Wreckless

I just gave my son a copy of Shadow Divers, a fantastic book about the quest to identify a sunken German U-boat off the coast of New Jersey.  I didn’t do it because it’s such a good read, though.  I did it because I think his underwater future (sigh) may be that of a wreck diver.

I have little interest in wrecks myself.  I graduated from Mass Maritime Academy and spent years shipping out, first as a mate, then as a captain, and the last thing I want to do is spend my time looking at yet another ship – even one underwater. 

Some of this disinterest may also be due to a dearth of good wrecks around here.  I always enjoy diving the U-853.  Ditto for its neighbor, the Bass.  But the PT Teti, the Poling, the Pinthis, others of this ilk … eh.  I’m just more interested in marine life.

Which brings us back to the boy.  I have a feeling that he’s a whole ‘nother story.  When we dive in Eastport, with incredible marine life all around, his focus is on digging though the muck for old bottles (thanks a lot, Alan Shepard!).   A torpedo bottle he pulled up last summer was the highlight of the trip, and I know that any girl he brings home is sure to get a showing.   Old plates, silverware, portholes, et cetera, just seem like the next logical step.  

So if Shadow Divers indeed triggers an interest, I’m probably looking at a summer with at least some wreck diving mixed in.   The boy is only 15 so we’ll probably stick to a few of the shallower fresh water wrecks.  I’m thinking the OJ Walker in Lake Champlain (you know, I actually enjoyed that one), the Weetamoo in Lake Sunapee (hey, I enjoyed that one, too), and the Lady of the Lake in Winnipesaukee (okay, that one, not so much). 

And maybe it won’t be so bad.  I could probably use a change of pace.  But hopefully, at some point, he’ll find at least a little interest in marine life, too. 

  

Eqp Review -- Faded Glory "Rock Boots"

Years ago, DUI introduced the Rock Boot – a canvas high-top sneaker to be worn with drysuits that are fitted with neoprene socks. Believe it or not, it’s a concept I’ve always considered to be brilliant. (As you may know, I have a little bit of a problem with DUI. I think the quality of their products has gone steadily downhill over the years, and their customer service is completely in the crapper. But I digress ... back to the Rock Boot.)

The concept works for shore divers because we’re constantly walking over uneven rocks while carrying quite a bit of weight and it’s nice to have a sturdy sole underfoot. It’s also better than having a boot attached directly to the suit because, when the rock boot wears out, you just get a new pair, rather than having to send the whole suit in to have new boots attached.

Of course, the brilliance of DUI’s thinking pretty much ended there and they immediately began adding unnecessary features and jacking up the price (in my opinion). And it didn’t take long for me, sick of paying over $100 for what looked like a pair of Converse All Stars, to just go out and buy a pair of Converse All Stars.

They were not, of course, identical and at first I was concerned that the lack of the above-mentioned features would doom the All Stars for diving. The two big ones were the lack of finger loops on the backs of the shoes, and the lack of that plastic thingy used to secure the laces rather than tying them. Wrong on both counts. It turned out that it takes no more effort to pull on shoes that don’t have a loop, and the lack of that plastic thingy made it easier, and more practical, to tie the laces in a regular bow knot rather than cinching that thingy down and then wrapping the extra lacings around your ankles.

But even when those issues turned out to be non-issues, there was still a problem with the All Stars -- they just weren’t designed to fit a foot that was already ensconced in a neoprene sock with a thermal sock underneath. My feet are size 10/10.5 (my left foot is size 10 and my right is 10.5 -- yes, it’s a hassle) and the only way I could make a pair of All Stars fit was to buy a size 11.5, pull out the insoles, and then cut the top of the toe box out of the right shoe.

This may sound like a lot of extra work but considering that I could buy them on Ebay for $20 a pair, and I wasn’t giving any more of my money to DUI, it was all worthwhile. That’s me on the right in my All Stars with Andy Martinez. In addition to saving money, just look at how much more stylish I am in my reds than Andy is in whatever he has on his feet. But notice also how the top out of the toe box is cut out of the right shoe and how I could really only lace up the upper half of the shoes.

Still, I was happy with my All Stars -- until I saw a pair of Faded Glory sneakers at Walmart. I couldn’t help but be intrigued by their very wide toe boxes. And at $12.50 a pair, how could I go wrong.

I bought a size 11, brought them home, pulled out the insoles to make more room inside (very easy since they’re barely glued), and voila! just like that I had a perfect pair of drysuit shoes with no further alterations required.

I’m now on my second pair of Faded Glorys. They’re easy to put on and take off, and are comfortable whether I’m on the surface walking around or in the water kicking with fins on. They also take quite a beating. The photos below are of the pair I just bought and the older pair that has 125 dives on them. That’s the same amount of dives I used to get out of DUI’s Rock Boots -- at almost one-tenth the cost. As you can see, the right shoe of the old pair is more worn than the left (perhaps because of the size difference of my feet) and the tongue has ripped away from the rubber toe. That’s not really much of an issue, though, and I’ll probably get another 20 dives out these guys before switching. 

As you can also see, they are not high tops. At first I was concerned that the low back would chafe against the drysuit sock but that hasn’t happened. I also thought they might feel less secure on my feet than the high tops but that’s also not the case. If you insist, though, Faded Glory does make high tops and they cost a whopping $3 more (that’s $15.50 a pair!).

In fact, I also wear the Faded Glorys when I’m diving wet, over my wet suit boots. It makes entries and exits easier at rocky sites but, more importantly, When I switch back and forth between diving wet and diving dry, I don't need to worry about switching fins. If not, it would then just be a matter of time before I showed up at a dive with the wrong set of fins. And the Faded Glorys fit very nicely over the wetsuit boots (my wetsuit boots have very little tread on them).

The bottom line: I like the Faded Glorys a lot and will never go back to DUI’s Rock Boots. They make for a great dive shoe at a great price. My only complaint is their limited colors. They don’t come in red. Oh, well.

Eqp Review -- Aqualung Titan LX

About 30 minutes into a dive at Pierce Island last week, I spotted two big nudibranchs feeding on a single hydroid, their bodies curving together in a near-perfect oval. What a series of photos this was going to make. I moved in to shoot them but only got off a single shot before hearing a mini-explosion about ten feet away.

Ah, yes, the old regulator freeze-up. I followed my buddy, who was now furiously bubbling away, up to the surface. At 38 degrees, the water didn’t seem quite cold enough to cause such a freeze-up, and yet, there we were, swimming back to the beach on the surface. So much for that nudibranch series. It was the third time this winter that a buddy’s regulator has frozen – twice underwater and once after we’d surfaced.

Let’s face it, some regs just can’t handle a little temperature.  My first regulator, a Dacor Pacer 900, could take anything … depth, cold, exertion, you name it. But when Dacor evaporated, so did their parts, and I switched to a Poseidon Odin – supposedly a high-performance, cold-water reg. What a joke. Forget cold water – this regulator had so many design flaws as to be a poor choice in any conditions. Next came a Sherwood Blizzard, a regulator supposedly made specifically for cold water. It froze on a semi-regular basis.

Later on, I met a gentleman who was a scientific diver in the Antarctic and who kept meticulous records on the regulator freezes his team had suffered over hundreds of dives. He also considered the Blizzard to be unreliable, but said that the Magnum, another Sherwood reg, performed better than any other they used. And he was right – that reg never froze on me.

Time moves on, though, and over the last four years, I’ve been using an AquaLung Titan LX. And it may be the best cold-water reg I’ve ever used. Even in 29-degree water, and with air temps in the teens, it performs perfectly every time. It’s so consistent that no matter how cold it is, I never even bother to wonder whether it’s going to have problems or not. I can’t speak to how well it breathes on deep dives – the deepest I’ve taken it is 107 feet – but if you’re in the market for a cold-water reg, I highly recommend it. 

While we’re on the subject of dive equipment, dive buddies and their combination with cold water, I’ve also made two dives this winter where I’ve had to wrestle my buddies out of their fins at the end of the dive. Their fingers were too numb to push those little plastic release buckles. Why, oh why, oh why, in this day and age of spring straps – one of the cleanest, simplest, and best innovations in years – would anyone still have plastic buckles on their fins? Spring straps, unlike their plastic counterparts, won’t break at the worst possible moment, and will make donning/doffing your fins incredibly easy, even with numbed fingers. Who knows how many divers could have been spared the humiliation of crawling about in the shallows with their gear on, waiting for some good Samaritan (i.e., their buddy) to come over and unbuckle their fins, if only they’d made this one little change.

And the photo below? It’s the one shot I got off of those nudibranchs at Pierce Island before having to surface. It really would have made a great series.

 

 

Too Small To See (Almost)

Toward the end of a dive last week, I spent a few minutes watching some kind of ornate worm pulsing around in the water column.  I didn't bother shooting it -- even though the viz was good, there was enough sand in the water that any images taken with nothing but water in the background would have looked like they'd been shot in a blizzard. 

At some point, though, the worm unexpectedly set down on a piece of kelp, and just like that, a non-photo op turned into a minor photo op.  I spent the next minute or so shooting it while it worked its body into a spiral, extended its arms out in one direction, pulled them back, then extended them in another.  I liked the shapes it was making but, in fact, had no idea what I was shooting.  I didn't even know that I didn't know what I was shooting.

When I looked at the shots later on, I saw that when the worm settled down, it had very purposefully reached out and grabbed a tiny ball of muck.  It immediately released the muck ball, then reached out in the opposite direction and grabbed a minute piece of seaweed covered with some type of creature ... an entoproct, endoproct, exoproct ... one of those procts just beyond my grasp of marine biology. 

Over the course of the last three photos I took, the worm worked the creature around in its arms, pulled it toward and then finally under itself.  It was at this point that I happily swam off, having no idea what was happening in front of me. 

If only I had taken one more shot, who knows what would have happened next.  The worm might have jammed it into its mouth like John Belushi downing a burger.  It might have twirled the seaweed around in its arms, eating it like an ear of corn.  Or the proct (?) might have somehow defended itself, causing the worm to spit it out like a bad egg. 

Looking at shots like these, it's impossible not to wonder how many times life and death struggles have happened right under my nose without even being noticed, because they just happened on too small a scale.  My guess is a lot.  And since my eyes aren't all that bad, my other guess is that I'm not alone here. 

There aren't a lot of solutions to the problem, though, so I guess it's not worth driving yourself crazy over (I'm going to shoot every single thing I see, no matter what, just in case!).  I guess the best option is to just pay more attention to opportunities when they come up and be happy when we do end up shooting something good that we didn't know we were shooting.

Frozen Fingers

Cold enough for you? No one ever asks that one. If they had, on pretty much any day over the last two months, the answer would have been yes, it’s sufficiently cold for me.



Air temps this winter have put a definite damper on diving. It’s one thing to spend an hour in 30-something-degree water. It’s another to step out of that water and into air temps hovering in the single digits. More than once this winter, I’ve come out of the water and walked to my car, only to find that the bolt snaps on my camera housing had frozen solid onto my BC D-rings in the interim. Not a good thing.

That being said, winter diving is some of the best diving there is. Not only is it easy to get primo parking spots right by the water, but visibility can be off the charts. Just the other day, I had 40 to 50 feet of viz at Pierce Island in New Hampshire. It’s also easy to find creatures not around during other parts of the year.

As far as keeping warm, diving in the winter is just like skiing – you have to dress for it. But no matter how warm I dress, or how much I layer up, the one thing I can't get around is frozen fingers. Once water temps dip below 37 degrees, I just can’t keep them warm.

Here are a few things I’ve tried:
Quarter-inch wetsuit mitts with wool gloves underneath – they kept my fingers somewhat warm but obliterated dexterity, making it impossible to operate small camera controls.
Dry gloves with liner gloves underneath – the dexterity is much better but the difference in warmth isn’t all that much.
DUI’s kevlar dry gloves – not surprisingly, this is a poorly thought out piece of equipment. While my fingers could have survived being nibbled on by a small shark, so much dexterity is lost that I probably wouldn’t have even known they were being chewed on. To top it off, my fingers were still cold.
Chemical hand warmers inside the liner gloves – this should have worked, but it didn’t. By the time I came out of the water, the warmers were just as cold as my fingers.
Larger dry gloves with a pair of liner gloves layered underneath – this is the best option I’ve found so far. Still not a great one.

Dawn Guglielmo just told me that she loves her battery-powered heated thermals, which include gloves. At some point, I guess, that’s the route I’ll have to take.

The Heartbreak Of Underwater Photography

I had a dream last night that my camera flooded. I can still see it, awash inside the housing while the water level, visible through the port, gurgled ever higher. Unfortunately for me, this is a recurring dream, like the ones we have as kids where we get to school and realize that we somehow forgot to put on pants before leaving the house. And like those dreams, it feels so good to wake up and realize that everything’s okay.

Of course, everything isn’t always okay. Sometimes those floods are all too real. Back in the days of film, I used to flood cameras on a regular basis. I didn’t worry about them because those cameras weren’t overly expensive and replacing them was simply the cost of doing business.

Even still, I’d warn my friends against ever bringing a camera underwater. The list of things that could go wrong, and that you wouldn’t know about until too late, was excruciatingly long. I used to call it, “the heartbreak of underwater photography.” The film didn’t always advance between shots; strobes sometimes didn’t fire (sometimes they didn’t even get turned on); exposure settings could be way off; distance settings would get accidentally changed; et cetera, et cetera. And when you did get a good shot, so much time passed before you saw it that it was hard to remember what you had done right to then do it again.



All that’s in the past now, though, and it’s hard to even remember those bad old days. I’m continually blown away by the quality of images and video that people are able to capture using small, inexpensive cameras. It’s never been easier to re-live a dive, to share it with friends, or to try to figure out what the heck you were looking at, than it is today. And those floods – well, when the camera’s expensive enough, that’s what insurance is for. But these days, if you’re going underwater without a camera, the only question is – why.

Book Review -- Shadow Divers, Robert Kurson

I picked up Shadow Divers with very low expectations. The story of the U-Who had already been told in numerous media and the fact that the book was a best seller just convinced me that it would turn out to be so much schlock. I was wrong.

Shadow Divers is the story of two men, John Chatterton and Richie Kohler, who find themselves thrust together while diving the wreck of an unidentified U-boat off the coast of New Jersey. The motives and methodologies of the two men, both in life and in diving, seem polar opposites. Chatterton lives a tenaciously disciplined life in which he consistently strives to do the honorable thing. Kohler prefers to keep things a bit looser, drinking to excess, mooning families on passing boats and pulling up as many artifacts as he can from the wrecks he dives. Not surprisingly, the two start off not liking each other.

Equally unsurprising is the fact that they turn out to have a lot more in common than they initially believe. Both have more than a passing interest in U-boats. Both are able to look past the subs' Nazi origins to see the characters of the men who manned them. And both are committed to doing whatever it takes to discover the identity of this particular one -- which lies in a place where no U-boat is supposed to be.

To the uninitiated, it would seem a simple matter to discover the identity of a wreck. Someone must have reported a sinking. Somewhere a name must be engraved or stenciled in. At the very least, there must be some mention of a crewman. Well, not in this case. Whatever secrets the U-Who has, it doesn't give them up easily. It lies in 230 feet of water and its interior is a nightmare combination of silt, skeletons, hanging cables and caved-in pieces of machinery. Of the first six divers who enter it, three lose their lives. Still, dive after dive, year after year, Chatterton and Kohler devise new plans to find some marking, carry those plans out perfectly and then come up empty.

I get the feeling that the author, Robert Kurson, is not a diver. If this is the case, then his ability to describe the dangers and claustrophobia of deep wreck diving is remarkable. And the human side of this story is nothing to sneeze at either. I actually got a little verklempt near the end -- that's the first time that's happened while reading a wreck diving book!

Despite my original misgivings, Shadow Divers is a very good book.

It was published by Random House in 2004.