Mother Ocean

The great vastness of the sea never ceased to amaze me. The ocean is a great friend and a great foe to the men and women who dare to make their profession on her mighty back, and in her great depths. She is the mother of life on this planet and in that way we have her to thank for our existence. She birthed us when that first fish walked out of her salty womb 423 million years ago, and provided us with food when we were hungry. Along with that when we upset her, her wrath knew no bounds, the hurricanes and storms that have slain sailors since the dawn of man, and the great waves that have wreaked havoc on us even inland shows that she can be bitter, and wicked in the face of our unknowable indiscretions. Not that I think that we are at fault for the abuse she gives us, not for all of it anyway, our relationship with her is definitely an abusive one both ways. It was impossible to ignore the abuse that we gave her sitting on that dive boat.

I was out that day to participate in a reef clean up, I had a free day and hadn't been diving in a while so I took the opportunity gladly. The weather for the day was supposed to be clear but dark clouds were gathering even before we left the marina. It's not uncommon for short rains to come around midday in south Florida especially at this time of the year. So I wasn't too worried, plus even if it did rain I was going to be underwater where the rain had little effect. I hadn't been diving in a year or more and I hadn't been on a reef clean up in even longer. The last time I was part of a reef clean up I had taken the day off high school to go with my dad who was an expert diver and an ichthyologist, he had introduced me to diving and helped me get my open water diving certification as soon as I was old enough.

While leaving the marina we seemed to leave the dark clouds behind which put to ease the little bit of worry there was in my mind. I pulled on my wetsuit as the dive boat began to speed off away from the coast, by the time we were at the reef I had got all my gear ready making extra care to bring my gloves, a mesh bag, and my dive knife, all key items in underwater garbage cleaning. This would be the first dive of the two planned for today so each man onboard with the exception of the Captain and Deckhand had two allotted air tanks. I was the fourth man in the water after the Divemaster and two spear fishermen who were determined to catch some fresh lionfish, helping with the cleanup in their own unique way. 

The first part of the dive is always the strangest to me, there's a moment where you are too far from the surface to reach it without running out of breath and too far from the bottom to even see it leaving you in the middle of some sort of cold void. When people say they are afraid of open water this is always what I imagine they mean. After a moment it's over and the bottom comes into sight, no longer am I drifting through a void. Now I am floating above a foreign almost alien land, the land from which all things green and all things fleshy on this planet first came to be. I stay close to the Divemaster while scanning the reef for garbage, finding the occasional aluminum can and plastic bottle to put in my mesh bag. It's a meditative feeling, letting the current carry you across the reef, even if I did have to stop and pick up trash along the way, this was my way of saying thank you to the ocean and all she had done for me.

My tranquility was soon interrupted by a metal clanking noise, the noise of someone trying to get the attention of the group. I turned to see someone waving and hitting their air tank with a small rock. Upon swimming over to see what was wrong I saw there was a huge mass of fishing line, and in it caught like a fly in a spider's web was a small loggerhead sea turtle. I immediately and cautiously began cutting the line that had it ensnared being careful not to touch the turtle, after a few panicked moments it was free though it still had some line around its appendages that I was not able to cut. I slid the knife back into its sheath on my calf while watching the turtle glide off into the great embrace of the ocean. The dive carried on like normal from that point and we surfaced not too shortly after.

While standing on the deck of the dive boat with my wetsuit half rolled down I looked back at the shore that was maybe three miles away, maybe further. "What luck that we came out today, any later and that poor turtle could have died, I hope some biologist finds him so the extra line can be cut off of him" I thought now watching the storm that we had left behind come ever so closer out to the boat.

"Do you think we're good for another?" I overheard the Captain say to the Divemaster

"We're far enough out, we'll be done with the next dive by the time it makes it out here if it makes out at all"

"alright it's your call"

With that we began our next dive, I switched out air tanks and followed the Divemaster into the water. The descent took longer this time, we were maybe thirty feet deeper here than we were at the last site which means we'd have a shorter bottom time. Immediately this reef was worse off than the last with fishing line clumps wrapping around most of the reef, I went off a little ways to cut the line from a small batch of reef away from the rest. I took my time cutting and pulling lengths of line putting them into my mesh bag. On one cut I brought my knife up too quickly, catching it on a piece of rock  knocking it out of my gloved hand. I moved closer to pick it up without realizing a length of line had tangled with my dive computer. I leaned down to pick the knife off the sandy bottom inadvertently getting myself more ensnared, by the time I had my knife I was as stuck as the turtle I had helped earlier.

As I finally realized what had happened a panic began to come over me, I was trapped ninety feet underwater, or as deep as an eight story building is tall, completely isolated from the rest of the group. I tried to bang on my tank with the knife but I was too tangled to reach it. The only option for noise making would be moving backwards to bang my tank into the rocks, which if done incorrectly could dislodge the tank from my air regulator. My heart at this point was pounding, and I began to hyperventilate which only wasted more of my air. In the midst of my panic I closed my eyes and attempted to calm down. I focused on the feel of the cool water on my skin and on the dry air flowing into my lungs. It was not lost on me that somewhere out there somebody had put this line here, on accident most likely but the intent meant little to me especially in the moment. After I had composed myself and got my breathing back to normal I began to slowly cut myself free. First I freed my right hand, the hand holding the knife, by slowly rotating my wrist. I used my freed hand to cut my other hand loose and pulled the rest of the line off me.

I was free from entanglement but couldn't see the rest of the group. I figured that I should go to the surface and deploy my marker buoy so I could get back to the boat. I began my slow accent to the surface making sure to stop at fifteen feet to decompress. Fifteen feet was enough to tell that the storm had caught up, I could see raindrops hitting the surface and waves gave it a distorted look, I checked my air levels and saw they were reaching 500 PSI. 

Once while diving with my dad I almost ran out of air. We were on a wreck dive at around ninety feet, everyone else had Nitrox but I wasn't certified to, so I was diving with air. We were down for maybe twenty minutes when my dad came over and asked how much air I had left. I had been so busy swimming around the wreck that I hadn't checked, I showed him how much air I had, maybe 700 PSI, and he went back up to the surface with me.

The storm had definitely followed us and it got worse. I inflated my BCD to stay at the surface and began blowing up my marker buoy. The storm was thick and dark, and the waves were making it hard to stay on the surface. "Even if I got the buoy fully inflated, what are the odds the boats would see it? Boats are higher up so they would have a vantage point if they were looking for me, if they were looking for me. I have to hope they did a head count, of course they did a head count they are professionals". My mind was racing with thoughts of being left behind.

Was this the ocean's way of punishing man's hubris? Was she taking out her wrath on me as a scapegoat for all the other men, the men who filled her with plastic and oil, the men whose actions I was trying in part to rectify today?" but I did my part. I helped that sea turtle, I picked up plastic, the waves and rain continued to pound on me. For every one person who goes into the depths with hopes of making things better, there are 1000 indifferent people who live with no care towards the ocean. Nonetheless nature's retribution knows no mercy or discrimination. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time and my intentions meant nothing, I was but another trespasser, another parasite clinging to this pure and natural place.

I clung to the buoy with all my strength and my BCD was inflated to its fullest capacity. I took blow after salty blow from an opponent unknowably larger and stronger than myself. "Maybe I should swim for shore? I could make it if I were underwater maybe but I don't have enough air to get that far, and there's no chance I could make it on the surface in these conditions". Nevertheless I began kicking towards land, I rolled onto my back and faced away from the shore, that way it would be easier to keep my head above water. I couldn't help but be reminded of the song The wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, specifically the line "does anyone know where the love of god goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours?" I had no idea how long I had been floating there and was too afraid to check my dive computer as I didn't want to let go of the buoy. It was at that point I saw the boat climb over the waves towards me. I could make out the silhouette of the deckhand inquiring about my condition by knocking the top of his head with a fist, I replied in turn and they threw me a line.

On the way into shore they asked me about where I had been, and I explained the whole ordeal about getting tangled. The Divemaster wasn't too pleased with my having wandered off but was glad to see me safe nevertheless. I couldn't help but stand there and look out over the ocean after we made it back even in the pouring rain. I had seen our relationship with her that day, I saw the scars we put on her body. I tried to help and she tried to squash me. Not that I can blame her after all I too am at fault for her sickness in one way or another, we all are. Somewhere out there while I was having my endeavor some other man on the other side of the world was fighting the same battle I was. Only there was no one to come tap him out at the last minute. We can scar her and poison her all we want but we'll never win. To land a fatal blow on the ocean would be to land one on ourselves and She, the great mother of all life, she only ever ties or wins.