Caves and, Caverns, and Cathedrals! Oh My!

Everytime I see the movie Sanctum I vow to never go cave diving. There is nothing more terrifying as a scuba diver than to watch an air-related problem happen in an overhead environment. If you sever a hose under “normal” circumstances it is dangerous, but miles deep into a cave without a bailout bottle? It is deadly. Now, I know Mr. Alister Grierson has to keep us on our toes so we cannot help but sit through his entire movie, and so maybe all of the scenes are not 100% accurate, but even in real life there is no debating that cave diving can be extremely dangerous, even for experts. The film has a number of very accomplished cave divers in it as “dive doubles” for the actors. Agnes Milowka was the dive double for the characters Jude and Victoria. She was a recognized cave diver and author of numerous articles on technical diving and cave exploration. She was definitely an expert in the field but she died in 2011 after running out of air in a cave system in South Africa. Freak accidents happen and, when the surface is accessible, there are options, such as doing an emergency swimming ascent for which there is no guarantee you will survive, but at least you have the possibility. In a cave, if you run out of air, no matter how experienced you are, death is imminent.

So, everytime I see Sanctum I say I will not dive in a cave, but the reality is I have been in overhead environments. Technically speaking you need a special certification for overhead environments but dive charters sometimes take advantage of the fact that the definition of a cave is a bit vague. There are caves, caverns, cathedrals, swim-throughs, etc. but sometimes they become one-in-the-same. I have entered “swim-throughs” where I could not see the other side so I had to trust that my divemaster was taking “through” and not “into.” I have swam around “cathedrals.” I have swam into “caves.” For me, the caveat has always been I will go in if I know and am not far from my way out. But, if given the opportunity to dive the Cenotes in Akumal, Mexico, where you follow a guide into an amazing “cavern” system full of otherworldly structures, would I likely throw that caveat out the window? There are many divers like Agnes Milowka who are technical divers and going into caves is their forte. Why do something so dangerous? I cannot speak for all divers but for me it is the thrill and the opportunity to see structures and life that cannot be seen anywhere else. 

So, to go into a cave/cavern/cathedral or not to go into a cave/cavern/cathedral? I cannot tell you what the best decision is for you, but for me, as with any dive, I will prepare as best as I can and then trust my intuition. As divers we are always training. If we have an interest in overhead environments, we get as many specialty certifications as we can and then gain our experience appropriately. We do not go into an advanced environment if we have not dove the basic environments first. Then,we trust our guts. If we do not feel good about a dive we do not get in the water. As scuba divers we are thrill seekers. I will say no to caves every time I see Sanctum, but perhaps I will inevitably not be able to resist the promise of beauties I have never seen.

By Serendipity or Fate

By serendipity or fate, Sky, Jake, and I found ourselves riding out to the magnificent Molokini Crater off the island of Maui on a private charter. We were going to dive the back wall of the crater, a dive Sky and I had wanted to do for the past 2 years. Our captain confirmed our enthusiasm when he told us Molokini is unrivaled in terms of visibility and biodiversity. Our excitement grew as the sun rose, warming the boat deck, as we drew closer to the remnant of a volcanic crater.

We pulled up to the outer rim and descended 60 feet into the beautiful and mysterious deep blue. The hauntingly beautiful whale songs permeating the water immediately overtook us. It was as if there were 20 whales and they were 10 feet from us, but, looking out into the deep, I could not see them. I was wearing less weight than I normally do and so I had to swim down, rather than sinking, but at the bottom I was perfectly neutral. It was a very freeing sensation. From the bottom I could look up to the surface where Jake and Sky were descending and see them as clear as if we were not submerged. We followed our divemaster to the edge of the crater, enjoying the 150 feet of visibility and fields of coral. On that short swim we saw a white tipped reef shark, probably 10 or more eels, two octopuses, and clouds of colorful tropical fish. It was incredible! At the edge we caught a current which swept us out around the back of Molokini to about 97 feet. It truly felt like flying as we soared over 350 feet of water along a submarine wall full of life. On our drift, we witnessed an interesting symbiotic relationship between an eel and two bluefin trevally. At first it looked as if the fish were chasing the eel or vice versa, but on closer examination and some expertise from our divemaster we discovered they were hunting together. We surfaced from that dive absolutely stoked with huge grins on our mask -impressioned faces!

After some chatting we decided on Pu'u Olai, aka Red Hill, for our second dive. It was shallower so we could maximize our bottom time and our captain and divemaster told us it is a quintessential Maui dive. We descended to around 40 feet and spent 50 minutes going to all the hangout spots of Maui’s best marine life. We saw Hawaiian lionfish, honu, chirping domino damselfish, a tiny goby that only lives on wire coral, parrotfish, squirrelfish, trumpet fish, moorish idols, goatfish, frogfish, unicornfish, and many trigger and wrasse species. We then ended our dive with a magnificent swim-through that was home to a huge school of squirrelfish and a 7-foot white-tipped shark. It was a thrill to be surrounded by fish and to be checked out by a relatively big shark. He swam circles around us and got close enough we could see he had a hook and line dangling from his mouth, an encounter he must have had with a fisherman (or a fisherman’s catch!).

Both dives were amazing and I would probably venture to say they were the best dives I have ever done. I say that because I feel this was the way diving is meant to be, a personal experience. We had the boat to ourselves, we got to choose our dives with help from the experts, our captain and divemaster were funny, friendly, and knowledgeable guides, and we had two gorgeous dives with fantastic visibility and new and interesting marine life.     

The Road to NAUI Instructor

There is something about spending a significant amount of time underwater doing complicated skills without a regulator in your mouth that really gives you an appreciation for being able to breathe whenever you want to. We all know the number one rule in scuba is never hold your breath, and I never have, but in the past few months there have been multiple times when I have thought to myself, “whelp, I’m out of breath, I hope I get that reg in my mouth pretty quick here.” Whether I was doing an equipment exchange, which involves swimming the length of the pool with your buddy, except your buddy is only wearing their wetsuit and weight belt, which means you are dragging their blind butt the length of the pool buddy-breathing the whole way; when you get to the deep end you must take all of your equipment off (mask, fins, BC, etc.) and give it to your buddy (all while buddy-breathing) and then they have to drag your blind butt back to the shallow end. Or, if I was doing a skin ditch and recovery, which involves swimming down to 8 feet in your skin gear, taking off your mask and fins, weighting them down on one breath, then coming up and momentarily catching your breath. Then, swimming back down, putting your fins and mask back on, clearing your mask and coming to the surface, while clearing your snorkel on one breath. To say the least, I really came to see the value of air.

It would make sense for me to say my instructor certification was harder than I thought it was going to be but, to be honest, I never really thought about it. There is nothing I enjoy more than scuba diving. I think it is a thrill, and I knew I wanted to become a scuba instructor so I could show other people this amazing sport. When the opportunity to go through an instructor training program presented itself, I jumped. The course was a blast but it was difficult, and it should be. Scuba diving has risks and thus not just anyone should be able to be a scuba diving instructor.

In order to be a quality instructor you must be able to teach but not just teach. A quality instructor must be able to engage the students in the information, make them laugh, make them oooh and awe, and make them want to know more. A quality instructor must be able to break down a skill into a simple and explicit description. She must be able to clearly demonstrate the skill, but she must also have an arsenal of alternate ways to guide the students through the skill because one way of explaining will not work for everyone. A quality instructor must have an acute awareness of everything going on around him. He must be able to run one student through a skill without removing his eyes from the other students for more than a moment. In addition to these skills, a quality instructor must be prompt and organized. She must have an understanding of the environment in which her students will be learning. She must engrain a deep respect for the water into her students and make sure they understand the risks they are taking. He must be approachable, kind, and able to coach his students through issues they may encounter during the course. Being a quality instructor requires a lot and that is why becoming one should not be easy. 

My cohorts and myself, throughout our instructor course, learned these necessary skills and many more (including how to blow bubbles even when you are totally and completely out of air), but we are not done. We will always be learning and improving and we will always strive to know more. Scuba diving is a dynamic sport, and there will always be more skills to learn and new equipment to understand. So, in order to be quality instructors, we must be dynamic as well. As scuba divers we of course hope to eventually evolve gills and thus no longer have to teach scuba diving skills or run out of air while doing equipment exchanges and skin ditch and recoveries, but, until then, we scuba diving instructors are ready to instruct!   

My New Year's Resolution

As a scuba diver, whenever I find water, I always find myself thinking, “I wonder what’s down there.” Our planet is 70% H2O and, salt or fresh, whenever I get to a body of water I start imagining what could be living down there. Is there coral or kelp or rock out croppings? Is the visibility 5 feet or 500 feet? Are there fish or mammals? What are the currents like? I recently traveled to Italy and spent a day in Venice. Our group was allowed the opportunity to take a gondola ride, which was lovely. While gliding around the canals Sky and I noticed there were hydrocorals growing right beneath the surface of the water and a few crabs here and there. I was tempted to jump in and free dive down to see what else lived in the depths of Venice. I started daydreaming about a tiny underwater city of a new highly-intelligent species of fish who walk upright on their fins and are planning world domination (this may have stemmed from watching SpongeBob in Italian the night before). Unfortunately, as far as I could tell, diving is not allowed due to the boat traffic and water quality (something about raw sewage...). 

There are tons of gorgeous dive sites that have been explored and are open to scuba diving but also so many more locations yet to be discovered. In his TED talk about life in the oceans, Oceanographer Paul Snelgrove said, “We know more about the surface of the Moon and about Mars than we do about [the deep sea floor].” It is reassuring we as humans have not touched every inch of this earth, but it is the mystery of not knowing that fuels my curiosity. I am not a marine biologist or an anthropologist, so I will not be leading the exploration of the deep sea floor, but I want to see as much of our underwater world as I can. I am almost 22. Say I dive until I am 82, which is probably pushing it. I have 60 more years of diving. If able to travel to a new location every year, I have 60 places to visit in the whole world. That is both exciting and a little sad. The prospect of visiting 60 new places and scuba diving all over the world is thrilling. The revelation, with a busy life, it isn’t humanly possible to see everything is disappointing. 

I have a lot of intentions for my life but having a series of amazing experiences around the world has always been at the top of my list. Then I fell in love with scuba diving and my travel goals started to orient around diving. I still have places I want to see where scuba diving is not the main activity, like taking a safari on the African savanna, but, because our planet is 70% water, if I follow the water I see much of the world. Following the question “I wonder what’s down there” leads me around the planet. My New Year’s resolution is to see somewhere new, and I want my New Year’s resolution always to be to see somewhere new.