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Lsdeep |
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Post subject: Diving Hood Canal: Brace yourself for a really cool trip
 Posted: Mar 26, 2007 - 08:42 PM
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Joined: Feb 18, 2007
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By AMANDA CASTLEMAN
"Welcome to cold-water diving," one of my companions says. "We call it combat diving. It's not for the weak."
True. Around 80 pounds of equipment girdle my body: great elephant folds of fleece jammed into a drysuit, gloves, mask, weights, tanks and tubes, tubes, tubes. My features pinch through the neoprene hood's tiny porthole.
Eh-oh. I look like a Teletubby.
My scuba career largely has been a toddle in the park: a dozen dips in the balmy Caribbean. A friend wrote: "I wish I could've been there ... (but) your home dives will be your first in real water. That's what counts."
Five months later, my fins splay over Hood Canal, that 60-mile fishhook fjord on the Olympic Peninsula. One hand secures my mask and mouthpiece (regulator); the other gear flaps around my torso. I focus on the horizon -- sun-syruped Olympic foothills -- and take a giant stride off Pacific Adventure's dive boat, the Down Time.
The drysuit shrink-wraps against my body. Corking upward, I roll onto my back, suspended in the jade cradle of Puget Sound. The Emerald Ocean, they call it.
At last.
However "real," these waters also are troubled. Dead critters keep washing ashore.
Hood Canal is slender, averaging just 1 1/2 miles across, the only Western fjord in the continental U.S. "It's a long, skinny body of water. Naturally it has poor circulation," explains Wayne Palsson, a research scientist for the Department of Fish and Wildlife.
To make matters worse, its mouth is shallow. Imagine filling a double sink by overflowing one side.
Fresh water brings oxygen -- and life. The lower stretches of the canal fight for air, especially the curve south of Lilliwaup.
The problem is somewhat cyclical, but the huge 2003 and 2006 fish kills shocked the community -- from tribal fishermen to University of Washington marine biologists. "What is the smoking gun?" Palsson asks. "A change in forest practices? Climate? Septic systems bleeding nitrogen? No one knows yet."
"The Hood Canal is dying," headlines scream. Then, practically in the next breath, the same publications rank the area among the world's premiere cold-water dive sites.
What gives?
Time to see for myself, clearly.
Captain Diane Coleman stuffs me into the borrowed gear. With a mother's patience, she smoothes hair wisps into my hood and adjusts drysuit seals around my irritatingly dainty wrists.
Combat diving is not the men's club I expected.
Sure, tough guys exist here -- swaggering on the decks and tech-talking of bubble-free rebreather units. But on the Down Time, we have gentle camaraderie and fresh-baked snacks. Chew on that, gear heads!
Cookies and courtesy may be the future. Female divers, typically less aggressive, nonetheless grab more and more of the market. Seattle Scuba School director Craig Gillespie notes, "My new students jumped from 30 percent women to 57 percent in the last 10 years."
Debbie Cowan, a petite 53-year-old medical technologist, could be the poster girl for this trend. "I certified in June 2006 and have done 76 cold-water dives since. My goal is 100 before my first anniversary.
"Last time I was out, we had seven divers on the boat. I was the oldest, the smallest, the only woman ... and I kept up with the big boys."
So much of scuba is about judgment: confidence and a cool head. The sport can be weirdly passive. Often a diver hovers -- rather than swimming -- and changes position using subtle lung and gear adjustments, the odd flick of a fin.
Underwater, it all flows easy, free from gravity's punishment.
And the topside has benefits too, explains Janna Nichols, a marine life instructor and grandmother of three: "My lady diver friends and I are all pushing 50, the age where doctors recommend weight-bearing exercise to prevent osteoporosis. As we're trudging into the water, we always joke about that. Because we're each hauling around 100 pounds -- a good chunk of weight!"
My load is somewhat lighter, but I still waddle to the Down Time's platform.
Big breath. Spsssss-hrrurrrr. Then -- bam! -- into the 46-degree water. Cold sears my cheekbones and forehead, tries to worm under my cuffs. I descend the anchor line with Don Coleman, Pacific Adventure's other owner.
Combat diving is like a game arcade: stimulus, everywhere, at once. Equalize pressure in the sinuses, deflate the vest (called a buoyancy control device), pump air into the drysuit, don't shiver and check out that copper rockfish!
Sea stars splay along the bottom. Some have that classic configuration, ready to top a Christmas tree. Others, of the sunflower variety, drape two-dozen spaghetti-soft limbs over the rocks. Greedy eaters, they devour urchins, bivalves and even dead fish, capturing prey with more than 15,000 sucker feet.
Sponges, kelp and invertebrates patchwork the reef: a maroon, mottled effect. The look's so good, the decorator crabs had to have it. They dress in algae and tiny seaweed --swapping these live accessories from shell to shell as they grow.
White and orange plumose anemones flutter like small mushroom clouds. My wake bounces a sea cucumber off its perch, plump body writhing in "Matrix"-style slo-mo. Coleman shepherds it home.
At 35 feet, he pokes his flashlight between two rocks. Lurching, I follow suit.
A live Easter Island god peers back.
I recoil, eyebrows flaring. "Wolf eel," he explains, writing in pencil on a plastic wrist slate.
Drifting down again, I study the face -- an icon as if hacked from granite, then weathered almost back to boulder. Old Man Wolf Eel's round eyes, two dark disks, regard me. His lips part slightly, revealing a mouth that slashes deep like Pac-Man's. I shiver.
Oh, I'm not scared of Anarrhichthys ocellatus. Males can reach 8 feet, true, and occasionally clamp the fingers of rude, poky divers "like a pair of pliers." But they're largely a gentle, sweet species, nicknamed "underwater Muppets."
No, I am moved by what lies beneath -- all that I did not know.
I grew up on the coast of Puget Sound, galloping along drift logs and squelching across mud flats. Yet the inland ocean remained a cipher: a reflecting pond for the snow-shadowed mountains.
Now I've plunged through the looking glass.
Have I any right to be here, wide-eyed in Wonderland, as fish strain for air?
Absolutely, Palsson says. "Witness this drama -- just from a distance. Don't make a gasping, stressed creature burn energy escaping you. At acute times, say, from mid-August to October, don't chase fish around Hood Canal."
I can't spot the problem on a clear March afternoon. Pulali Point's reef bustled like Pike Place Market during the coffee rush.
Are reports of the fjord's death greatly exaggerated?
Yes and no, Coleman explains. The troubled area is the southern U-bend, not the whole 60-mile shebang. "We can't stop damage, but we can slow it down, especially in the north. There's still a lot worth saving."
I ponder all this, as we rise toward the shimmering surface. We leave behind the Emerald Ocean's cold shadows and mysteries. Giant octopuses. Sixgill sharks. Ottoman-size sea stars. My friend, Old Man Wolf Eel.
Real water. Indeed.
Let's keep it that way.
If you go
Learning -- A basic scuba course runs $300-$400. The school's brand or prestige is less important than the instructor's reputation. Tropical divers may want to take a drysuit class or Northwest orientation. Seek advice on bulletin boards such as nwdiveclub.com and northwestdiver.com.
Diving -- "Diving in the Northwest's protected waters is a great deal," says Department of Fish and Wildlife research scientist Wayne Palsson. "The Hood Canal has hardly any currents."
"Octopus Hole is right off Highway 101, so be careful crossing the road in gear," he advises. "Sund Rocks is private, so you have to pay to get in, but there's a Porta Potty. Waketickeh Creek is the area's third marine reserve, also popular."
Chartering -- Pacific Adventure, captained by Don and Diane Coleman, visits popular sites in the canal's healthier northern stretches, such as Pulali Point and the Pinnacle. The new Down Time is a speedy 1968 Chris Craft Commander, refit for divers. A two-tank excursion costs $70, including snacks. Contact: Pleasant Harbor Marina, Brinnon; 206-714-1482; pacadventure.com.
Traveling -- Budget three hours from Seattle to Brinnon, either looping around the Sound's base or cutting across on the Edmonds-Kingston ferry. The latter is more relaxing, but wait times can be intense on weekends. Pleasant Harbor Marina is by milepost 309 of U.S. 101.
Researching -- Scientists examine the "dead zone" in the Hood Canal Dissolved Oxygen Program (hoodcanal.washington.edu). They work closely with the Hood Canal Salmon Enhancement Group (hcseg.com).
Helping -- Add to the fish and invertebrate database, maintained by the Reef Environmental Education Foundation (reef.org). The Washington Scuba Alliance fights for more underwater parks, as well as monitoring critters and removing invasive species, such as tunicates in Hood Canal (wascubaalliance.org).
Seattle-based freelancer Amanda Castleman can be reached by e-mail at amanda@amandacastleman.com. |
_________________
Idealism is what precedes experience - cynicism is what follows.
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