Covediver's Underwater World

Tuesday, July 24, LeConte Glacier

No diving today as we motor toward the LeConte glacier, actually right up to the face of it or at least as close in as the field of calved ice will allow. Fog-shrouded rain pelts the deck as we “cross the bar;” the shoal created by the terminal moraine of the glacier, that is, the submerged rock mound that marks the furthest seaward extend of glacier before it began its inexorable retreat to its present position. Think of a glacier as a bulldozer blade pushing rock in front of it. When the dozer stops and backs up, a pile of rock and other geological debris remains—the terminal moraine. I have seen many such terrestrial moraines in the eastern Sierra Mountains and in other locations, but I can only imagine what the submerged moraine looks like.


This summer seems to be my time for glaciers, a landform synonymous with Alaska. An attempt to get to Exit Glacier near Seward in Spring with a friend was turned back because the trail was closed, I assume because of avalanche danger; a hike up the Matanuksa glacier and a jet boat trip up to the glaciers that feed 20-mile Creek near Portage with my 12 year-old-nephew J.T. were successful. A glacier is best enjoyed in the company of a child with a infectious energy, curiosity, and sense of wonder. I am three for four in getting to glaciers; hopefully this will be four for five.


Immediately after crossing the bar, we begin to encounter bergs; few and far between at first, but then increasing in size and density the farther up the fjord we move toward the face of the glacier. The fjord is a wide drowned glacial valley carved out by the river of ice long ago, have the characteristic U-shape cross section (river-formed valleys such as the Grand Canyon have a characteristic V-shape cross section). The basalt granite walls are laced with very prominent seams of quartz. I wonder if the matrix of those rocks traps gold within. A huge white spot, like that on a black lab-Aussie shepherd mix’s chest, stands out on the rock.

My attention turns to the ever increasing ice. My companions on the bow look for figures formed in the bergs, much like the forms we looked for in the clouds as children laying in the grass on a bright summer’s day. I spot an ice form that with a little imagination is transformed into a sea horse. Others are like modern art; so abstract as to defy transformation into anything recognizable regardless of how much imagination is applied.

The ship bumps and bangs its way through the pack ice. I imagine the skipper’s grimace with each metallic “thump” and “thud” as the thickening ice bounces off the hull. The ice field is not a solid mass. It is more like slush, like crushed ice in a glass of water. We spot a number of small dark objects atop the slush pack in the distance. Closer inspection reveals these are hauled out harbor seals. The skipper speculates that they find this a place of refuge, safe from predation by orca. We also encounter growlers of the most clear blue ice I have ever seen. The color is truly breathtaking.


Closing in on the face of the glacier, the fog and mist shrouded sides of the fiord become precipitous bare gray rock cliffs, as if the granite has been coated by the dull glacial till that has the consistency of quicksand and has yet to be rinsed off. This till is the reason that Alaskans remove our shoes before entering someone’s home. While it may be the dust of ages, it makes for a very dirty carpet and very dusty floor. Yet, this combination of boat, bare rock, glacier-in-the-mist, and slushpack provides the dramatic backdrop for some great portraits.

The slushpack is too thick and resists the boat’s efforts to power through to the face of the glacier. The fog and mist begin to abate. Although the weather is rainy, at the ice-sea interface glaciers have a way of making their own weather that may be quite different from that just a stone’s throw away. We fall just short of our objective, but close enough to witness the glacier calve. Heralded by a fall of ice and a thunder-like clap, building-sized chunks of ice break away from the glaciers face, finishing with the sounds of an ice wall avalanche splashing into the water accompanied by the cacophonous cries of gulls startled by the sound. We answer with a resounding “yes” the skipper’s query from the bridge asking we have the patience to stand off the face of the glacier in anticipation of further calving. As if on cue, the glacier calves again within a minute.


Throughout the day, people move from the comfort of the galley to the bow, to the upper decks, back to the galley and on to the bow, their passage correlating with the ship’s orientation to the glacier or as we encounter one remarkable berg or another on the port or starboard side. Bergs trigger the interjections of inevitable “Titanic” analogies into the conversations and I am half-tempted to climb up on the bow and announce I am “king of the world.” The boat seems to heal to port to starboard as photographers scurry about to get the best angle for the photo op of the moment. They must be quick as the movement of boat relative to the ice makes the most advantageous position a fleeting one. More than once, a passenger not engaged in this pursuit of the ideal shot remarks that they are like paparazzi vying for the best shot of the celebrity of the month. At one point, the seals hold the photographers interest, then it is the face of the glacier.

The boat moves slowly through the slushpack, powered by nothing more than the force of the current. The water-ice mixture has a distinct sound as the hull moves through it, albeit one that defies description by words. Yet, this sound would be perfect for the Sound Clips segment on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered” that “collects the sounds that fascinate our listeners.”

Upon exiting the slushpack and reaching an area that offers open water between bergs, we undertake a “shore” excursion of sorts. The skipper invites us to don our drysuits and swim, kayak, or play among the bergs for the next two hours. We drop into the water and clamber onto the ice floes, hauling out like so many of the harbor seals a short distance behind us. Sliding onto a small piece of ice, I discover it is inherently unstable and the slightest shift of my sizeable weight could cause it to dip and perhaps even upend and flip. The area of broken ice is like the fountain of youth as we cavort among the bergs having as much fun with the complete lack of inhibition of children at a swimming hole on a hot day. This swimming hole is loaded with ice, cold as sherbet, and is hundreds of feet deep. Some of the crew and a couple of the passengers go for a dip in the ice water wearing nothing but swim suits or less, all to the hoots of encouragement from us bobbing warm and cozy in the cocoon of our drysuits or from the comfort of the ship’s deck.



I approach a berg to join Shane and Ginny intent on getting a better vantage point from which to watch the water show put on by the swimmers. As I begin to haul out, Shane cautions me not to flip the berg as he has no hood. As I sit on the berg, I cannot but help think of the emotionally evocative painting “End of the Hunt” by Fred Machetanz which shows a Native Alaskan hunter sitting on a piece of broken ice resigned to his fate. We don’t know what chain of events has stranded him on the ice, we only know the result is inevitable and fatally final.

I shout to some of the folks on the boat’s stern, asking if they would please grab my digital camera off the table and shoot a couple of pictures of us on the bergs from the vantage point of the deck. Lynn sneaks onto our little berg and holds up two fingers behind my head in the Nautilus Explorer equivalent of the devil’s horns in the third grade class photo—a move I did not discover until downloading the images later that evening.


I guess in Alaska the Fountain of Youth is spelled L-e C-o-n-t-e. Like all fountains of youth, it is best spent in the company of fine companions.

Saturday, July 21, and Sunday, July 22, 2007, The Inian Islands—Steller Sea Lion Encounters

The amplified chimes and loudspeaker announcement “good morning, dive briefing in the main salon” invites still sleepy divers to the early morning dive briefing. In these latitudes the day dawns early, so the sun is well into the sky as we haul ourselves into the salon to learn about the dive. We will not be disappointed. Today’s dive will take us to a reef in the Inian Islands and an area frequented by Steller sea lions. As a result, the skipper cautions that we will be subject to scrutiny by the sea lions. The plan is to anchor up in about 30 feet of water, descend to the bottom, hunker down along the rock ledges, and let the sea lions initiate contact. The behavior we expect witness will start out with curiosity and progress to aggressive posturing to possible “mouthing”—what I call “play chicken and chew.” We would descend and ascend in groups, after all, there is safety in numbers. While the briefing thoroughly covers the contingencies, the abstraction of the description does not quite equate to the reality of the situation.

I have had but a momentarily brief encounter with a solitary Steller sea lion prior to today. Diving around my former stomping grounds in the Channel Islands I am no stranger to marine mammal encounters having been joined by California sea lions on numerous dives. These experiences and critters are not similar, not even close. The similarity ends with the words “sea lions” in their name. (Steller sea lions are the only living members of the genus Emetopias; their closest living relatives include other sea lions in the genus Zalophus which includes the California sea lion.) Compared to their west coast counterparts, Steller sea lions are larger, more aggressive, and seem to have an attitude that goes along with being the biggest and toughest critter on the rock.

A little description sets the stage. Males can tip the scales at 2,200 pounds and measure 10 feet in length, although the bachelor bulls we may encounter will most likely weigh less than half that maximum (whew, that’s a relief). The bachelor Steller sea lion is still larger than most full-grown California sea lions. To put it in perspective, a half-ton Steller sea lion exceeds the capacity and cargo space of most full-size pickup trucks. One guide book describes the behavior of the Steller sea lion as “the species roars and growls deeply rather than barking; sometimes swims by to inspect divers” and goes on to describe California sea lions as “darker and smaller” than their Alaska relatives. After the dive I concluded that the author of that book has a gift for misunderstatement. If what I witness on this dive is a “swim by” then the Luftwaffe fighters going after 8th Air Force bombers did a “fly by.” To top it off, there is no agreement as to their name, various sources identify the critters as Steller sea lions, Stellers sea lions, and Steller’s sea lions.


I enter the water with the last third of the divers reflecting more my station at the back of the skiff rather than the luck of the draw. When I get to the bottom, I find a rock in the kelp and used it as cover. Trouble is, at least two other divers want to use the same rock so we get stacked up; but we decide to play well together and take turns alternately cowering and looking up. This rock seems to be a valuable piece of real estate and I consider selling it in a time share scheme. Cautiously at first, the sea lions began to work the outer perimeter of the group. Looking up, I see what looks like dozens of sea lions darting around above in a quite stunning choreography of fur and fat. I take random pictures with my Sony Cybershot digital camera as the situation allows, but in the turbid green water figured all I would get is “shadows” of the sea lions as they climb, dive, and loop-the-loop about us. I notice my buddy’s tank band has come lose and the tank slipped down. I point out the situation to another diver closer to her and he quickly repositions the tank and cinches the band tight.


Instantaneously, as if on cue, the sea lions’ actions change. They move closer, abandoning any pretense of turning away at the last minute. As if to “count coup,” the critters begin “mouthing” the divers. The sea lions seem to mouth anything that is exposed, which in the shelled up position most of us have assumed seems to leave just our heads. The critters seem to come in waves rather than in a constant frontal assault. The scene is a melee of cowering divers and plunging sea lions. We are surrounded and outnumbered and I begin to wonder if this is how Custer felt. I see a diver in front of me get mouthed on the top of his neoprene hood, a situation that reminds me of checking the ripeness of melons in the grocery store produce section. I get the same treatment a few times on the noggin, these are equal opportunity stalkers. One tugs hard at my regulator hose; now it is getting personal; which means it is time to leave.

I join a small group of divers heading to the surface. We make no safety stop. A few of the sea lions detach from the main body and follow us up, although whether they do so as an escort or to pick off stragglers I can’t say. They play a Border collie role in that they keep the flock together.

A pretty stiff current is running at the surface and some of us begin to drift away from the skiff. The crew directs us to “swim toward the boat” as they are plucking other divers out of the ocean. Kicking against the current, the best I can do is slow the drift and wait for the skiff to motor over for the pick up.

Back on board the Nautilus Explorer, I peel back my drysuit and discover the polar fleece undergarment is damp. I figure that in craning my neck to watch the sea lions, a trickle of water entered through the neck seal.


The next day, we do an afternoon dive at a location the skipper has named “Bad Girls Wall.” In the dive briefing, the skipper surmises that we will probably see more sea lions on this dive, just not in the number we encountered the day before. As we drift along the wall, the sea lions approach and dart away, seemingly more curious and not exhibiting the belligerent aggressiveness evident on the previous day’s dive. Except for their size, I would speculate these California sea lions that strayed up the coast. My illusion and complacency startling shatters at the end of my safety stop. A sea lion zips in and mouths my forearm as if being offered the drumstick of a Thanksgiving turkey. (I should probably be thankful he didn’t want a thigh or breast.) I am startled as its oral cavity encompassed my drysuit-clad arm. I feel the squeeze but not much pressure. He lets go and is gone as quickly as he arrived. The incident, which lasts all of one or two breaths doesn’t last long enough for my surprise to progress to astonishment.

Back on the Nautilus Explorer, my dive buddy Lynn tells me that by happenstance he captured the encounter up to the point of connected of the sea lion’s mouth around my forearm. The video camera was running and he turned it off as we broke the surface. As I watch the replay, I see the critter approach mouth wide open as if it were about to rip into a salmon. I am pleased and relieved it knew the difference. The last frame of the video is just prior to the point of contact, making for a very dramatic visual.

A few days later, a visit to the Whale Museum at Telegraph Cove, British Columbia, dramatically reinforces this point. The docent compares a Steller sea lion scull side-by-side with that of a brown bear (as in grizzly bear for those of you who don’t speak Alaskan or BC). The Steller skull dwarfs the brown bear’s skull. She highlights another anatomical difference—the brown bear has both incisors and molars reflecting his omnivore diet; the Steller sports only incisors. Fortunately, I can look at the skull and teeth before me with the disinterested detachment of someone who has looked into the jaws of the living animal.

Is any of the foregoing an exaggeration? I suggest you take the plunge and find out for yourself.

Friday, July 27, 2007, Dillon Rock, Shushartie Bay, British Columbia.

Today we dive on Dillon Rock, a navigation light-marked pinnacle, which according to the British Columbia GIS database was "named in 1850 after William Ward Dillon, RN, master, 1843, who when temporarily serving as master on HMS Daedalus on this station in 1850, made a sketch survey of Daedalus Passage and Shushartie Bay."

We expect to find wolfeels, Giant Pacific octopi (or “GPO” for short), and ratfish at this spot. The always thorough dive briefing advises that wolf eels and octopi are most likely found below 30 feet in the rock’s numerous cracks and crevices.

Wolf eels have intrigued me since I first encountered one named “Captain Crunch” on a dive trip to Campbell River/Quadra Island more than a decade earlier. In writing up this log entry, I checked some of my field guides to review the natural history of wolf eels. The guides’ listing of the adult fish’s length varies from 6 to 8 feet. Primary habitat is dens on rocky reefs in depths from intertidal to 700 feet. Males and females apparently mate for life. The practices of some of the Native tribes along the coast restricted consumption of the wolf eel to the shaman or medicine man for it was believed to increase healing powers. Finally, they are incorrectly referred to as “eels” being most closely related to blennies. While they are alternatively known as “wolf fish” (which sounds a hell of a lot better than “wolf blennie”) comparisons to eels seem inevitable especially given their deceptively ferocious appearance, a feature highlighted in most of the guides.

Marty Snyderman characterizes the fish “as perhaps the fiercest looking of all the reef creatures encountered…Though capable of inflicting serious wounds with the canine like jaw teeth, their looks belie their docile nature.” Gar Goodson relates “they are eel-like, and grow very large; with their powerful canine teeth and stout molars, they can be quite dangerous. Yet divers…report that the wolf eel quickly grows accustomed to diver, even greedily accepts hand held food, much like morays….” Finally, as only he can, Milt Love notes that “wolf-eels are really easy to identify…We are talking about an eel-shaped fish, colored gray…with dark eye spots on its body and fins. Combine this with big canine teeth and massive molars and you can’t miss. Oh yes, the adult males have lumpy misshapen heads and look like the title characters in Chainsaw Flesh Eaters from the Planet of Mutant Savings and Loan Executives….” Finally, from the log entry from a previous trip to the site, Skipper Mike reports, “this is also the only place that I have ever had the extremely rare experience of been bitten by a wolfeel (a male that I believe to be "alpha" came up behind me and latched onto my leg as I lay on the mud bottom taking a picture of another wolfeel). Being bitten by a wolfeel is virtually unheard of.” One thing the sources can’t agree on is spelling; take your choice between “wolf eel”, “wolf-eel”, and “wolfeel”. (The accompanying images show a Dillon Rock wolf eel and me as a Dillon Rock diver. Any resemblance ala the above description is purely coincidental.)

After a quick trip from the Nautilus Explorer, the dive skiff anchors and we descend, seemingly en mass, down the anchor line into the dark green water which gives this part of the eastern Pacific the name “emerald sea”. We switch on the dive lights and with their beams probe the nooks and crannies for the wolf eels and octopi. We quickly locate our objective. The wolf eels abound on this site and prove very willing subjects for observation. The photographers begin a leisurely frenzy of activity as they frame their shots before withdrawing to let their companions have a look see as they move on to the next subject. No one wants for the view of a wolf eel on this dive. I manage to capture a few images of a wolf eel’s face-in-the-hole with my Sony Cybershot. Maybe call this spot should be called “Wolfeel Lairs”. Other divers shoot video to capture side-to-side undulation of a swimming wolf eel. The distinct movement also makes the taxonomically-incorrect comparison to eels inescapable.

Moving along, I spy a pile of shells on a small ledge that marks the base of a crack that rises toward the surface. Rising up a few feet, I observe the mantle and folded arms of a rather large octopus wedged far back in the crack. Divers find several similarly ensconced octopi at the site, but none of us had any luck in coaxing the critters to emerge from the confines of the rock. Unable to draw out the GPO, my attention is diverted by the applause-like movement of the free swimming scallops. I am still amazed by the motion of this bivalve. Most of the scallops I have seen have been firmly and forever cemented to rock faces in Channel Islands of California.

Ascending toward the surface, we encounter a stronger than anticipated current; less than a rip, but enough to pull the kelp down from the surface. We find a sturdy stalk and hang on as the three minute safety stop ticks down on my computer. Breaking the surface we have little time to wait before the dive skiff swings in to pick us up.

We make the second dive at the same spot. While conditions at depth are a little darker than the first dive, the results are pretty much the same—lots of wolf eels and GPO back in their holes. After descending, I help one of the divers connect the inflator hose to the suit. A tab on the end of the connector makes the hook up easy. I had done this same thing for another diver a few days earlier. After the dive he observed that with my bulky dry glove, using one finger instead of two to pull back the connector lock would probably be easier. His advice was right on. Using just one finger makes short work of the task.

Labels: log, Nautilus Explorer Cruise

The Center for Biological Diversity formally petitioned the Federal government to protect the black abalone under the Endangered Species Act. If the species is listed, it will enjoy that dubious distinction with the white abalone. The petition describes in a few short sentences the precipitous decline of the abalone along the Southern California coast and Channel Islands. The petition cites commercial and recreational overharvesting and disease as primary factors in the decline with warming ocean temperatures cited as a contributing factor among others. The petition relates that starting in 1985, dead and dying abalone were observed at Anacapa and Santa Cruz Island. Withering syndrome caused by bacteria results in tissue atrophy. An infected abalone is unable to hold onto the hard substrate and eventually dies. The document describes the spread of the disease which resulted in the disappearance of 99 percent of the population of black abalone from Anacapa Island and other locations.

I started frequently diving at Anacapa and Santa Cruz Island in the mid-1980s. In the shallows and intertidal areas, black abalones crowded about stacking on top of each other. Pink and red abalones were abundant in deeper water and occasionally a diver would find a rare white abalone approaching the edge of the sport diving depth limit. The desirability of the abalone as a food was directly proportional to its depth. Black abalones were the most abundant and easiest to find and take. They were the least desirable species because their tissue was tough with the consistency (and taste some would argue) of old shoe leather. All abalone steaks need to be tenderized using an “ab hammer” fashioned from wood or metal. One diver I knew swore that the edge of the bottom of a 12-ounce Coke bottle worked equally as well. Many of us believed the easiest and only way to tenderize a black ab steak was to run steamroller across it a few times and as a result we took very few if any, especially when other species were relatively plentiful. My favorite recipe was to coat the ab steak in Italian bread crumbs, stuff it with Monterey jack cheese and avocado and lightly fry the entire concoction.

Within a couple of years I noticed that the black abs were disappearing and that there seemed to be a lot of black ab shells in the shallows. About the same time I began to hear of an mysterious ailment that was working its way through many abalone species, not just the black abs. Called the “withering foot syndrome” there were several competing hypotheses as to its cause—warm water from the El Nino events which were just becoming to be understood at that time; some kind of a parasite; pollution from offshore oil development; bacteria from run off; or a cyclic event in the little understood natural history of the species. Many scientists at the Marine Science Institute at the University of California at Santa Barbara worked on the problem. I would hear about it in Friday afternoon get-togethers sponsored by various labs at MSI. The cause was also the subject of endless speculation among graduate students and undergraduate marine biology majors, many of whom I dived with as part of the UCSB Dive Club. Also, my best friend worked in one of the labs and we would talk about this and other trends as we traversed the southern Santa Barbara County coastline in search of new dive spots. One-by-one the possible causes of the syndrome were eliminated through solid scientific research.

I am a bit surprised that the CBD petition lists recreational take as one of the contributing factors to the abalone’s demise. That is not my experience. We took what we needed for immediate consumption, seldom taking the limit, and almost never taking blacks for the reasons cited above. But then I recall a statement by Howard Hall. “For many years I've been calling this phenomenon, the ten year syndrome. Specifically a diver's first dive in an environment becomes his baseline. Ten years later, the environment seems "dived out," a term used by divers to punish themselves for environmental degradation they largely had nothing to do with, but being ignorant of other causes, blame the degradation on the impact of divers.”

Recently, I learned of a campaign among Southern California divers to return very large lobsters, known as “monster bugs,” to the ocean after capture. A poster showing two very happy divers holding up extremely large lobsters advocating a catch and release ethic is circulating with the advice “IF you need to bring one up to prove you caught it, take a picture and then put it back into the ocean carefully. That will impress your friends far more than eating it!”

When I first saw this poster on line, I thought it was someone’s idea of a real bad joke. Incredibly, I found that it was not a joke. People are quite serious about this point. Somehow, they have deluded themselves that “catch and release” is somehow ennobling when it really amounts to stressing an animal for no reason other than ego gratification.

Let me state that I have no problem with sport divers, or commercial fishers, capturing and consuming lobster. Granted, scuba makes the taking of these critters less “sporting” than say, if one was breath-hold diving. I abhor poaching, taking of short lobster, diver who take more than their legal limit and distribute the excess to those less fortunate and those who do not consume what they capture.

The problem with “catch and release” of these lobster is that it dignifies what really amounts to “take and torture” removing the lobster from its water environment and placing it into an air environment. The suggestion to take pictures before magnanimously sparing its life seems a bit hideous. I am not sure what constitutes “putting it back into the ocean carefully.” It sounds like a euphemism for “after you take its picture, toss it over the side.” I have observed sheepshead trying to take a bite out of a lobster being held by a diver on the bottom at Anacapa Island. Tossing a lobster back into the water from the surface to let it fend for itself until it hits the bottom and finds a hiding place seems kind of cruel. If you are going to capture it, eat it, if you are not going to eat it, leave it alone. If you need to impress your friends with a picture of the lobster, I would suggest that either they or you need to find new friends.

In the book, Blue Frontier: Dispatches from America’s Ocean Wilderness, author David Helvarg concludes “…an end to conflict of interest in our fisheries is not likely to be implemented until far more Americans who say they love the ocean decide to take more responsibility for its stewardship.” I am not quite sure that “take and torture” is the kind of more responsible stewardship he has in mind. What the advocates of “take and torture” suggest is a malignant mutation of the old saying “take only pictures, leave only bubbles.”