Cove Diver's Journal--Kelp Forest Monitoring

Wednesday, July 26, 2001— Hump Day

Pick up any one of several more detailed books on sailing and it will enumerate the several definitions of "dawn" a point that is driven home as I struggle to full consciousness watching the morning light turn a guano-covered wash rock from a dark grey silhouette to a multihued white capped pinnacle, like some snow-topped Sierra peak. Sounds change as well. While never completely silent, the night time anchorage is not as rich in sound as the daytime anchorage.

More and more island birds join in the reveille chorus, starting with the pleasantly melodic chirping of birds in the bluff-side pine forest and ending with the nails-across-the-chalkboard multiple echoscreetch of wakening gulls. Like an artist experimenting with colors, as the sun rises the color on the canvas of the rock wall changes.

Shifting and intensifying light reveals patterns in the rocks. While geologically permanent (at least in human time scale) they are nonetheless temporary. Since all the variables that make up this moment will never be reproduced, this view is mine and mine alone this morning. While awestruck at the view, I am saddened for like all thing beautiful, it is best when a shared experience. A photo could not do this justice. And for me it is transitory, never having developed the artist’s ability to recreate the colors. Nature's rock art but for a moment ever lost to nature!

Just as the island comes to life with a building cacophony of sound, so does PR. Mumbled good mornings, sounds of coffee being brewed, teeth being brushed, water running, cereal being poured, and normal conversation crescendo to noise with the start of the generator. Time to get up and go to work.

There is a ritual that the crew follows at the start of the day on a boat. With the number of people on board, there is a certain choreography to progress of the day. For example, six people gearing up to enter the water becomes a ballet done in neoprene booties instead of toe shoes with all manner of wetsuits and gear taking the place of leotards. Yet like a ballet, one missed step can bring the whole production to an abrupt halt. I won’t report much of the movement, but only note that the dance goes on.

I have one rule in keeping the journal and reporting the flow of the daily life-cycle of the voyage: most of what happens on the boat, stays on the boat. There is much personal interaction that occurs between the crew, usually among people who have known each other or worked with each other for a period of time. Any attempt to try and replicate this interaction in any detail suffers from several deficiencies:

1. Dialog can only be reconstructed, never recalled or recorder verbatim.
2. Nuances can never be captured to explain the context of the situation.
3. The observer cannot hope to gage the sub text of the situation.
4. For a week this boat is an island. Knowing their off-the-cuff remarks are being recorded would have people on edge and end up with me being shunned, placed overboard in the dingy for the duration of the voyage, or banished.
5. On a boat conducting diving operations, in the space of a week, people are bound to do something silly. Such silliness is randomly distributed throughout the occupants, so no one really cares. Unless, that is, by recording and reporting situations, the diarist turns the boat into a setting for the Ed Show or Real TV.

So many situations are not recorded, and therefore not reported. Having said that, I must report the incident of the exploding baked potato. The item blew up in the oven while being prepared for last night’s meal of pork and chicken, corn-on-the-cob, salad, and cobbler with ice cream. While only a minor explosion, I never considered donning a life jacket. Damage was contained to the immediate interior of the oven and consisted of the potato being reduced to pulp. Photographs were taken of the scene. The cause of the incident is undetermined. This incident is reported because, as all mariners understand, any explosion at sea is cause for grave concern and noteworthy in and of itself, without regard for the reputations of the people involved.

The number of trained observers and scientists onboard this boat creates the setting in which some mighty interesting conversations take place about the nature of things in the ocean, from individual critters to ecosystem health. I notice that when presented with a species here-to-fore not encountered, the diver carefully records the critter’s characteristics and uses guidebooks and field guides to make a positive identification. Others may offer their advice to aid in the identification. Inevitably, something new is learned and someone will be shown something new on the next dive. Lots of learning takes place on these cruises, the field guides are well worn from use. Imagine moving down a 100-meter transect line, and at certain intervals doing a census of critters in a certain area. For the time of the dive, sometimes going longer as one and 1/4 hours, the area surveyed is a microcosm of the ocean. Much may be happening beyond the periphery of the survey area, which is maybe a couple hundred yards, maximum. The diver, while not totally oblivious to the yonder discounts it’s reality. The observer cannot afford to break concentration on the task at hand to examine phenomena or creatures outside of the survey area.

On the first dive of the day at Pelican Bay, I collect red, white, and purple urchins with Dave. I’m getting more efficient at this, and complete the task well within the safety limits of my 2600 psi, 95 cubic foot air supply. We are finished at the site. Back on board, I grab a set of calipers and begin to measure the urchins. Joining me in this effort are two or three others who measure and one who records the measurement. It’s almost like a game of reverse bingo, where three people call out the numbers and one person marks them down. Quickly, the task is completed and the urchins returned to the sea. We are done at this site. We move west to Fry’s Harbor. En route I again rewind the Pelican buoys.

The Fry’s Harbor site is a short distance from the plunging vertical walls that characterize this part of the island. Despite anchoring right up against the island, this is a relatively deep site. Teams working abreast on opposite sides of the transect can have a vertical depth difference of 20 feet! On the fish count, we move along the deep side of the line for the first half of the dive and the shallower side of the line for the second half of the dive. While on the dive, I encounter a large harbor seal inspecting the remains of an arm that has tumbled and broken open. I wonder what force could have caused the arm, a rather robust structure, to be split open as it had been?

Back on the boat, I posed that question to Derek. He speculated that it may have been wave surge from winter storms that moved the ARM, someone anchoring on it, but it also could be from rock slides that plague this area. Image the force generated by a sizeable rock slide from a 100-foot cliff. There are reports that a similar slump as Cuyler Harbor at San Miguel Island caused as sailing vessel to roll to shore wrapping its anchor chain around the ship in the process.

On the third and final dive of the day, I do 5 meter quadrats with Derek to measure knobby stars and bat stars. The work of measuring the longest arm of each critter goes quickly. The recording less so. My dive mask, while equipped with corrective lenses, does not have bifocals. As a result, I must move the caliper to just the right spot in order to accurately read the scale. The seal still seems to be inspecting the destroyed ARM. I can only guess what fascination the structure holds for the naturally curious marine mammal. I recall the old adage about seals in the water being the early warning system against large sharks. If there are seals or seal lions around and all of a sudden they disappear, beware! While they may have just moved on, something lurking nearby may have caused them to move on.

A small rigid hull inflatable is moving back and forth just offshore as if looking for something or someone. It motors over to us and the driver asks if we have had any contact with the mother ship. The boat was towing the inflatable while cruising from Santa Rosa Island to Santa Cruz Island earlier in the day. Since the tow was difficult to control in the high winds and building seas, the boat skipper decided to send the inflatable ahead. Now the inflatable was a lost lamb trying to find the flock. We had heard no radio traffic from the mother vessel. The inflatable went off to check other boats in the anchorage. After a short time it was reunited with the slower mother ship. Good thing, as the sun was beginning its slide toward the horizon. We pulled the hook and returned to Pelican for the night. Pelican was a good choice as it kept us from rocking and rolling in the wind and swell all night. There seemed to be a lot of requests for assistance traffic on the marine radio that night. Most of us have no business being on the Channel at night in high winds and high seas.

Dave recalls that earlier this year, when PR was at Santa Barbara Island, another vessel joined them in the anchorage. The next morning, PR left early to go to the survey site. The second boat from the anchorage soon joins them and the skipper asks PR to confirm that "this is Santa Barbara Island." They then asked for a heading to Catalina! Oops, I guess someone slept through the navigation portion of their sailing instruction, assuming they ever had any. I am long past being surprised at the ignorance of many sailors. The guardian angels of mariners must be working overtime nowadays.

For example, a day or two earlier, a power boat had transited the area between PR and the island, right over the transect, despite the fact that the our vessel was flying the customary red with white diagonal "divers down flag" and the less recognized but more legally recognized blue and white Alpha flag. I know from research and experience that the dual dive flags offer only a little legal protection and no reliable actual protection to divers.

The California Safe Boating Course book, which defines the minimum knowledge that mariners should have about boat operation and such things states, "if a divers flag is spotted while boating, be careful and do not approach out of courtesy. Maintain a distance of at least 100 hundred feet between the flag and your vessel when boating on inland waters. In bays and open waters, stay at least 300 feet away. Also, keep a sharp lookout for air bubbles breaking the surface near the boat. It is possible for divers to accidently stray from the safe area of the flag." Great advice if everybody follows it. In recreational diving class we are warned against believing the mythology that the dive flag is sacrosanct, that the safety zone it provides impenetrable protection against boat props, keels, and collisions with personal water craft. I recall too many incidents where it does not. A few of the more notable ones include:

• A few years ago, a local yacht club had an "around the island race" in which a line of sailboat passed between our dive boat and the island, right over the divers. We yelled, they waved back. How they did so without hitting our divers or the reef is unknown.
• When I spoke to a yacht racer about this, he said he didn’t recognize the diver flag "as conferring any exclusive use of ocean space. He went where he wanted to go. Getting clipped was just one of the potential risks of diving." Turns out his attitude is not all that uncommon and legally, not far from the mark.
• At Refugio State Beach on the mainland coast of the Channel, a small inflatable boat motored up to a dive flag that marked the location of a dive class. He grabbed the flag and pulled it into his boat and continued to pull in the line until the small anchor was on the surface. He then dropped it back down. The anchor didn’t set and the flag started to drift with the down coast current. When the driver beached the inflatable, I asked him why he had pulled the flag up. He responded that he thought "it was a lobster pot and wanted to check it out."
• Last year a sailboat entered the anchorage at one of the Channel Islands. Nearby, an urchin diver was on the bottom. The sailors reported that they saw the diver surface as if to motion or say something before dropping back down. He never resurfaced. A Coast Guard inquiry concluded that the sailboat’s keel snagged the diver’s air line dragging him to the surface before severing the line. However, no culpability was found on the part of the sailboat because the diver’s vessel was not displaying the dive flag. Yet, the alpha flag which signals other vessels that, "I have tethered divers in the water and have restricted ability to maneuver, confers the right of way to the vessel as a means of avoiding collision." It has nothing to do directly with diver safety.

Bottom line is flying the dive flag is the right thing to do. But, depending on the boater it will provide little protection and may actual mark the spot where they can come and get you depending on their state of intoxication and hostility.

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