Covediver's Underwater World

I recently came across a blog that examined some of the iconography associated with the scuba diving in the 1960s. Drawing on childhood memories, the feature’s author Gene Gable, notes “the '60s was a great decade for good guys vs. bad guys. Cowboys and Indians were still viable entertainment, and the post-war interest in army heroes hadn't faded. If you were a young boy looking for something a little more contemporary, there was the emerging field of spy adventure or space exploration, all inspired by popular television shows. Though I never wanted to play cowboys and Indians, and my heart wasn't in the army thing, I went through a "Man from Uncle" spy phase and had a short fantasy period where I was a character on "My Favorite Martian." But it took re-runs of the TV show "Sea Hunt" to really catch my attention. From then on, I was fighting off sharks, saving trapped divers from certain doom, and slicing through the air hoses of bad guys on the bottom of the sea floor. All from the safety of the backyard swimming pool…”

Gable observes “for some reason, scuba diving and knife fighting went together from the beginning, though I doubt many underwater fights ever really took place. If you could sneak up behind your victim and cut his air hose, there was nothing he could do but head for the surface. Sadly, modern equipment did away with the original two-hose regulators, so knife fights went out and spear guns came in as the preferred underwater weapon. The (accompanying) images are from Sea Hunt Comics (top) in 1960 and Frogman comics (bottom) in 1962. One of the challenges for artists unfamiliar with the intricacies of the sport was to realistically depict situations when, in most cases, they had never been under water themselves.”

OK, I admit it. I was similarly inspired by Sea Hunt. Like Gable, I experienced the show in syndication but unlike the author, I had no backyard pool which magically converted to the ocean realm. I had to be satisfied with the Milwaukee County Swimming Pool at Hoyt Park, where the harried lifeguards would warn us with deep, megaphone-magnified voices to knock off our above and underwater wrestling inspired by Sea Hunt. And yes, as a certified diver, I did not put away the foolishness of my youth, taking part in staged underwater fights with some of my more adventurous, curious, or just plain bored dive buddies on the bottom of pools and the sand flats of Goleta Beach. By the way, grappling and rolling around the urchin covered rock reefs of California is not recommended unless one is trying to understand the experience of underwater fighting with a porcupine. And playing underwater hockey at UCSB sometimes resembled the underwater fight scene from Thunderball.

Outside of an occasional juvenile role play, do underwater combat skills have any applicability? I only used it once, years ago. My friend Brandon was trying to get a shot of a wolf eel pair on the bottom off Quattra Island on the Campbell River in British Columbia. A boatload of divers from another vessel descended on the spot before Brandon could get his shot framed. When they charged forward to evict him from the spot, I ran interference using my underwater hockey skills, body checking one of the divers into his buddy, causing both of them to back off. Brandon got his shot and we promptly exited the area. Decades ago, I learned underwater self defense techniques as a lifeguard and a divemaster against panicked swimmers, but that aspect of guard training has really fallen into disfavor among many lifeguard instructors (although not the lifeguards who seem to still like to practice it). I guess other aquatic combat techniques might find some application in water polo where most of the fouls occur under the water out of the sight of the officials. I recall a UCSB student I worked out with at the State Street Boxing Club in Santa Barbara telling me that he was teaching the kids on the water polo team at San Marcos High School some of the dirty tricks, just as his student coach had taught him when he was a high school freshman. And I understand that because of a perceived terrorist diver threat against harbor and other facilities, military and public safety divers are being offered the opportunity to learn the techniques. Looking back at Sea Hunt, I guess that life has come to imitate art.