Deep Thrills

The Water around the Maldive Islands, out in the spaces of the Indian Ocean, 400 miles from Sri Lanka, is dazzlingly clear. So clear that the diver is almost unaware of it. There is no distortion. No murkiness at all. Only the color--a kind of blue that does not occur anywhere except in the Sea. Going down into this clear, azure water is like swimming through liquid air. The corals appear below the diver in perfect relief. Solemn domes of brain coral. Tangles of elkhorn and staghorn. Vast purple fans. The colors in the blue world below the ocean's surface are implausibly vivid. The corals and sponges range from brilliant orange to smoldering reds and the fish are even more spectacular. Blue tangs are not really blue. More indigo--a deep, mysterious color. Parrot fish are a shade of green that recalls the jungle. Squirrelfish are scarlet. The spots along the flank of some grouper are a psychedelic purple. It is a world, down there, of lush growth and exotic creatures, a world that you cannot be prepared for or imagine on dry land. A world that you must go halfway around the globe and then, most importantly, 40 feet down, to see.

Not so long ago, the trip would have been impossible. You might have been able to get to the Maldives 50 years ago, but getting down to the reef was another matter. Then Captain Jacques Cousteau invented scuba, the self-contained underwater breathing apparatus. The military and scientific implications of this radical yet simple method of allowing a diver to breathe compressed air were immediately apparent. The sporting possibilities of scuba were realized more gradually.

For years, sport diving was a fringe pursuit, something for thrill seekers and island vagabonds. If you didn't run out of air and drown, then certainly something would eat you. In the popular imagination, the underwater world was full of sharks, morays, barracuda and other predators. It was like the uncharted areas of old, where the maps went white and the words here be Dragons were printed.

Early divers did their share to enhance the sport's reputation for danger. In those days, divers seemed to be almost at war with the underwater environment. They plundered it for souvenirs and they speared fish indiscriminately.

But gradually, a new generation of divers appeared. They went into the water as observers: They meant to be unobtrusive. They also stressed safe-diving techniques, training and certification, and created a market for new equipment that made diving less hazardous. However, the sport is not without risk. And that calls for the proper instruction and correct equipment.

How to Begin

To buy air, rent equipment or go diving, you must be certified and have received a C card from one of the recognized umbrella organiza tions to which virtually all dive instructors belong.

To get your C card, youmust go through a course of instruction that includes the basics of physics and physiology--such elementar subjects as how gases behave under pressure and how the body reacts to depth. You learn how to avoid decompression sickness (the bends) and nitrogen narcosis (rapture of the deep), which are far more dangerous than sharks. The equipment is explained. Techniques such as hand signaling and buddy breathing are taught in shallow-water environments. Many divers first breathe compressed air in Y.M.C.A. pools in landlocked cities. Then, once the beginner has mastered the fundamentals, he makes an "open-water dive" or two and, if his instructor is satisfied, he is certified. He has much to learn if he is to become an expert, but he knows enough to dive safely while he gains that experience.

Learning to dive in an indoor pool and then making your first open-water dive in a deep gravel pit somewhere outside town--as many divers have done--is not what most people have in mind when they decide to give the sport a try. They want the tropics. White sea birds soaring over a sparkling blue sea. Stunning coral reefs and exotic tropical fishes. The experience, in short, and not just the mechanics.

Fortunately, it is now possible to learn to dive where you want to dive, instead of at home, in less than ideal surroundings. You can combine your certification course and your vacation in some of the most spectacular diving environments in the world. This is the right way to learn.

Club Med, for example, launched diver-certification programs at its Turkoise and Sonora Bay resorts last spring. Other resorts from the Caribbean to the Red Sea also offer instruction and certification. Some of them, such as the venerable Small Hope Bay Lodge on Andros Island in the Bahamas, exist for the diving. Experienced divers from all over the world go back again and again to Small Hope for the lush reefs, the imposing walls that fall off in a sheer vertical drop to more than 1000 deep-blue feet and the eerie limestone formations known as blue holes. The beginner will make his first open-water dive in world-class conditions. It compares, in a way, to learning golf at Augusta or St. Andrews rather than at the local driving range (continued on page 154) Scuba Diving (continued from page 88)

Other resorts offer diving as part of a larger package, one ingredient in a mix of activities. Kona Village on the big island of Hawaii is easily the most authentically Polynesian resort anywhere outside of Tahiti. One goes there to enjoy all that the Hawaiian Islands have to offer, plus the wonderful solitude of the resort itself--some 125 small cabins (called hales)--concealed in the tropical growth that covers 82 acres on an unspoiled coast. You can dive there, if you choose. The instruction is personal and one diver, making his first open-water dive, found himself less than a dozen feet from a whale shark. "He could spend the rest of his life diving," the dive-master said, "and never have another experience like it."

World within Worlds

As a new diver, making your first open-water dive, you'll inevitably feel a kind of generalized apprehension. But as you descend, that feeling recedes, then vanishes. Everything works as it should. The regulator functions and you can breathe. If you're weighted properly, you can let off a little air and feel yourself achieve neutral buoyancy, so that your body neither rises to the surface nor sinks to the bottom but floats--hovers, almost--until you move one way or another by gently kicking with your flippers. And as you begin to feel at ease in the water and confident about your equipment, your eyes take in the marvels around you.

There is nothing to prepare a diver for his first underwater look at a coral reef, which is a kind of aquatic jungle. At first, his eyes will simply try to take it all in. The entire reef. The coral formations, the fish, the colors. With a little time and a few dives, his vision will become more and more focused. He will learn to see and appreciate the specific wonder. A plume worm, an inch or two long, sprouting from a rock, gills extended like the petals on a flower, then withdrawn, instantly, when the diver goes too close--that will seem like something worth the most intense study.

You could dive the same reef, to the same depth, every day for a lifetime and see something new on each dive. But it is human nature to extend yourself. Divers want the next thing.

Generally, that takes the form of an urge to go deeper. Sport divers, in general, should not go deeper than 100 feet. Eventually, however, most will. Perversely, as he goes deeper and the risks increase, the diver is likely to feel increasingly confident and exhilarated and decide to go on deeper still. This is nitrogen narcosis. Rapture of the deep. The effect of the nitrogen, under pressure, on the central nervous system.It is intoxicating and dangerous and divers often refer to the "martini effect," which describes the way descending each additional ten feet after the onset of symptoms is like taking another martini at a cocktail party. Experience will teach a diver to recognize the symptoms of nitrogen narcosis and he will know what to do when they appear--ascend a few feet until the symptoms disappear.

Depth, for its own sake, loses its fascination fairly quickly. The diver looks for other things to engage his attention and provoke his fascination. For many--for me--the most compelling thing under the sea is the wreckage of ships. It is an undeniable thrill to dive a shipwreck in 70 or 80 feet of water; to go floating down on the hushed superstructure of the old vessel and to swim through the passageway, past a school of surgeonfish, and then grip the wheel that is slowly crusting over with coral.

The first shipwreck I ever dove was in about 110 feet of water--deep enough--and of fairly recent vintage. No one knew the ship's name or when it had gone down or the circumstances of its sinking. Its cargo accounted for its anonymity. The hold was packed with marijuana, carefully baled by a trash compactor and wrapped in burlap. There are wrecks in all the oceans of the world and each has a story.

Inevitably, the diver who finds himself growing passionate about the sport will begin to think about photography. It is a way of framing and ordering--of bringing discipline to the experience. The special problems of shooting film underwater raise the level of concentration enormously. Quality underwater shots are exceedingly difficult to set up, even when conditions are ideal, which they seldom are. A little plankton in the water will scatter light all over the shot, for example. But a clear shot, well framed, of some vivid underwater scene--a clownfish hovering in the fingers of an anemone, for example--is an accomplishment to be prized.

Large fish, rays, turtles and mammals, including whales, are the big game of diving photography. The diver longs not to kill them but to see and get close to them. Where there is absolutely no feeling of kinship with sharks--the response is, in fact, just the opposite, the diver experiences a kind of chilly awe--with the mammals, a diver makes a connection. Swimming amid a school of dolphins off Hawaii, I had the sudden, delightful realization that they were interested in me. They swam away, then came back, again and again. One large dolphin looked at me--I'm sure of it--and there was both curiosity and mirth in that eye.

A final avenue for the passionate diver is archaeology, or, less elegantly, salvage and treasure. While conscientious divers strictly do not break off living coral for souvenirs the way they once did, they will work mightily to recover artifacts. Some of those will have novalue except as they enhance the diver's personal collection.Countless anchor chains and fragments from cannon balls have beenbrought to the surface by divers looking for trophies. But there is still treasure under the sea, as onetime chicken farmer Mel Fisher established conclusively by finding the Spanish treasure ship Atocha after following its trail for 16 years and losing a son in the effort.

Gearing Up

Gear has its own fascination for divers. The equipment is seductive and elegant. The regulator, for example, is to the sport what an airfoil is to a pilot.

Next tothe regulator, probably the most important piece of gear to the sport diver is his buoyancy compensator. His B.C. This is a vest with a frame to support the air tank. The vest can be inflated either by mouth or directly from the tank by means of a low-pressure hose. The most common and convenient purpose served by the B.C. is to maintain neutral buoyancy. A body that displaces an amount of water equal to its own weight is said to be neutrally buoyant. It neither ascends nor descends at the desired depth. It hangs, or floats. Divers wear weights to overcome positive buoyancy--you do not want to be fighting the laws of physics that insist that your body rise to the surface all through a dive. The trouble is, neutrally buoyant at one depth is not necessarily so at another. When you are wearing a B.C., you can simply add or release a little air to float at whatever depth you choose.

A new and radical item in the diver's inventory is the computer used to compute nitrogen saturation and outgassing. This is to help the diver avoid the bends.

The dive computer (the original and still the standard is called the Edge) will keep track of the diver's depth, time at that depth and nitrogen absorption. It will alert him when he needs to ascend. It will tell him the correct ascent rate, when to stop to decompress and how long he can dive at any depth if he wants to go back into the water with residual nitrogen in his system. The biology is beyond the scope of this article. Suffice it to say that the technology is wonderfully liberating and coveted by every diver who does not already own a dive computer.

Divers also like good watches, stainlesssteel knives, waterproof flashlights, wet suits, masks, fins, snorkels and underwater cameras. Nikon's Nikonos is the industry standard.

Where to go

Destinations are almost without number. The A tourwould include the Red Sea, the Coral Sea, Belize, the Caymens, Bonaire, Hawaii, Cozumel and a few others. There are first-class facilities in all of these places and divers will feel, when they arrive, asthough they have found the perfect spot. This will last until they get home and begin to think about the next trip. There are more reefs than time.

Lately, divers have discovered the "live aboard." You book space on a large boat--a small ship, insome cases--that moves around a large area to locations not easily reached from a beachside resort. The accommodations can be quite lavish. I was on a live aboard called the Thorfin in Truk Lagoon. It was nearly 200 feet long and had been built in Norway to chase whales. In its new, gentler configuration, it featured several private staterooms, a lounge with bar and VCR and a hot tub on the fantail. It was a truly sensuous experience to come up from a night dive on one of the wrecks, shed my gear, pour a glass of rum and climb into the hot tub. I would sit there, warming myself inside and out, staring up at the tropical sky cluttered with unfamiliar stars, thinking about ... nothing at all.

There were some two dozen divers aboard Thorfin. Sun Seeker, out of Kona, Hawaii, represents the opposite extreme in live aboards. When I cruised on Sun Seeker, there were four divers and the boat's owner, Paul Warren. I had met Warren on Truk and had learned more about diving from him than from all my previous instructors. We cruised the wild undeveloped Kona coast, diving for the lobsters we cooked for dinner each night, swimming among schools of small whales and dolphins and generally feeling the kind of tranquility you experience in the presence of a few companions.

The live aboard allows divers to explore reefs where there are no nearby beach facilities. Chris Newbert--one of the finest underwater photographers ever--has been putting small parties together, for example, to cruise the reefs off New Guinea, where he says the diving is like nothing he has seen before. And he has virtually seen it all. One of those trips would be, for the diver, what the Himalayas are to the passionate climber. An unalloyed ultimate.

But, in reality, for the diver, there is no ultimate experience. Not even in the Maldives. No dive, no reef, no ocean that will once and for all satisfy his craving to go down into the ocean and explore its wonders. Every destination is new and every dive is full of possibility. The sport is, finally, as endless as the sea. And there's the beauty of it

"It is a world down there thatyou can't imagine on dry land"

"Now it is possible to learn to dive where you want to dive."

"As you begin to feel at ease in the water, your eyes take in the marvels around you"