Covediver's Underwater World

Today I reached into the mailbox and sorted through the pile of periodicals that arrives this time of month. I found the July 2006 issue of Scuba Diving. Originally, I did not subscribe to this magazine, but became accustomed to it when I started receiving it as part of a deal with DAN Alert Diver a few years back. I know two people associated with the magazine. The magazine featured a two-page photograph of the HMCS Saskatchewan by Brandon Cole, a contributing editor and a diver with whom I have had a fair number of aquatic adventures and a number of misadventures. The other item that caught my attention was an article about Bill Kendig, associated with the magazine’s Scuba Lab feature. The article, Guarding the Guardian, relates how Bill has been working as a safety diver on an upcoming Kevin Costner film about Coast Guard rescue swimmers. Costner selected Bill for the position as the two have been dive buddies for some time. Costner chose well.

I met Bill back in the late 1990s when we both lived in Southern California and volunteered as the tender/safety diver for the Channel Islands National Park’s underwater video program from Anacapa Island, which was held on Tuesdays and Thursdays from Memorial Day to Labor Day. Bill took Tuesdays the Tuesday show and I took the Thursday show. Working the National Park Service program from the island’s landing cove dock earned me the nickname Covediver and was a lot of work and a ton of fun. Bill impressed me as a diver. He was an instructor at one of the area dive shops at the time. Bill went on to do other roles in the show such as underwater naturalist and camera operator, while I was content to be the critter wrangler, line tender, and safety diver. With the other folks who helped out with the program we made quite a team. Bill dived with my team from the Minerals Management Service on Platform Grace in the Santa Barbara Channel as part of a joint MMS/NPS dive exercise where he took the accompanying photo. Bill also did a DAN oxygen course for me just before my day job took me to the wilds of Alaska, causing me to end my association with the program.

Seeing the article reminded me of the great friends and experiences that I have had in my more than two decades of diving. I don’t get under the water as much as I did when I lived in the lower 48, which makes the memories of these dives and friends even more precious. I look forward to Costner’s movie, not only because of the theme (USCG rescue swimmers are indispensable components of search and rescue in Alaska) but because I know someone affiliated with the show.