...
There were many unique aspects to the Research Diving Program at Cal, there were divers in identical gear, most of it black. 'caus there was a equipment list, and you needed to show up the first night of class with a full set of gear. Everyone wore a skin out, farmer-john, attached hood, no zipper suit. Everyone had a neoprene instrument cuff on their left forearm that had an Ikelight compass, a Sears "Waterproof Sports Watch" and a capillary depth gauge. Steel ’72 with a K-Valve and a plastic backpack featuring two stainless steel twistlocks on the left shoulder were in fashion as was a black Mae West life vest with CO2 detonators and a weightbelt with a wire buckle. You had to have a Dacor 300 regulator; and when you saw another Berkeley Diver, you knew who they were. Well … you knew most of them. Then there were the odd-balls, like me.
I was already a diver, at least I thought of myself that way. I’d been diving for more than 10 years, and had made about 500 dives. That’s about the point in every diver’s career that they know everything there is to know. Well, knowing everything about diving that there is to know is fine, but back then, when diving was dangerous and sex was safe, it was much more important to look sharp, and I looked sharp. Besides being 6’2” and a rather muscular 190 lbs., with a clean shaven, cleft chin and thick brown curly hair that fell down to my shoulders, and opaline green eyes, which, some joking described, stealing a line from Clive Custler's Dirk Pitt novels, as being, "both alluring or intimidating, as need be."
My gear was really knarly. Orange U.S. Divers Taskmaster suit, with matching hooded vest, shiny aluminium ’72, Swimaster MR-12 regulator with (gasp) an SPG, and lots of ScubaPro: a triple pane mask, Jetfins, JetSnorkel, CamPack, five finger gloves, and the blue stripped weightbelt with the bungies in the back. And then there were my instruments, only the hippest gauges, a ScubaPro Helium Depth Gauge, a Suunto SK-6 Compass and my pride and joy, (also a cause of the rumor that Dirk Pitt had been modeled on me) a U.S. Divers, orange face DOXA 300. And my BC was the pièce de résistance, a Fenzy. Yeah, I was as cool a diver as they had ever been, and my poor instructor, Ken McKaye, had to deal with me. Exactly how Ken turned that refugee from the Thunderball set into a committed Berkeley Research Diver is a story for another time, suffice it to say that through a combination of Ken’s incredible skill as a diver, patience as an instructor and brilliance as a researcher I found myself, within just a few months, looking exactly like every other Berkeley Diver; well … almost … I did continue to use my really hip gauges and my Fenzy.
Part of how Ken accomplished this almost miraculous transformation involved the use of some truly unique training exercises like the free diving doff-and-don, the doff-and-don buddy-breathe, the circuit swim and the Edward’s Field Crawl. But there is one exercise that is indelibly engraved in the memory of every Berkeley Diver: the dreaded Hand Signal Test. It is as much a part of being a Berkeley Diver as our suits, surfmats and instrument gauntlet. Trust me, it may have been the sixties, but if you were there … you’d remember, you’d never forget. You stand nervously on the pool deck, John Osterello right up in your face, he gesticulates wildly and then stands there, judgment personified, belittling your intelligence and insulting your progenitors as a result of your inability to translate his arm and hand motions into something, anything, intelligible. Well, hand signals are important, but they don't always work the way you intend, as we shall see.
...
