Here's the promised story:
When I was a student at Cal, it was considered my many to be the world's foremost representation of the impersonal megaversity. But within Research Diving Program I found an oasis of incredibly diverse, real people who truly loved and cared for each other. Our shared experiences had deeply profound effects on us all.
One unique aspect of the Diving Program at Cal (no, not free diving doff-and-don, not the doff-and-don buddy-breathe, not the circuit swim) is the hand signal test. It is as much a part of being a Berkeley Diver as the Edward's Field Crawl or black no-zipper wet suits or an instrument gauntlet. And unlike the sxties, if your were there youd remember . . . nervously standing on the pool deck with John Osterello first gesticulating wildly at you and then complaining that you could not translate his arm and hand motions into, Four score and seven years ago, our forefathers brought forth on this continent a new nation. complete with three part harmony. Well, hand signals are important, but they don't always work the way you intend.
I rolled out of bed early on a Friday morning in 1973. We loaded our gear and the zodiac into a uni-van ... Lloyd Austin, Ken McKaye, Carole Kane and I. This was going to be a great day. I had finally had a properly fitting 3/8" inch wet suit from Harvey's (I'd only sent it back three times). Lloyd and Ken swore that now I'd be warm. The ride down was the usual drowsy morning, interrupted only by a stop for breakfast in Gilroy at the Busy Bee.
What can be more beautiful then Pt. Lobos at 9:00 A.M.? There was a flurry of activity getting the boat set up and gear together. While Lloyd and Carole took the Zodiac over to Children's Garden, Ken and I set out for Blue Fin Cove on our surf mats. After the dive we were all sitting on a picnic bench at Whaler's Cove and I remarked that my suit was so warm that for the first time I noticed that my hands were cold. Lloyd and Ken told me that what I needed now was a pair of three finger mitts. We drove into town to fill our tanks at the Aquarius Dive Shop and I sacrificed next week's food money to buy a pair of three finger mitts.
As I pulled my new mitts on for the afternoon dive, I considered the effects of only having three digits on each hand. I asked Lloyd and Ken what the hand signal for a shark would be, since when wearing these mitts I could no longer make the peace sign that was the traditional dangerous fish signal. They looked at each other, laughed, and said, when was the last time you saw a shark? We all agreed we'd never seen a shark at Pt. Lobos, so it just wasn't a problem. Lloyd piloted the Zodiac over to the far kelp bed in Blue Fin Cove. Ken and I rolled out backward, gave Lloyd and okay and watched as Lloyd and Carole motored away to their dive site at the cone shell wall.
This was one of those great days, bright sun and 60-foot visibility. On a day like this Blue Fin Cove is one of the most spectacular dive sites in the world. Let the tourists have Palancar Reef, the wall on Cayman Brac, Rosh Muhammad and Heron Island, all the frenetic neon of those underwater Times Squares. Give me the kelp forest, subtle greens broken by shafts of light that look like they came from a Sunday school painting, that's for me. We hovered above the reddish-purple encrusted rocks, Ken with his slate and me with my new gloves. Our objective was for me to learn the names of the fish found in this aqueous forest. Ken was patient enough to offer to teach me. He would point to a fish and write recondite Greek or Latin nomenclature on the slate. I'd read what he wrote and try to commit it to memory.
After about twenty minutes we'd worked our way up from sixty to forty feet. Ken pointed to a cabezon, in among the rocks on the bottom, and wrote, Scorpaenichthys marmoratus. I was looking at the slate and trying to wrap my tongue around the phrase when Ken tapped me on the shoulder. He held his right hand up. He clenched his last three fingers into his palm, and raised both his thumb and pointer finger. Exactly the gesture you'd make when you told someone, it was small . . . you know about an inch . . . this big. I started looking around the bottom for a little Scorpaenichthys marmoratus.
Ken smacked me on the shoulder insistently. He repeated the gesture. I was mildly annoyed. I knew what he was saying. I was trying to find the damn fish. Ken poked at me again. I held up a clenched fist to tell him to wait. Ken wrenched me around and made a gesture with his right hand with all five fingers repeatedly contracting into his palm and flexing out again. He pointed up at forty-five degrees. A large blue shark was coming right at him. Less then five feet away it pulled up, went over us and languidly disappeared at the limit of visibility.
Well ... now I knew what he meant. We knelt, back to back amongst the rocks on the bottom. I glanced quickly at my pressure gauge ... a thousand PSI ... about half a tank. It would last, maybe, thirty minutes at that depth. How long should we wait? I heard the rackety whine of an outboard motor. The noise stopped. We looked at each other, simultaneously shrugged, raised our thumbs and nodded our heads. Back-to-back we surfaced. Lloyd and Carole were right there in the boat. Ken shouted, shark, as we clamored into the boat. That was the first time I'd ever committed the heresy of entering the zodiac with my tank and weight belt in place. On the way back in I asked Lloyd and Ken what the 3-finger mitt signal for dangerous fish was. They laughed and told me not to worry about it, I'd never see another.
Supper at Le Coc Dor was magnificent. Ling Cod only hours out of the water poached in wine. We drank a really good fume blanc and chuckled over the day's contretemps. Back at the motel we got a good night's rest since we had to teach class the next day.
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