Extending the air

"Kerplunk": it's the sound I hear when I do a backward roll out of the dive boat and into the water to begin another scuba dive.  I make a mental check, my mask is fine with no leaks.  I'm floating back to the surface so I must have put enough air in my buoyancy control device ("bcd").  Air in the mouthpiece seems to be flowing fine, so now all I have to do is wait until I hit the surface so I can reclaim my underwater camera.  I can see bubbles rising above my head to the surface.  With a kick or two, I hit the surface and signal I'm ok, and ask for my camera.  After claiming my camera, I check my computer, it's in the proper mode.  I attach the camera to my bcd and then let the air out of my bcd and begin my descent to the ship wrecks below.

Ordinarily, when I descend, I am pretty slow because it takes awhile for my ears to equalize to the water pressure.  Most of the time the other divers who are diving with me are already on the bottom before I get there.  This is a shallow dive so the time it takes me to get to the bottom is very short, maybe a minute.  As I get close to the bottom I see it is sandy which means that I have to stay above the bottom otherwise I will stir up the sand and there will be nothing to see around the wreck until the sand settles to the bottom, perhaps 15 minutes later.  I get to the bottom and look around.  My dive computer tells me I'm only 17 feet beneath the surface.  The wreck is within arms' length from me, but I don't see any of the other divers including my dive buddy, my wife Nancy. And, then it hits me, of course no one else is down yet because Andrew the dive master wanted me  to go first to be able to get a few shots of the wreck before everyone else stirred up the sand.  My immediate thought was, I better start shooting pretty quickly because this blissful quiet won't last long.

I'm amazed by what I see.  A lot of fish seem to be congregating around the back of the ship.  The ship is the Berwyn.  It was sunk by its crew about 90 years ago because they did not want to leave Barbados.  Given the warm clear water and abundance of fish life, I am beginning to understand why the crew of the Berwyn didn't want to leave.   There are french grunts, pork fish, glassy eyed snappers and other fish I don't recognize right away.  I roll on my side and start taking wide angle shots to capture the wreck and show the background of fish.  What is left of the Berwyn after 90 years underwater is pretty amazing.  The hull is still relatively intact.  After I have taken about a dozen shots I look at my dive computer.  I've been down almost 10 minutes and I have only see a couple of the other divers, but at least I have seen Nancy my dive buddy. 

I take a few more shots of the Berwyn and then I see Andrew the dive master starting to lead the group away from the Berwyn to the next wreck.    

I look at my dive computer and see that I still have plenty of air in the tank, and do some mental calculations about how long I should be able to stay underwater.  It occurs to me that I've already been down at least 10 minutes which means that I am going to have to really go easy on air consumption otherwise I will have to come up long before the group is ready to surface.  Usually I can stay underwater 40-45 minutes with my underwater camera depending on how deep the dive is.  So I try to slow down my breathing and remain calm as we kick towards the next wreck in Carlisle bay.  As we go I am amazed there is a bit of a debris field probably from the next wreck.  I see an anchor as I continue to kick to the next wreck.   

We reach the next wreck and I can see it is a much larger ship than the Berwyn.  There are holes in the side of ship which we can look in and see an amazing abundance of fish.
 The depth now is about 30 feet and I look at my air guage and do some more mental math to try to figure out how my air consumption is doing.  I think I should have enough air.  I will just have to be careful to keep my movements as efficient as possible.
My shoulders are a bit stiff.  The weight of my camera, underwater housing, and dual strobes is a lot of mass to push around.  On dry land its about 25 pounds of equipment.   Underwater it's not so much the weight, but the drag caused by pushing it through the water.  I hold the camera in front of me so I am as efficient  as possible, and so if there is something I want to take a picture of I can do so quickly.   I take a few more pictures and then I look at the battery on the camera.  That's not good, the batter is almost drained.  I guess I shot more pictures on the first dive than I thought. We slowly circle the second wreck and I notice we are descending.
We reach 45 feet below the surface and start to swim toward the third wreck of the dive.
The wreck is interesting, but I've begun to do more mental calculations about my air consumption and I begin to think that getting back to the boat without first surfacing is going to be very close to the limit of my air.  It occurs to me that on this wreck and on the swim back to the dive boat I can stay about 10 feet above everyone else and if I still try to slow down my breathing I may make it without surfacing.  I take a few more pictures before the battery on the camera is dead.
We finish our circle around the second wreck and start swimming toward the third wreck.  I am now about 50 minutes into the dive and we have not reached the third wreck.  We begin kicking toward the third wreck.  I look at my air gauge.  I do some mental calculations and figure out that if I move up the water column from 45 feet to about 30 feet I may be able to stretch my tank of air to stay under about 70 minutes.  I am hoping that will be enough time to circle the third wreck and get to the dive boat.  We keep swimming underwater at about 30 feet and round the third wreck.  At 65 minutes into the dive we start towards the dive boat.  At 70 minutes I can see the anchor of the dive boat.  I'm now at 15 feet from the surface and I can see everyone else is surfacing.  I look at my  air guage and I can see I still have enough air for a full safety stop so I take my time swimming toward to the dive boat and rise to 12 feet from the surface.  For the next 5 minutes I circle the dive boat and then come to the surface with 50 bar of air in my tank.  Wow, that was long dive.  Before I had even gotten back in the dive boat I'm already thinking:  "I need to do that dive again".  

Bruce - Barbados
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bcampbell65/collections/72157625869070930/



If you want tell your "one day story" write to: oneworldmanylifes@gmail.com
or follow us on FB http://www.facebook.com/pages/One-World-Many-Lifes/511422235540268