I
idocsteve
Guest
As I look back on a good summer of diving Wreck Valley off the southern shore of Long Island between NY and NJ, I recall two incidents which are worth posting in this board.
The first-
It was my first dive of the season, back in May. The seas were 5-10 feet, the boat was really rocking, and of course the boarding ladder was moving up and down along with it.
Here in the Northeast, divers keep their fins on when they board the ladder as opposed to removing them such as in tropical destinations, and there are good reasons for the disparity, but I digress.
After diving a wreck at 97', I had just finished my safety stop and was swimming for the ladder from underneath. I reached up to grab the ladder just as a swell dropped the boat (and ladder) right on my outstretched arm, jamming my wrist and damn near breaking it.
What was I thinking approaching from under the ladder rather than behind it in those rough conditions? The question is of course, rhetorical.
The second (see if you can spot the blunder as you read)-
This was about two months ago. As I said, it was almost my last dive. Funny what goes through your head when you realize this might be the end. At the time my divorce was not yet final, and one of my last thoughts would have been "I can't believe the ex is going to get both halves of everything!"
It was my first night dive in the North East Atlantic.
Several divers have perished on ship wrecks in my area over the years. Primarily because they penetrate an intact wreck without the proper gear or training, and either get lost, or stir up a whole bunch of silt and what was clear visibility upon entering becomes a cloudy mess where you can't see 6 inches in front of your face and finding your way out is next to impossible.
A father/son dive team died, doing exactly that a year ago, on a wreck I dove a few weeks prior. It's a 500 foot long WWI battle ship called the USS San Diego. Because it's huge, and starting to deteriorate, there are many ways to enter the ship and divers can go very far inside. The father and son entered and swam quite a ways inside, and then they either got lost or silted out the wreck so badly they couldn't retrace their steps. They were found by a recovery team several days later, with no air left in their tanks.
So I'm down about 82 feet, and running my reel which is tied off to the anchor line, and I decide to penetrate the intact wreck, which was a barge sunk as an artificial reef..I'm in about 20 feet, and I see a nice sized lobster. I put my reel down in the sand next to me, I grab for the lobster, make the catch, and unhook my catch bag and put the lobster inside..as I'm putting the lobster in the bag, I look for my reel and am shocked to find that I cannot find it.
Without the reel, in the low light, poor visibility conditions, I had no way to find my way back to the entrance point of the wreck, other than sheer luck. I had about 10 minutes of gas remaining at that point..and that's when it hit me that I was in serious trouble. I was in exactly the same predicament as a diver who enters a wreck without a reel. However, I'm thinking to myself it shouldn't be THAT hard to find the reel, I couldn't have drifted that far in the minute or so it took to grab the lobster.
The next moments were perhaps the longest of my life...swimming in a slow circle, trying to keep the panic down, searching for the reel in what was now a totally silted out compartment in the wreck.
Suddenly I found the reel in the sand below me, I grabbed it, and worked my way out of the wreck and back to the surface to dive yet another day.
That lobster got out of my hands and it was lost, although judging by the size of the claw that was left in the bag, it was too small to be a keeper anyway...it's hard to tell underwater, everything is magnified. On the second dive I caught another one
Moral of the story- never drop your reel, always clip it to yourself or even to the catch bag. There can be significant currents even inside the wreck, and my movements while catching the lobster might have contributed to my movement as well.
The first-
It was my first dive of the season, back in May. The seas were 5-10 feet, the boat was really rocking, and of course the boarding ladder was moving up and down along with it.
Here in the Northeast, divers keep their fins on when they board the ladder as opposed to removing them such as in tropical destinations, and there are good reasons for the disparity, but I digress.
After diving a wreck at 97', I had just finished my safety stop and was swimming for the ladder from underneath. I reached up to grab the ladder just as a swell dropped the boat (and ladder) right on my outstretched arm, jamming my wrist and damn near breaking it.
What was I thinking approaching from under the ladder rather than behind it in those rough conditions? The question is of course, rhetorical.
The second (see if you can spot the blunder as you read)-
This was about two months ago. As I said, it was almost my last dive. Funny what goes through your head when you realize this might be the end. At the time my divorce was not yet final, and one of my last thoughts would have been "I can't believe the ex is going to get both halves of everything!"
It was my first night dive in the North East Atlantic.
Several divers have perished on ship wrecks in my area over the years. Primarily because they penetrate an intact wreck without the proper gear or training, and either get lost, or stir up a whole bunch of silt and what was clear visibility upon entering becomes a cloudy mess where you can't see 6 inches in front of your face and finding your way out is next to impossible.
A father/son dive team died, doing exactly that a year ago, on a wreck I dove a few weeks prior. It's a 500 foot long WWI battle ship called the USS San Diego. Because it's huge, and starting to deteriorate, there are many ways to enter the ship and divers can go very far inside. The father and son entered and swam quite a ways inside, and then they either got lost or silted out the wreck so badly they couldn't retrace their steps. They were found by a recovery team several days later, with no air left in their tanks.
So I'm down about 82 feet, and running my reel which is tied off to the anchor line, and I decide to penetrate the intact wreck, which was a barge sunk as an artificial reef..I'm in about 20 feet, and I see a nice sized lobster. I put my reel down in the sand next to me, I grab for the lobster, make the catch, and unhook my catch bag and put the lobster inside..as I'm putting the lobster in the bag, I look for my reel and am shocked to find that I cannot find it.
Without the reel, in the low light, poor visibility conditions, I had no way to find my way back to the entrance point of the wreck, other than sheer luck. I had about 10 minutes of gas remaining at that point..and that's when it hit me that I was in serious trouble. I was in exactly the same predicament as a diver who enters a wreck without a reel. However, I'm thinking to myself it shouldn't be THAT hard to find the reel, I couldn't have drifted that far in the minute or so it took to grab the lobster.
The next moments were perhaps the longest of my life...swimming in a slow circle, trying to keep the panic down, searching for the reel in what was now a totally silted out compartment in the wreck.
Suddenly I found the reel in the sand below me, I grabbed it, and worked my way out of the wreck and back to the surface to dive yet another day.
That lobster got out of my hands and it was lost, although judging by the size of the claw that was left in the bag, it was too small to be a keeper anyway...it's hard to tell underwater, everything is magnified. On the second dive I caught another one
Moral of the story- never drop your reel, always clip it to yourself or even to the catch bag. There can be significant currents even inside the wreck, and my movements while catching the lobster might have contributed to my movement as well.
Last edited by a moderator:
