life and wished to explore the underwater realms off their coasts for fun. Self-contained diving equipment was available in limited quantities to civilians, who needed only money to indulge their fascination with life under the waves. No formal training was required.
Most of those who engaged in the earliest days of sport diving were men, and they believed that you had to be a tremendous swimmer in order to safely scuba-dive. There were occasional exceptions in this world of men, such as the beautiful Austrian Lotte Hass, who worked with her husband, Hans, to photograph, film, and write about the underwater realm. Cousteau’s marketing was more effective than the Hasses’ in the United States, which led to Cousteau’s becoming an internationally recognized icon through his television shows, while the Hasses’ fame was limited mostly to Europe, where their films were aired.
Both Cousteau’s and the Hasses’ efforts led to publicity for the possibilities of underwater exploration as a sport. Civilians who were curious about diving could learn from former military divers, who continued to emphasize strong swimming as a prerequisite and weeded out students not possessing superb skills and stamina. This philosophy became the basis for civilian sport-diving training programs founded in the mid-fifties, whose participants had to endure calisthenics such as push-ups and jogging on the beach as a complement to undergoing diving instruction. And no wonder. Early diving equipment required strong lungs to inhale and exhale through the regulator and its large corrugated double hose that provided air. There was no way to tell how much air remained in the tank, other than a safety device that allowed a reserve to be made available to the diver when he had difficulty breathing. He then pulled a long rod on the side of the tank, which depressed a switch on the tank’s valve and released the reserve. Of course, if the switch had accidentally been bumped during the dive, the reserve would already have been inadvertently breathed, and the diver would find himself out of gas on the bottom. He would then have to make a controlled ascent, swimming toward the surface slower than his exhaled bubbles, and swim back to shore or the dive boat while breathing from a snorkel. So being a very good swimmer did help you survive.
As the Rouses’ diving obsession grew, their collection of diving-related books, magazines, and videotapes proliferated. Their study of the sport led to a level of sophistication that eluded the vast majority of the general public and even many divers. During one of my visits to their house, they asked if I had seen Cousteau’s television cave-diving program: “Oh, you’ve got to see it. It’s so funny!” Chris Rouse said, with Sue and Chrissy chiming in, in agreement. As we watched the program, they pointed out the many technical errors made during the Cousteau team’s dive with Dr. George Benjamin in the Bahamian Blue Holes, limestone cave systems accessed via holes in the ocean floor. Dr. Benjamin had made cave diving safer by inventing a piece of diving equipment that allowed the cave diver to have redundancy among the critical life-support breathing hoses, or to come to the rescue of a fellow cave diver who needed gas. Although Dr. Benjamin was nothing less than a hero to hard-core cave divers, he lived in obscurity outside that eclectic community.
As the videotaped program played, the Rouses each took turns imitating Cousteau’s distinct nasal French accent, while pointing out the errors. “We took special, extra-large tanks for this dive,” Cousteau announced, which made Sue laugh. “Yeah, right. Look at those eighties. God, hasn’t he heard of one-oh-four’s?” “Eighties” are the standard-size scuba tanks the Cousteau team was using, as opposed to the heavy, extra-large tanks resembling small bombs used by serious cave divers.
Chris continued excitedly, “Listen to this bit: ‘We had to use special underwater magnesium torches to light our way. The liquid smoke filled the cave and reduced our visibility.’ Ha!” Chris turned to me. “Haven’t they heard of high-intensity battery-powered cave-diving lights?”
When one of the Cousteau team threw the spent flare aside, we all went into hysterics. The team was violating the most basic principles of cave conservation at every turn. We had all been drilled with the mantra of cave explorers: “Take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but bubbles.” The Cousteau team polluted the cave unnecessarily with their flares, when underwater diving lights would have served them far better, and they threw their trash away in the cave with complete disregard for the environment. That this icon of underwater environmental protection should be doing so in front of an international audience was too much for us. Not only that, but their breathing tanks were woefully inadequate for the dive, with insufficient reserve gas for an emergency, and they did not use the equipment invented by Dr. Benjamin himself—which had become standard in the cave-diving community and which would have made this dive much safer.
Chrissy shook his head. “Man, this is a ‘smoke and mirrors’ show. We should be out there getting paid to show real cave diving, not this bullshit.” All of us were saddened that Dr. Benjamin had succumbed to what we perceived as pressure exerted on him to use improper equipment and techniques for the sake of dramatizing cave diving. Though we were all grateful for the invention of scuba and the environmental awareness promoted by the Cousteau Society, our respect for Cousteau’s expertise and authority slipped markedly.
Cousteau’s cave-diving show illustrated for us the importance of being humble. Although he and Gagnan had invented scuba, he could have been open to advances made by others after him, most notably Dr. Benjamin, whose invention had made diving safer. Cousteau had chosen to go with diving equipment and techniques familiar to him, instead of learning new approaches. For me, the philosophy of a diver like Marc Eyring contrasted sharply with what Cousteau was up to. A highly experienced cave diver, Eyring always maintained that he was a “rookie.” Eyring liked to say, “When you think ya know it all, when you’re not ready to be open to new ways of doing things, you’re in trouble. This is too unforgiving an environment. I’m always learning, ’cause if I don’t, I know I’ll be dead soon.” Eyring had the philosophy of the true explorer.
Some cave dives require hours of decompression, which means waiting in the water and doing nothing for long periods of time while the body eliminates the excess inert gas. The wait can be excruciatingly boring. Steve Berman frequently endured the long decompressions when he taught cave-diving classes, and also after his pleasure dives. Some divers pass decompression by reading books or magazines underwater, or even playing chess on magnetic boards. Berman read voraciously in his regular life on the surface, and he wanted something else to occupy his mind during decompression, called deco. Music. That would pass the time far more enjoyably. Berman started working on an underwater system to house his Walkman. Protecting the cassette tape unit from water damage proved easy when he used a round canister that usually housed the battery for an underwater light. The headphone proved to be much more problematic—it was the weak link for the unit that Berman dubbed the Diveman. Steve would cover the small, delicate headphones with plastic wrap, or dip them in heated rubber, which worked for a few dives but then developed holes, allowing water into the headphones, which traveled through the wires and into the tape unit, ruining it.
Frustrated after replacing several flooded Walkman units, Berman mentioned the problem to Reekie, the rotund Canadian. The solution was to find headphones that were made for underwater use. During a trade show, Reekie came upon underwater metal detection equipment that used large, durable, waterproof headphones. Reekie approached the manufacturer: “I’d be interested in placing an order for a quantity of your headphones if you can make them in stereo,” he said. The manufacturer thought the request odd, but found no reason to pass up a sale, and agreed to modify the headphones. When Reekie and Berman applied the specialty headphones to Berman’s Diveman, the flooding problems were eliminated and the sound was nicely stereophonic.
Berman now enjoyed listening to the surreal music of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon while he decompressed in the crystal-clear water above the
entrance to the Ginnie Springs Devil’s Cave System. He would frequently do solo dives at midnight, relishing the tranquillity of his own private world. While decompressing, he rested lazily on a tree log that had fallen into the water. He was often illuminated only by the Moon, whose light beams rippled through his exhalation bubbles, which rose like rapidly expanding flying saucers, exploding when they hit the surface. The rippling light cast eerie shadows on the rock entrance below Berman, making fish, crabs, and crayfish seem to dance in a strobe light, appearing, disappearing, and reappearing in an instant.
Berman gave a Diveman to the Rouses as a present, and they took their new toy into the water with the anticipation of children. Chrissy preferred rock music to Berman’s more mellow selection, and when he was on deco he could be seen shaking and bobbing his head with the rhythm, and making drum-playing motions with both arms, as if he were in a concert. When Pearl Jam released their album Ten, Chrissy found a new favorite song, appropriately called “Even Flow,” which he grooved to underwater, in his car, at home—everywhere. In contrast to his son, Chris Rouse preferred to rest quietly, introspectively, after a dive, allowing the time to pass with the steady, predictable flow of the spring’s current.
Because it is predictable, the cave-diving environment is in many ways easier to dive than the open ocean. In the open ocean, there are currents and varying weather conditions for a diver to deal with. Although the Rouses had been diving on shipwrecks off the New Jersey coast, most often off the dive boat captained by their advanced diving instructor, Bob Burns, they stayed within the recreational dive table limit of 130 feet for ten minutes, to avoid the necessity of decompressing. When they did exceed the dive table time limits, they had to decompress. In the ocean, that meant hanging on to the dive boat’s anchor line, lest they be swept away in the current and lost. It was far easier to decompress while resting on the bottom of a cave floor, or on a tree that had fallen into a cave’s entrance, than on an anchor line. During calm ocean conditions, decompression was not difficult, and there was always enough marine life floating past to keep the Rouses occupied. But when the current was running, or the waves kicked up, their arms and shoulders got tired of holding on to the line.
It didn’t take them long to adapt the use of the jonline, a nylon rope usually six feet long, to aid in decompression (it was named for its inventor, Jon Hulburt). They would wrap it around the anchor line and then hang on to a loop in the end of the jonline. If the current was strong, they would clip the line to their harness, so their arms wouldn’t get sore. In high wave conditions, the anchor line would jerk up and down with the waves, but the jonline would take the stress, not their arms. The device was useful, but it was just another thing that had to be carried all through the dive, even though it might not be needed. And it had to be easily accessible, because if it was needed the diver must be able to reach it and tie it on while holding on to the anchor line; otherwise he could lose his grip on the anchor line and be swept away.
In cave diving, explorers can store anything not needed during the dive itself at whatever depth it might be used. If they require extra tanks for decompression, these can be “parked” somewhere handy and clipped on as the divers make their ascent. Thus cave divers are as streamlined and unencumbered as possible during the actual swimming portion of the dive. This is not possible in open-ocean wreck diving, where the cardinal rule is that every diver has to be self-sufficient at all times. The wreck diver cannot even rely on the dive boat’s being there when he gets back, as it is not unheard of for the boat’s anchor line to slip free from a wreck in seas that suddenly turn violent. In such a case, if the diver needs extra scuba tanks for decompression, it will do him no good to have those gases attached to the anchor line at the depths where he needs them. A wreck diver must carry all of his required gas bottles with him. Sometimes he places the extra bottles on the outside of the wreck before going inside so that he is more streamlined, carrying fewer items likely to get snagged inside the wreckage. On wrecks with large openings and interiors, the extra tanks can be worn throughout the dive, even during penetrations, but this is the exception rather than the rule.
Most northeast wreck divers—those who dive the plentiful wrecks off the U.S. East Coast north of South Carolina—seek trophies of their explorations, whether live lobsters to eat or shipwreck artifacts to bring up and display. The diver who brings up the largest or the most lobsters on a single dive will proudly reveal his take once back on the dive boat. For sheer impressions, size means everything, and the diver who brings up the biggest lobster is looked on as a very competent diver, even though very large crustaceans do not taste as good and sweet as their smaller counterparts. The diver who comes up with artifacts is seen to have a good eye—and maybe some luck thrown in. To retrieve artifacts consistently is the mark of the truly proficient wreck diver. But to get any of these trophies, a diver has to take a nylon-mesh goodie bag to contain his lobster catch, or a bag with tools if he wants to retrieve artifacts that might require removal. Sometimes, divers take a bag containing tools and a mesh bag, to be prepared for whatever they might come across. There is nothing better than to come up with a bonanza of both lobster and artifacts; in the eyes of the hard-core wrecker, hitting Lotto is a close second to such an experience.
The wreck diver who can capture still or moving underwater images is a curious breed, and many regard such persons as anally retentive masochists: The sheer number of things that can go wrong with underwater imaging equipment—and the attention to every detail required before, during, and after a dive—is staggering. Imaging equipment and water do not mix well, and large housings are required to protect each piece of equipment from the slightest drop of seawater. In spite of the heavy housings, it is all too easy to flood a camera, causing thousands of dollars’ damage. Or for the camera to malfunction. Or for the diver to have the wrong lens for the underwater conditions or sea life he or she encounters.
By the late eighties, the harsh, unpredictable, cold-water wreck-diving environment had given rise to many different ways of wearing the various equipment that a diver might need during the dive. And also to impassioned arguments about the correct way to wear the equipment, as well as the correct way to conduct the dives themselves. This resulted in cliques of wreck divers who had similar philosophies and dived together. Clashes were inevitable as wreck divers hunted trophies and status.
Ken Reinhart’s warning to Chris Rouse that cave diving was a tiger waiting to take a swipe should have included wreck diving. With no Grim Reaper warning signs in and around wrecks, as there had been in the Devil’s Cave System at Ginnie Springs, the Rouses were unaware that the tiger also waited in wrecks.
4
Artifact Fever
SUMMER 1990. KEY WEST, FLORIDA.
TWO YEARS BEFORE John Chatterton discovered the mystery U-boat off the New Jersey coastline, dramatic changes in the world of sport diving were set in motion by a very unlikely candidate. The Californian Michael Menduno arrived on the diving scene full of energy, enthusiasm, and vision that would transform sport diving. With his long, dirty-blond hair, crooked teeth, and slim, nonathletic frame, he seemed an unprepossessing spokesperson for new and daring methods of diving exploration, and when the first issue of his magazine, AquaCorps, was distributed in 1989, it was to distinctly unimpressive reviews. But Menduno was a fast study, and his spirited presentations at diving shows across the United States gave voice to divers undertaking extreme dives and elicited curiosity among those who had been content to stay well within the relatively shallow confines of recreational diving.
Before long, AquaCorps found its footing, and its combination of attitude, cutting-edge information, dramatic underwater photography, and offbeat graphics made it the bible of diving’s avant-garde. The Rouses were keen fans. Whenever a new issue came out—and no reader ever knew when that would be—if the Rouses saw it first, they would call their friends to brief them on the contents, and their fellow divers would do the same if they
were the first who could get the word out. Finally, here was a diving publication that boldly probed the world of extreme cave and wreck diving, including the dives now occurring worldwide that were pushing the limits of how far below the surface or into a cave system sport divers could venture.
Like so many developments in diving that had come before it, AquaCorps cleaved old-time conservative divers from those who either recognized the sport’s inevitable evolution or sought to know how to safely go deeper and stay down longer. Before AquaCorps, divers who worked at dive stores and who engaged in deep cave or wreck diving were often warned not to talk to the shop’s students or customers about what they dared to do. Many dive shop owners were worried that the trend toward deeper, more complex diving would result in more deaths, which would bring bad publicity for the sport and a downturn in business. As the magazine became more slick in its graphics and presentation, and became more popular, it lent a legitimizing voice to those whom some viewed as diving’s pariahs. Suddenly, it was cool to dive deep.
The Last Dive Page 10