Covediver's Underwater World

A little over a year ago, Aqua Lung America (aka U.S. Divers, I am not sure when they changed their name) released a “modern” version of the classic double hose regulator. Designated “Mistral” in honor of its ubiquitous single-stage, double hose regulator of the 1950s, the new regulator is a two-stage design, joined in a single unit, behind the divers head, which is where the bubbles exhaust.

One UK website noted “older divers will look back with nostalgia at the days of the original twin-hose regulator. But it had a single-stage mechanism and breathed like an asthmatic ant.” Scuba Diving magazine in an equipment review article predicted “the Mistral's unique double hose design will appeal to underwater photographers, videographers, ice divers, commercial divers, military divers, search and rescue divers, scientific divers, and anybody nostalgic for the 'good ol' diving days." Don Rockwell, president of Aqua Lung America, echoing these sentiments, notes on the company’s website "divers miss the many benefits of the double house regulators – plus, they're nostalgic for scuba equipment from the early days. So we combined the best features of the old double hose regulator – including having the bubbles come out from behind the diver's head and not obstructing the field of vision – and updated it with new modern regulator technology."

Now, I have been diving single hose regulators for a while and have never found bubbles to be particularly obstructing or bothersome. I am an older diver, who has been an underwater photographer (albeit not a very good one), videographer (ditto), search and rescue diver, and a scientific diver. I did not clamor for the return of the double-hose regulator; neither did my colleagues. Nor do I particularly long for the “good old days” that for me began more than two decades ago with the acquisition of my first regulator, a U.S. Divers Conshelf 14. At that time, many dealers already considered this reg to be “old” technology. Newer, easier breathing, and more lightweight plastic second stage regulators were rapidly relegating the heavy marine brass regulators to the bottom shelf of the glass display cases in dive shops. Nowadays, the 14 and regulators like it are more likely to appear on a dive shop’s “wall of honor” along with other “classic” regulators. I might still be using the regulator but it lacks sufficient low pressure ports to accommodate the second stage, a B.C. inflator hose, and a drysuit inflator hose—all of which I consider a necessity more than a nice to have feature. I have purchased two regulators since then, a Conshelf 21 and an Apex ATX 40. I still have and use both.

Now I will admit, I like the looks of the modern Mistral. It seductively screams “Sea Hunt,” unique,” and “novel.” When the regulator was introduced, I mentioned to a 20-something gear head with whom I Yahoo IM’d about scuba that I thought I might get one, but that the $900 suggested retail price was a real turn off. He noted that I seemed “old school.” It must have been my attitude that gave it away; I know he couldn’t see the black Converse “Chuck Taylor” high-top sneakers that I wear. I also knew that many divers felt the same way but unlike me had never dived with a double-hose regulator and did not know what a pain in the ass they could be. Sure enough, they soon started appearing on EBAY auctions and at gear sales going for as little as one-half of the original price. So I waited, watched and a couple of weeks ago I scored one. My initial experience diving with it at a local pool will be the subject of a future blog.

I could hardly wait to try out my new double-hose Mistral regulator. Scott, the owner of a local Anchorage dive store, rents the only 50-meter pool in the State for a couple of hours once a week for “Scuba Night.” While he uses this time for class instruction, he graciously opens the pool to folks who want to work on skills, try out new equipment, get reacquainted with old equipment and so on. He asks a modest contribution to help cover the cost of rental. In the last few years, pool operating hours have been cut back as operating expenses have increased. When I first arrived in Anchorage, the pool at Service High School had Scuba Night every Monday. The Municipality of Anchorage eliminated this time from all the pools’ operating hours as an economy moves but allows private parties to pay for the facility, at the price of about $100.00 per hour.

So with regulator in hand, I pulled my black 3-2 Tilos wetsuit out of the closet, threw my b.c., fins, and steel 72 in the SUV and headed to Bartlett pool. I arrived a few minutes early to set up my gear so I could hit the water as soon as possible to maximize my time. Scott’s class had already set up their gear. At first I thought it might be a tech diving class. Each diver’s set up consisting of an elegantly simple, if somewhat utilitarian, backmount b.c. with backplate was laid smartly along the edge of the pool. Scott’s assistant explained that the setup was the shop’s standard configuration for classes and that they did not use stabilizing jacket b.c.’s. I figured that the double-hose regulator I was attaching to the J-valve might be old school enough to divert attention from the fact that the rig was attached to a Sea Quest Black Dimond stab jacket b.c.

I recall hearing a charge that the Sea Quest Black Diamond was a b.c. for wannabe techies. Two of the four b.c.’s I have owned in 23 years have been the Black Diamond. I love the simplicity of the weight integration, the way it fits snuggly against my torso with little drag or inherent buoyancy, and the great way it disassembles for travel. It is not a b.c. for everyone, but it is the b.c. for me! That was not always the case.

Having dived with a Sea Quest backmount b.c. for many years because the stab jackets rode up on me, I merely nodded as one of the Scott’s divers extolled the virtues of that design. I did chuckle a little bit recalling the many times the owner of the Santa Barbara dive shop where I worked as a divemaster/AI complained about my unconventional set up consisting of a red Dacor aluminum 92 tank, brass Conshelf 14 regulator, and yellow backmount b.c. and the impression it made on the impressionable students who look to their leaders for examples of the “right” gear to use. I would remark, “Gee, you didn’t seem to mind when you sold me the stuff a few years ago.” To which he would reply, “most people don’t keep using gear as long as you do.” Offering to use whatever gear he would “comp” me usually ended any objection he had to my rig.

Waiting for clearance to get into the pool, I spoke with Eric, a teenaged diver who was soon to be the shop’s newest divemaster-in-training. We spoke about diving and gear while Scott looked over the Mistral. He asked if we could switch out rigs at some point during the night as he would like to try a double-hose regulator. I responded that swapping out the regulator would be fine as I had a single hose regulator that I needed to test dive. As we got ready to head into the water, I noticed Eric pull a pair of Scubapro Jet Fins out of his bag. I thought this was an odd choice of fins for a youngster, since the design of the fin has changed little in the nearly-half century it has been on the market and tends not to be the choice of fin among divers today. (I exclusively used Jet Fins for nearly 12 years, purchased right after U.S. Divers quit marketing the black graphite Compro fins I preferred. Now, I dive an Apollo Biofin when using a dry suit because the foot pocket on the Jet Fin will not accept my rock boot.) I remarked to Eric, that he was using a “classic fin.” He seemed confused as to whether or not that was merely an observation, complement, or subtle put down. Later one of the assistants would joke with me that “split fins were for sissies.” “No”, I corrected with a laugh betraying my own bias, “split fins are for people who don’t like to kick; Force Fins are for sissies.”

These events got me to thinking about the gear choices I had made during my diving career. I pretty much ascribe to the point of view that dive gear should only come in one color, basic black. I managed to survive the neon neoprene craze of the late 1980s when dive gear, taking it cue from ski-slope fashion, went from monochromatic to eye fatiguing bright hues nearly overnight. I used to disparage “neon divers” as those who would never be true practitioners. While I like to think that I have always selected my gear based on functionality first with style a secondary and distant consideration, the fact is that my first regulator was a Conshelf 14 because my instructor’s regulator was a Conshelf 14 and that was the brand carried by the shop where I traded. Imitation is the highest form of flattery and a great rule of thumb when you don’t know any better. So maybe the dive shop owner was justified in expressing his concern over my rig oh so many years ago.

The story appeared below the fold on the front page of the business section of the Anchorage Daily News, heralded by the headline “Scientist says offshore oil platforms make ideal fish habitat.” With a dateline of Santa Barbara, I anticipated that the “scientist” in the story was none other than Milton “Milt” Love, a widely respected and dedicated marine biologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The story was quoting attorney Linda Crop, a longtime Love detractor and a lawyer with the Environmental Defense Center by the article’s fifth sentence; long before Milt Love has a chance to chime in to relate why he believes what he does. This is objectivity as it is taught in today’s J-schools; don’t try to state facts, just quote both sides and let the public figure it out.

Full disclosure time. I have known Milt Love professionally for nearly 15 years. I knew of him by reading his insightful and humorous book on California fishes. No one can write quite like Dr. Love. For a few years, I also managed the U.S. government/University of California cooperative research program that funded some of Dr. Love’s research. Before that, I was affiliated with the Ocean and Coastal Policy Center of the Marine Science Institute where I worked on my Ph.D. and taught Political Science and Environmental Management at a small state-supported university in Alabama.

I got involved in this issue in earnest in 1993. Brandon Cole, a now world-renowned marine wildlife photographer, and I dived on two of California’s offshore oil platforms. Just a short time before, all California offshore platforms were off limits to everyone but commercial divers working on the structures. That changed in the early 1990s when Chevron decided to cease operations on the four platforms close to Summerland and Carpentaria, just south of Santa Barbara, because most of the oil had been produced from the underlying field in the quarter century the platforms had been operating. The platforms, with their Coast Guard-approved designators Hilda, Hazel, Hope, and Heidi (collectively known as the “4H’s)--were among the first to be placed off the California coast. Now, under the terms of the leases from the State of California, they would be among the first to be removed.

With the cessation of operations, Chevron allowed small dive boats to dive on the platforms by appointment while they planned for the disposition of the structures. Brandon and I dived from a Radon, a locally constructed vessel designed to handle the rigors of the Santa Barbara Channel. Radons are work boats, fanatically favored by urchin divers and others who made their living from the sea.

I was impressed by the diversity and thickness of marine life on the structures. While Brandon shot images of the critters swimming through the underwater truss structure that is a platform, I went exploring. A platform is like a big underwater jungle gym. The two dives so impressed me that I decided to learn more about the possibility of preserving some of the marine life and habitat that the structures provided.

I learned that before platforms could be converted to artificial reefs, all vestiges of oil and gas operations, including much of the topside deck and production spaces would have to be cleansed of contaminants and removed. Any of the remaining structure left in place or “reefed” at another location would have to be a minimum of 50 feet from the surface so as not to constitute a hazard to navigation. Once deconstructed, what remains of a platform is literally tons of steel, akin to something an ambitious and industrious boy could build with an Erector Set. Finally, I discovered that scientists were not certain whether these platforms-as-artificial-reefs merely aggregated existing fish populations (the attraction hypothesis) or whether they increased fish populations (the production hypothesis). Furthermore, if they did produce, a debate raged whether the design and vertical relief of the structure was optimum for mimicking the topography of a natural reef.

In the absence of scientific certainty (and as events bear out, often in the overwhelming presence of it) the issue becomes more than emotional, it takes on the trappings of religion. Environmentalists hold as a tenet of the faith that offshore oil and gas is the ultimate evil; representing the literal and figurative rape of Mother Ocean. In their theology, redemption is not possible, good cannot come from evil, and the entire structure must be damned to the fires of Hell, in this case the recycling furnace. Any compromise undermines the fundamental beliefs of the faith. An offshore structure can have no possibility of redemption.

I countered this religious dogma in several newspaper and popular press articles, using the analogy of the platform as a steel pinnacle, with zones of different marine life as one moved from top to bottom; the same zones that one found on our rocky offshore pinnacles. I wondered out loud how long it took before “artificial” could be considered “natural” and whether or not it was a distinction without a difference to the organisms that inhabited the reefs? I noted that an oil company announcement revealing plans to alter an equivalent amount of “natural reef” through their operations would have the deep greens launching a flotilla of a thousand kayaks to blockade the site. In the case of the 4H’s, nary a single windsurfer sailed in protest. Finally, the State’s own environmental analysis on other fields determined that removing platforms could have significant, albeit local, environmental effects that would have to be mitigated as a condition of State approval of the State-mandated removal. Since on-site mitigation was not possible, compensation would be in order. Yet, the environmentally-preferred mitigation is to avoid the effect by not undertaking the operation that will cause it. Twelve years later I am still waiting for rational responses to these points.

The “precautionary principle,” long a touchstone of the environmental movement dictates that “when the potentially adverse effects of a proposed activity are not fully understood, the activity should not be allowed to proceed.” The principle was disavowed by the environmentalists and the platforms were ripped out. Tons of biomass was taken to shoreside landfills and the chance to preserve function reefs disappeared. By the way, the latest scientific evidence indicates that reefs are more likely to be “producers” rather than “attractors.”

Divers have definite and different personalities. The individual personalities within a buddy team can be simultaneously complimentary and destructive. This paradox is insightfully captured in Bernie Chowdhury’s book, The Last Dive, which tells the story of the Rouses, a father and son team that perished while diving on submarine U-869. The book is haunting in detail, revealing how the two personalities interacted with each other within the larger context of the social system that is deep wreck diving. The book gave me nightmares as I read it, a reaction I did not get from reading number of similar titles seemingly spawned by Chowdhury’s seminal work, such as Fatal Depth, Dark Descent, and Deep Descent.

Did you ever wonder what kind of dive buddy that you might be? Are you ready for a non-scientific, potentially tongue-in-cheek self-assessment of your “diver personality?” Can you be honest and not self-delusional when answering a number of questions about dive gear preferences, your reaction in hypothetical situation, and your dive behavior? If so, you may want to check out the Diver Personality profile at www.coralrealm.com and answer the 20 or so questions, hit the submit button and lo and behold your objective diver profile will be provided.

During a recent training session at work, I submitted to take a Myers-Briggs Inventory. The resulting “score” reduces my complexities to a single four letter string of characters. I answered the questions as best I could and the resulting score, when interpreted using a number of tools, was amazingly accurate. It was one of those “Killing Me Softly with His Song” moments with revelations that some people might find does not square with their self-perception.

I felt secure enough in my own diver identity to take the test. I answered the questions to the best of my ability, the forced-choice responses have no real overlap, although I did find myself saying “well, it depends on the situation” as I made my selection. And while essential human personality does not change over time (once it is set, we pretty much play the hand as it is dealt), I do think that my diver personality has changed over time as I have matured. Early in my career I felt cheated if I only made three dives on a four-dive-day boat. Now I definitely take quality over quantity.

My profile revealed that I am a Casual Explorer. The list of profiles explains that “there are three subcategories of the Explorer Diver: the Casual, the Scientific and the Extreme. All three diver personalities have inquiring minds. They tend to be conscientious and discerning. Explorer Diver personalities usually emerge with experience and maturity rather than being innate. Explorer Divers exhibit high levels of curiosity and love spending hours reading and adding to their marine knowledge base. Many are so passionate about their love of anything marine that they may be labeled "evangelistic" by other diver personalities. However, they make good mentors and guides. They love sharing their knowledge and expertise to enhance other divers' understanding of the marine ecosystem. The Casual Explorer is the least obsessive of the three Explorer personalities. They are extremely adaptable and enjoy all types of diving conditions and environments. Casual Divers exhibit an ability to find something interesting and new in every dive situation. They make more general and superficial notes in their dive logs than the Scientific and Extreme Diver personalities.”I believe that description fits me remarkably well. I am remarkably curious about the marine environment, or more accurately, the events and people who define it. While you will find some fish guides on my bookshelf, they are far outnumbered by other titles such as those cited above. I do think I make a good mentor and guide, if the testimony of my former buddies is any indication. And I agree that this type of diver is the least obsessive. As I tell people, diving for me once was an obsession, now it is merely a preoccupation.