Motion in the Ocean

 Ever since earning my C-card in scuba diving, I have dreamed of diving the kelp forests of Monterey Bay.  Not only is it one of the more beautiful dive spots on the California coast—a unique biome that supports numerous aquatic mammals preying amid the giant kelp—but it is also considered quite adventurous.  Difficult access, cold waters, low visibility, and potentially tangling strands of kelp all add up to great sport.

So when it became apparent that a prolonged stay in Santa Barbara and an early arrival in Oakland were squeezing Tassajara Zen Center out of my itinerary, I realized that I now had more time in Monterey; in fact, I now had just enough time for an afternoon dive.  Leisurely sipping coffee and gazing out over the morning ocean from a comfy adirondack chair at Asilomar, I let my fingers do the walking on my Droid to see about the possibilities.

A very friendly Tiffany answered the phone at Bamboo Reef Dive Center, located just a couple blocks up from Cannery Row.  I explained my situation—unplanned stop, no equipment, not even my dive log—but Tiffany said no problem: be at the shop at 1:00 and they would take care of me. Yes!  I finished my coffee and made an entry in the new journal that Mari Jo gave me expressly for this journey.  At the bottom of the page I noticed the journal offered a bit of pre-printed wisdom, written in the style of Chinese calligraphy:

In all activity, practice calmness.  To remain calm amidst the chaos of life requires a tremendous amount of focused energy.  Be calmly active and actively calm.

Good idea, I thought, closing the book.  I checked out of Asilomar, drove down into Monterey, negotiated all those one-way streets along the bay, and spent as much time as I would ever care to spend in a tourist trap like Cannery Row, i.e., just enough to shoot Steinbeck’s bust and wolf down a tasty calamari sandwich at Sly McFly’s.

I moved the car up to a parking lot behind the dive shop and went in to prepare for the most anticipated dive of my life.  Tiffany led me through all the paperwork, most of which absolved Bamboo Reef of any liability lest this aspiration should also be my last; then she started putting my gear together for me.  Little did I know that the difficult access I mentioned earlier was starting right then and there in the shop.

First she loaded my BCD (for buoyancy control device) with 32 pounds of sandbags for weight.  This was new to me, having only used a weight belt in the past.  I told her I’d had a hard time getting enough weight on me when I last dove, down in the Florida Keys, but Tiffany assured me that Courtney—our well-built and beach-boy handsome dive guide—would have ample weights for both me and my newly met dive buddy—a young Israeli man named Neer—if we should need more weight.

Next we pulled on our wetsuits: farmer johns for the legs and the first layer over the torso, then shorties for the second layer and arms.  This is where those cold waters mentioned earlier come into play.  I’d never worn a wetsuit before, and it seemed somewhat tight; however, Tiffany assured me that it was actually a pretty good fit: it needs to be tight to reduce the amount of water your body has to heat.  I pulled on some neoprene booties and started schlepping my gear—two 34-pound tanks, regulator, BCD with 32 pounds of weights, mask, snorkel, fins, gloves, hood, and shorty—out to the car.  We wore the farmer johns and booties on the drive out to the dive site because it was easier than trying to suit up on the beach.

Now, you have to realize that it was a really nice day.  California’s infamous “June gloom” was but a hazy memory; the sun was shining, and the breeze was light.  Perfect—unless you’re on dry land wearing a wetsuit.  By the time I had everything loaded in the car I had streams of sweat running off of me.  Naturally, the car was preheated to a toasty 98 degrees or so, so I rolled down the windows, cranked up the AC, and high-tailed it out to the dive site.  Courtney briefed us on the dive while we stood in the sunbaked asphalt parking lot, where we then geared up, putting on everything but mask and fins for the torturous hike across that lovely whitesands beach.  Not since Chaco Canyon had water looked so good to me, but this time I yearned only to be immersed in it—and the sooner the better.  By the time we reached the water’s edge, my heart was playing kettle drums at 200 beats per minute, and I was wheezing like an old pump organ.

Courtney then had us inflate our BCDs, put the masks around our necks, and enter the water to put on our fins.  The bottom drops off rapidly at the Breakwater, so we were in chest-deep water in only a few steps.  A-h-h … finally some relief.  But no rest for the wicked: we now had to put on our fins, which is no mean feat in 13mm of neoprene with BCD fully inflated and a rubber noose around your neck.  Picture the Michelin Man clad in black and floundering in five feet of water and you have a pretty good image of me there in Monterey Bay.  By the time I had both fins on and properly adjusted, I was in serious cardiopulmonary distress, and Courtney could tell.  “Just relax,” he kept saying.  “Just lie back and relax, and we’ll take our time kicking out to the kelp.” That brown smear on the water that looked so close when I was standing in Cannery Row now seemed like it was halfway across the bay.  I am getting too old for this kind of shit, I thought as the skintight wetsuit constricted my rib cage, limiting my breath.  Too fat, for sure.

But we made it out to the kelp at last, pulled up our masks and switched to regulators, which didn’t exactly help my breathing.  Then things got really hard.  Remember what I said before about not being able to get enough weight on me?  Well, I couldn’t get down.  I’d deflate, go vertical, and just hang there—my fins waving in the air like two sharks doing the watusi.  Courtney tried pulling me down, a panic-inducing sensation when you’re verging on hyperventilation with a regulator stuck in your mouth.  I re-inflated and lay back on the surface again, struggling to catch my breath without the regulator.  “I sure don’t want to ruin anyone’s dive,” I panted, thinking Neer must be getting pretty frustrated with his blimp of a dive buddy.  Courtney was great though.  He calmly put eight more pounds of weight on me while I caught my breath.  We deflated, went vertical, and easily kicked to the sandy bottom, where I could rest for a moment and just breathe, prone and weightless on my fingertips, 24 feet below the surface.  Cold waters seeped into my wetsuit like cool satin, and I could finally relax.  I could enjoy the dive.

And it was good.  The floor of Monterey Bay is literally crawling with life: zillions of sea stars, many dogpiled on dead jellyfish, their favorite cuisine; patches of speckled sand that would suddenly dart away as two-dimensional flounder; Dungeness crabs scuttling to safety at our approach; and a couple of lingcod skulking within some old pipes lying on the bottom.  I was surprised there wasn’t more trash in the bay, and was glad to later hear that local custom exhorts divers to always remove any debris they encounter in their underwater sanctuary.  At 10-15 feet, the visibility was pretty poor, but that just gave us a chance to practice our lost diver technique one time when Neer swam a bit too far away.  He reappeared within one minute, however, and nobody had to go to the surface to regroup.  I was fascinated by the holdfast that kelp uses to attach to rocks on the bottom, and I’m still perplexed by how algae can differentiate into the root-like, trunk-like, and leaf-like structures that make up each kelp frond.  I see now how the kelp forest ecosystem can inspire awe dive after dive after dive.

Too soon though, this one had to come to an end.  I opted out of a second dive, thinking Neer would probably have more fun going out alone with our excellent guide.  Besides, I was beat, and I still had to return everything to the dive shop and drive on up to Oakland.  Back on the beach, I thanked Courtney profusely for successfully getting me down to the bottom of the bay.

Be calmly active and actively calm.  Sage advice, though easy to forget.  I’m just thankful I had a guide with enough focused energy to remember it for me when I really needed it.