A
Anonymous
Guest
In the late 1990s, one of my jobs was being a commercial diver. I had done commercial diving for many years, [boat salvage, lost item recovery,hull inspection, hull cleaning, etc] but this time it was doing commercial fishing. I was with a crew that were fishing up green sea urchins['greens']. This entailed going to whatever area was decided upon, and happened to have an open season with a quota still available, and diving down with a LARGE goodie-type bad and filling it with the greens. When the bag was full, we would surface, the tender on the boat would come over to us, retrieve the bag from the diver,give the diver another bag and then the diver would descend to get another load. Despite the romance of diving, this was a pretty 9 to 5 type of job, in the sense that it was boring. The only time that it was not boring was when you were the tender.
The tenders job was to drop the divers off, where they wanted to be, and then keep track of them; not an easy thing to do since the currents were sometimes pretty vicious, and the divers could be dropped as much as a mile apart. We all took turns tending and for all of us, it was probably the most nerve-wracking part of the job. Not because it was dangerous but because , as the tender, you had to be available ASAP to a diver when he surfaced. And most times, where you dropped the diver was nowhere near where he surfaced. This is one of the defining characteristics of greens; they like to live in high current areas.
So, anyway, this day we decided to go out to East point, an area off Saturna Island. There is a very extensive reef there which always had proved productive in the past. The name of this reef was called 'the boiling reef'. Sounds ominous??? That is only because it is. That area has the worst current, bar none, that I had ever been on . 7-9 knot currents are the norm here with the currents being absolutely unpredictable and going in very different directions, even 15 feet down. In fact, only a week of so before, one of our competitors, Reg, from the Dog [the name of his boat] was out here diving for greens, and his tender could not find him after he surfaced. I mean not at all. After about 8 hours, and a massive search, Reg washed/swam up on San Juan Island. Since we are all in dry suits, and we all had BCs, sinking and hypothermia were not a problem. Reg just inflated his BC, and his suit, dropped his weights and urchins and just rode the current until he hit San Juan Island. A phone call to our search and rescue teams and all was well. The next week, he was out again.
Towards the end or our dive that day, we had filled our quota. It had been a good day since it was only around 2 in the afternoon and we had the luxury of time to kill.Since we were fairly close, one of the guys suggested a wreck dive and I said the the Roz [The John Rosenfelt] was close, and lets try there. Okay, and so off we went. Now the Roz is not a nice clean wreck,; it has been on this reef for over 100 years and has, subsequently, had over 100 years of pretty continous pounding. But it was still was worth a dive to look anyway, and who knows, maybe we could pick up a crab or two.{these are Puget Sound King crabs and they are huge}. So we zipped on over to the wreck site, easily identified by the large amount of kelp in that area, and one, by one, we went overboard.
Well, geeze, it was just like being in an eggbeater. You were being swept in different directions at the same time.Raffi went one way, Dan went another and I went another. Try as we might, we could not stay together. However, about 30-40 feet down, we got into a lee and met up. We searched for the Roz, but found only rusted pieces of iron. No wreck at all. We figured that it had been well and truly beat to pieces, or perhaps carried by the current into deeper water. So okay, off to find a crab or two. Have you ever been laying down and had someone sit on you so that you could not get up?? Well, this is what that was like. I have never seen a current like that; it was coming straight down. I inflated my BC and I was still hammered into the bottom; Then I inflated my suit, full, and that started to get me off the bottom. At this point, the current pushed me sideways. Okay, now I can get up. UP??? It was like I was a polaris missle. With the BC and the suit full, I was heading north at a great rate, all the time, trying to dump air.
Anyway, The upshot was we all made it out safely, and Raffi got 2 nice crabs. A good day after all. We filled our quota that day, had crab for snacks and had a good time. Out on the Ocean, with your buds.....It does not get much better than that.
all the best
M
The tenders job was to drop the divers off, where they wanted to be, and then keep track of them; not an easy thing to do since the currents were sometimes pretty vicious, and the divers could be dropped as much as a mile apart. We all took turns tending and for all of us, it was probably the most nerve-wracking part of the job. Not because it was dangerous but because , as the tender, you had to be available ASAP to a diver when he surfaced. And most times, where you dropped the diver was nowhere near where he surfaced. This is one of the defining characteristics of greens; they like to live in high current areas.
So, anyway, this day we decided to go out to East point, an area off Saturna Island. There is a very extensive reef there which always had proved productive in the past. The name of this reef was called 'the boiling reef'. Sounds ominous??? That is only because it is. That area has the worst current, bar none, that I had ever been on . 7-9 knot currents are the norm here with the currents being absolutely unpredictable and going in very different directions, even 15 feet down. In fact, only a week of so before, one of our competitors, Reg, from the Dog [the name of his boat] was out here diving for greens, and his tender could not find him after he surfaced. I mean not at all. After about 8 hours, and a massive search, Reg washed/swam up on San Juan Island. Since we are all in dry suits, and we all had BCs, sinking and hypothermia were not a problem. Reg just inflated his BC, and his suit, dropped his weights and urchins and just rode the current until he hit San Juan Island. A phone call to our search and rescue teams and all was well. The next week, he was out again.
Towards the end or our dive that day, we had filled our quota. It had been a good day since it was only around 2 in the afternoon and we had the luxury of time to kill.Since we were fairly close, one of the guys suggested a wreck dive and I said the the Roz [The John Rosenfelt] was close, and lets try there. Okay, and so off we went. Now the Roz is not a nice clean wreck,; it has been on this reef for over 100 years and has, subsequently, had over 100 years of pretty continous pounding. But it was still was worth a dive to look anyway, and who knows, maybe we could pick up a crab or two.{these are Puget Sound King crabs and they are huge}. So we zipped on over to the wreck site, easily identified by the large amount of kelp in that area, and one, by one, we went overboard.
Well, geeze, it was just like being in an eggbeater. You were being swept in different directions at the same time.Raffi went one way, Dan went another and I went another. Try as we might, we could not stay together. However, about 30-40 feet down, we got into a lee and met up. We searched for the Roz, but found only rusted pieces of iron. No wreck at all. We figured that it had been well and truly beat to pieces, or perhaps carried by the current into deeper water. So okay, off to find a crab or two. Have you ever been laying down and had someone sit on you so that you could not get up?? Well, this is what that was like. I have never seen a current like that; it was coming straight down. I inflated my BC and I was still hammered into the bottom; Then I inflated my suit, full, and that started to get me off the bottom. At this point, the current pushed me sideways. Okay, now I can get up. UP??? It was like I was a polaris missle. With the BC and the suit full, I was heading north at a great rate, all the time, trying to dump air.
Anyway, The upshot was we all made it out safely, and Raffi got 2 nice crabs. A good day after all. We filled our quota that day, had crab for snacks and had a good time. Out on the Ocean, with your buds.....It does not get much better than that.
all the best
M
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