Twenty steps down the beach left us sweating and exhausted.
Each of us wore more than thirty pounds of lead weights (the equivalent of a loaded backpack) not to mention metal air cylinders, fins, masks, BCD’s, snorkels, and gloves. Our heads were held fast in thick neoprene hoods, our bodies sealed in a watertight bubble.
One thing’s for sure: SCUBA diving in the Pacific Northwest is nothing like diving in the tropics.
Our dry suit diving course found us floundering in the waters off Seattle’s Alki beach last week. And by floundering, I mean that dry suits make you feel like an overloaded marshmallow. Make that a freezing cold overloaded marshmallow. To insulate the body against the cold, dry suits are designed to let users wear polar fleece and other street clothes underneath. But once we ducked below the surface of the Puget Sound, our overheated cores were traded for numb lips and stinging cold hands.
Keeping panic at bay is the key to any dive. It’s easy to freak out when you’re breathing underwater. This is especially true in cold water, where the bulky gear prevents ease of motion. Our six-member class knelt on the bottom to perform our required buoyancy skills, and one fin flip later we were instantly obliterated in a cloud of silt. Visibility dropped to five feet, which is not much more than your outstretched arm.
Playing follow the leader with the divemasters was akin to playing hide and seek in cold-water hell… if not for the four-foot tall orange anemone that suddenly emerged from the murky fog.
That’s the moment that dry suit diving took a turn. From out of nowhere, the bright squishy, critter appeared, looking like a tree from a Dr. Seuss book.
Forgotten was the discomfort and panic. Lost was my dive buddy, and the worry about rocketing to the surface because my feet filled with air.
Our second dive allowed for close encounters with ghost-white nudibranchs, dinner-sized crabs, a rat fish, and whole forests of anemones. We also fought leaky suits, and ill-fitting rental gear.
It wasn’t quite the “I want to go to there” experience we expected, but it was enough to plant an itch in our brains. Right out there, just a few feet below the surface, is a world that few get the chance to witness.
I will return. Marshmallow suits, lead weights and freezing lips be damned!
