Part 1
Most of the time underwater science is rather dull. Hours are spent collecting data. Data that is not particularly interesting in and of itself. Data that only has import when conjoined with similar data collected at other times and possibly similar locations. The stars of underwater science in the media like Sylvia Earle or Bob Ballard reach out to you from the pages of a glossy book or beckon from a tightly edited video production, crisp and seductive images that always intersect at a meaningful conclusion on the last page or in the last minute. But real life is not like that, at least not very often. It’s repetitious … hour after hour, cold, uncomfortable, often strenuous and occasionally dangerous. But every once in a while something special happens that more than makes up for all that’s come before, something really special. And this was one of those times.
It had been a very eventful trip for me so far. I’d had a close escape from one of those classic binds, a research cruise that I had be on, leaving the dock with the morning tide the same day that I was scheduled to deliver a paper at the annual American Academy of Underwater Sciences meetings. But my boss wanted both things done and so I’d come up with a creative solution. The ship was leaving Woods Hole and then transiting the Cape Cod Canal on its way to the Gulf of Maine. If I could move my talk to the first slot in the morning, there was a good chance that I could be back in time to meet the ship at the north end of the canal just after sundown. And if I were late, Plan B was to call a casualty evacuation drill with a chopper a bud flew out of Otis AFB and use that cover for my ride out.
On Friday I stowed the last of my gear on the ship and I caught an oh-dark-thirty in the morning flight out of Boston down to Florida. A quick cab ride to the meeting and I was in front of my colleagues presenting a paper I’d coauthored with Rich Pyle of the University of Hawaii which was an evaluation of his methods for using mixed gas open circuit scuba at depths of four to five hundred feet. Twenty minutes of talking, ten minutes of questions, I shoved my little certificate of appreciation into my case and scooted as out to waiting cab that took me back to the airport. I ran for a plane back to Boston and on the plane I switched my Sunday-go-to-meeting suit for a pair of 501s, a black U. C. Berkeley sweatshirt and my topsiders.
My work study student was waiting for me curbside at O’Hare. I threw my leather flight bag and black Halliburton case, the one covered with dive stickers, on the back seat, jumped in front and off we sped; south toward the Cape. Down Highway 3 to 6a, over the bridge at Sagamore and left onto Tupper Road, left again to Town Neck Road and once more on to Coast Guard Road. There, at the north end of the canal is a small U.S. Coast Guard station. We pulled in past the whitewashed rocks and I got out, retrieving my briefcase from the rear seat. We’d made good time, the ship was not due for a good half hour and Plan B could go by the board.
I pulled my ICOM M5 out of the Halliburton, slapped a battery pack on the bottom and keyed it to channel 16. “Whiskey, Victor, Foxtrot, Quebec.” I repeated the call ship’s call sign three times and then identified myself as Portable One. “This is Whiskey, Victory, Foxtrot, Quebec port one, come in.” No response yet. I had some time to kill and the damp air was cooling off as the sun now dipped below the land. I shivered slightly and went into the Coast Guard station and introduced myself.
I explained that I was meeting a research vessel out of the Hole that would heave-to just outside the north end of the canal and send a Zodiac for me. The Coasties seemed happy to have something to break their routine; they offered up a mug of hot coffee and asked if I wanted to use their longer range base station to call the ship. The Officer of Day volunteered to save us time and potential confusion by running me out in their boat.
Now I could see the ship in the canal. I pulled on the bright orange coveralls that the CANDIVE Supervisor had given me when we’d worked together with the Deep Rover submersible at the Caribbean Marine Research Center the year before (but that’s a story for another time) over my pants and sweatshirt. We went down to the dock, hopped into an overpowered Boston Whaler and sped out toward the oncoming ship, blue lights and siren flashing. We passed the ship starboard to starboard headed in opposite directions, came about in a tight turn and pulled up along side the moving vessel. At about eight knots our boat slid smoothly over to the Jacob’s ladder that was hanging amidships off the much larger research vessel’s starboard rail. When the Coastguardsman shouted, “Go!” I leaped from the port gunwale of the Boston Whaler and grabbed on to the Jacob’s ladder. The small craft veered off to starboard, throttled back and then came back up along side of me. I leaned out and the Coastguardsmen handed my case up to me. I passed the case up over the rail to a friend and fellow Explorers Club member who was making the cruse with us and I clambered aboard. Not exactly the way I usually started a cruise, I was really having fun with action movie aspects of the situation.
Supper was still available in the mess so I had a meal and then we all got to work. The compressor van had to be plugged into ships power, the air had to analyzed and the bank brought up to pressure. Filling whips needed to set up at the waist and a 10,000 PSI rated Kevlar line needed to be run from the compressor on the O1 deck down to the filling station. All our gear for the next days dive needed to be unpacked and readied. Contact with Offshore Medical Services had to made and communications with our contingency helicopter evacuation facility needed to be tested. I rolled into my sack about 22:00 hrs and fell asleep quickly.
The change of watch and eight bells at 04:00 woke me. I got up, showered, pulled on my coveralls and went up to get some chow. No one else from the science party was up yet so I had a change to spend some time with the ship’s folks. I went over the general dive procedures with the Captain, who had stayed up beyond his usual midwatch assignment so that we could talk. The Coxswain set up the diving Zodiac and I went over the boat and all of its gear. By now it was seven bells in the morning watch and the science party was drifting into the mess, pouring coffee and sitting down in the library and the lab.
We were due on station at Ammen rock in the Gulf of Maine at about noon, the start of the afternoon watch. We were planning our first dive about two hours after getting on station. The science party spent the morning setting up their computers and laboratory equipment and each of the divers got his or her gear unpacked and stowed in the wet lab that had been turned over to dive locker space. As I hung up my black Viking suit one of the University of New Hampshire grad students was heard to exclaim, “Oh no, it’s Darth’s wader’s.”
Staging the dive is pretty straight forward. The Zodiac is on the deck. You assemble your tank, regulator and backpack and put it in the boat. You put your weight belt in the boat and then you go and get your suit on. By the time you’re dressed into your suit the ship’s crane has put the loaded Zodiac and the Coxswain in the water and the crew had put a Jacob’s ladder over the rail. The water is about nine feet down that ladder. The Zodiac is held against the side of the ship with a bow painter and a stern line and the divers clamber down the ladder into the boat. Divers put their gear on in the boat, run through their pre-dive checks and back roll off the inflatable gunwales into the water.
(continued)
Most of the time underwater science is rather dull. Hours are spent collecting data. Data that is not particularly interesting in and of itself. Data that only has import when conjoined with similar data collected at other times and possibly similar locations. The stars of underwater science in the media like Sylvia Earle or Bob Ballard reach out to you from the pages of a glossy book or beckon from a tightly edited video production, crisp and seductive images that always intersect at a meaningful conclusion on the last page or in the last minute. But real life is not like that, at least not very often. It’s repetitious … hour after hour, cold, uncomfortable, often strenuous and occasionally dangerous. But every once in a while something special happens that more than makes up for all that’s come before, something really special. And this was one of those times.
It had been a very eventful trip for me so far. I’d had a close escape from one of those classic binds, a research cruise that I had be on, leaving the dock with the morning tide the same day that I was scheduled to deliver a paper at the annual American Academy of Underwater Sciences meetings. But my boss wanted both things done and so I’d come up with a creative solution. The ship was leaving Woods Hole and then transiting the Cape Cod Canal on its way to the Gulf of Maine. If I could move my talk to the first slot in the morning, there was a good chance that I could be back in time to meet the ship at the north end of the canal just after sundown. And if I were late, Plan B was to call a casualty evacuation drill with a chopper a bud flew out of Otis AFB and use that cover for my ride out.
On Friday I stowed the last of my gear on the ship and I caught an oh-dark-thirty in the morning flight out of Boston down to Florida. A quick cab ride to the meeting and I was in front of my colleagues presenting a paper I’d coauthored with Rich Pyle of the University of Hawaii which was an evaluation of his methods for using mixed gas open circuit scuba at depths of four to five hundred feet. Twenty minutes of talking, ten minutes of questions, I shoved my little certificate of appreciation into my case and scooted as out to waiting cab that took me back to the airport. I ran for a plane back to Boston and on the plane I switched my Sunday-go-to-meeting suit for a pair of 501s, a black U. C. Berkeley sweatshirt and my topsiders.
My work study student was waiting for me curbside at O’Hare. I threw my leather flight bag and black Halliburton case, the one covered with dive stickers, on the back seat, jumped in front and off we sped; south toward the Cape. Down Highway 3 to 6a, over the bridge at Sagamore and left onto Tupper Road, left again to Town Neck Road and once more on to Coast Guard Road. There, at the north end of the canal is a small U.S. Coast Guard station. We pulled in past the whitewashed rocks and I got out, retrieving my briefcase from the rear seat. We’d made good time, the ship was not due for a good half hour and Plan B could go by the board.
I pulled my ICOM M5 out of the Halliburton, slapped a battery pack on the bottom and keyed it to channel 16. “Whiskey, Victor, Foxtrot, Quebec.” I repeated the call ship’s call sign three times and then identified myself as Portable One. “This is Whiskey, Victory, Foxtrot, Quebec port one, come in.” No response yet. I had some time to kill and the damp air was cooling off as the sun now dipped below the land. I shivered slightly and went into the Coast Guard station and introduced myself.
I explained that I was meeting a research vessel out of the Hole that would heave-to just outside the north end of the canal and send a Zodiac for me. The Coasties seemed happy to have something to break their routine; they offered up a mug of hot coffee and asked if I wanted to use their longer range base station to call the ship. The Officer of Day volunteered to save us time and potential confusion by running me out in their boat.
Now I could see the ship in the canal. I pulled on the bright orange coveralls that the CANDIVE Supervisor had given me when we’d worked together with the Deep Rover submersible at the Caribbean Marine Research Center the year before (but that’s a story for another time) over my pants and sweatshirt. We went down to the dock, hopped into an overpowered Boston Whaler and sped out toward the oncoming ship, blue lights and siren flashing. We passed the ship starboard to starboard headed in opposite directions, came about in a tight turn and pulled up along side the moving vessel. At about eight knots our boat slid smoothly over to the Jacob’s ladder that was hanging amidships off the much larger research vessel’s starboard rail. When the Coastguardsman shouted, “Go!” I leaped from the port gunwale of the Boston Whaler and grabbed on to the Jacob’s ladder. The small craft veered off to starboard, throttled back and then came back up along side of me. I leaned out and the Coastguardsmen handed my case up to me. I passed the case up over the rail to a friend and fellow Explorers Club member who was making the cruse with us and I clambered aboard. Not exactly the way I usually started a cruise, I was really having fun with action movie aspects of the situation.
Supper was still available in the mess so I had a meal and then we all got to work. The compressor van had to be plugged into ships power, the air had to analyzed and the bank brought up to pressure. Filling whips needed to set up at the waist and a 10,000 PSI rated Kevlar line needed to be run from the compressor on the O1 deck down to the filling station. All our gear for the next days dive needed to be unpacked and readied. Contact with Offshore Medical Services had to made and communications with our contingency helicopter evacuation facility needed to be tested. I rolled into my sack about 22:00 hrs and fell asleep quickly.
The change of watch and eight bells at 04:00 woke me. I got up, showered, pulled on my coveralls and went up to get some chow. No one else from the science party was up yet so I had a change to spend some time with the ship’s folks. I went over the general dive procedures with the Captain, who had stayed up beyond his usual midwatch assignment so that we could talk. The Coxswain set up the diving Zodiac and I went over the boat and all of its gear. By now it was seven bells in the morning watch and the science party was drifting into the mess, pouring coffee and sitting down in the library and the lab.
We were due on station at Ammen rock in the Gulf of Maine at about noon, the start of the afternoon watch. We were planning our first dive about two hours after getting on station. The science party spent the morning setting up their computers and laboratory equipment and each of the divers got his or her gear unpacked and stowed in the wet lab that had been turned over to dive locker space. As I hung up my black Viking suit one of the University of New Hampshire grad students was heard to exclaim, “Oh no, it’s Darth’s wader’s.”
Staging the dive is pretty straight forward. The Zodiac is on the deck. You assemble your tank, regulator and backpack and put it in the boat. You put your weight belt in the boat and then you go and get your suit on. By the time you’re dressed into your suit the ship’s crane has put the loaded Zodiac and the Coxswain in the water and the crew had put a Jacob’s ladder over the rail. The water is about nine feet down that ladder. The Zodiac is held against the side of the ship with a bow painter and a stern line and the divers clamber down the ladder into the boat. Divers put their gear on in the boat, run through their pre-dive checks and back roll off the inflatable gunwales into the water.
(continued)
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