When people think of scuba diving they think of warm tropical water. Maybe Hawaii or Fiji. I have never gone diving in that type of water. The warmest water I have ever gone diving in was in San Diego. If you have ever been swimming off the coast of San Diego, you'll know that it's freezing. My first real experience in the cold waters of the Pacific ocean was when my dad took me snorkeling at a place called Salt Point on the northern coast of California. He woke me up at the break of dawn, 6:00 a.m., dragged my moody self down to the cove, forced me into a wet suit and mask, and all but pushed me into the freezing Pacific ocean. It remains one of the most memorable experiences of my life. No aquarium can ever give you the experience that really being in the ocean can. No aquarium can give you the experience of the freezing cold water against your skin or the powerful movement of the waves as they rock you back and forth. No aquarium can give the experience of swimming through a school of jellyfish so thick you can't see three feet in front of you. That was my first introduction of the world beneath the waves, but it wouldn't be my last.
When I was twelve years old, my dad enrolled me in my diver's certification class. I was the youngest in the class, the only other kid was sixteen. I was at home in the water and though the wet suits and diving equipment were cumbersome on land, in the water they felt as natural as my hair and skin. In two weekends, I passed all the tests and received my certification. I was as ready for my first open-water dive as I would ever be.
In my mind I always think of my first open-water dive at the Monterey Jetty as my rolly-polly dive. Although I enjoyed that dive, unfortunately, I must say that the most memorable part of it was the humiliating experience of trying to exit the water. When we exited the water, we had to crawl out on our hands and knees. I discovered that there was a very good reason for this. I tried to get up sooner than I should have, a wave hit me and I went toppling over. That wouldn't have been so bad, if not for the fact that I couldn't get back up because of the enormous amount of weight from the scuba equipment I was wearing. The ocean decided it would lend a helping hand by repeatedly crashing its waves against me and rolling me end over end up the beach. To add insult to injury, I saw a number of older divers standing in the parking lot watching this spectacle. And although my mom denies it, I was pretty sure I saw her laughing at me!
After this incident, my father decided to take me to Whaler's Cove at Point Lobos. Getting into and out of the water here was as simple as walking up and down a boat ramp. To get to the main reef in Whaler's Cove you have to swim through a thick forest of kelp. I have been to Whaler's Cove many times since, and can picture it clearly in my head. The tall leafy strands of the kelp block most of the light from above, so the seafloor is dim. When I look up, I can see hundreds of kelp fish hanging in the water above me. They almost look like part of the vegetation as they move lazily back and forth.
Seemingly empty crevices hold rockfish that dart away, flaring their fan-like fins. Little white, translucent fish barely the length of your pinky, rest on their fins at the bottom of the seabed. They stared at me in alarm with large black eyes that seemed bigger than they were, before darting away, leaving only a puff of sand.
I love scuba diving because it's a whole new world that seems to change around you even while you're in it. You can't trust your eyes when you're underwater. The surface can look only twenty feet above your head when you're sixty feet below. You can get lost swimming only a few feet. You might think you're holding still until you realize the current has pulled you several yards from where you thought you were. Fish that look big enough to eat you, might only be a few inches long.
One of my favorite dives was at the Coronado Islands off the San Diego coastline. We took a boat out to the islands. The crew warned us not to stray far from the cove because they didn't want us to get pulled out to sea in the current that wrapped the islands. The world beneath these waves was a shock to me. The underwater landscape at Monterey that I was so used to was made up of tall mountains and valleys. Reefs grew on rocky walls while kelp blotted out the light, creating a strange dark world that hid most of its treasures out of sight. At the Coronado Islands, there was no kelp to block the sunlight, which pierced the surface and poured down in a bright current. There were no structured rock walls here. Pieces of slate-like rock formed gentle rolling hills which rose and fell in ways that seemed almost to mimic the water above me. Bright orange Garibaldi nested in the seaweed which grew in the shallow dips of the seabed. They swam up to us and peered into our masks curiously, while more cautious silver fish darted around and away from us. Giant slugs as big as my head nestled in groups on the slate rock. I scooped one up and admired its vibrant orange belly which was set so nicely against its velvety black body. I jumped when a sea lion darted around me; it was just a blur of fins and teeth as it swooped around me and darted back to the surface. I kept swimming, without really paying attention to where I was. Suddenly I looked up and saw that the gentle rolling hills of the ocean floor dropped off abruptly into a steep cliff, a river of silvery fish swimming directly in front of me, caught in the freezing cold current of water which seemed to form a wall in front of me. I stared, mesmerized, for what seemed like hours before returning to the surface with my father.
That trip remains one of my all time favorites although I don't think I enjoyed it as much as diving in Monterey. Scuba diving opened up an entirely new and strangely beautiful world for me, which both terrifies and excites me, and although, it has been a while since I have been scuba diving with my father, I hope to be going again very soon.
