Deep Six

It was a stressful time for our whole family lately

News about dad being taken to hospital two weeks ago put writing my blog into a tailspin.  Dad was admitted with severe abdominal pain, after which an infection set in and then a critical drop in blood pressure followed.  We were all hanging on the edges of our collective places of rest as my sister Karen in California sent us updates (I would get them each morning or evening).  My parents were on holiday for the winter in the States and they had dropped into Karen and Gary’s place to visit and to complete the editing of my father’s life story, which has now been published.   They were proofing a pre-production printed copy when dad was swept off to the hospital in an ambulance.  Dad went though many different tests and at one point was in such poor condition that invasive exams were canceled.  In the end, 1.2 meters of intestine was removed due to internal hernia strangulation.  He is doing well now and has many new friends in the hospital who came to listen to stories he told about his life.  He is feeling better now and is back at Karen’s place again.  Hang on Dad!  Not time just yet to be rooting around in Davey Jones'Locker.

Advanced Diver Certification

This past weekend I spent both days out diving.  Thursday, a group of about 7 of us gathered at the same hotel used when I did my Open Water Diver certification.  We arrived with lots of time to spare as we wanted to be relaxed and spend some time on the beach.  I also wanted to purchase a wet suit, fins, gloves and dive boots.  I need boots so that I can walk through the waist deep water over the reef to the drop off, then slip on the ‘slipper’ style of fins and drop off the edge into the deep. Walking barefoot would be extremely dangerous, and using the full shoe-style of fins that I had already meant that I had to wear sandals to walk over the reef and then put on the slip-on fins and buckle the sandals to my gear at my chest.  It was a pain to do that because the sandals wanted to float all the time and bumped around on my chest in front of my face.

This first day of the weekend was designated the day for our night dive and underwater navigation training.  Navigation is done with a compass and with an understanding of how many fin kicks you do over a certain time period.  Later in the week, we combined this with a ‘search’ pattern of going in a square and taking one less kick each time we completed the square – in this way, we moved into tighter and tighter squares in a pattern that would cover an area, as if we were searching for something on the bottom.

The most spectacular dive I have ever been on (was on a number of dives many years ago) was the night dive we did that first night.  WOW!  How can I describe it?  The moon was full, and at its closest point to the earth in the year so was abnormally large and directly above us.  We all had flashlights and a glow stick tied to our tanks which floated slightly above us as we swam.  Looking up we could see the moon silhouetting schools of fish cruising the edge of the drop off passing though the columns of sparkling bubbles that we were releasing.  It was fun to shine the flashlight into every nook and cranny because each held a fish or creature of some sort in varieties that boggles the mind.  Most all the fish were sleeping too.  I moved the light right up to them and then touched them and they would move sluggishly to the side and then swim away.  The fish that were sleeping tended to be the kind that had a territory and did not school.

We met two other local men who were diving at the same time and when we were finished later that evening, they came over and showed us some of the photos that they took.  I think the most incredible fish was one that was surrounded by a penumbra of blue – Parrotfish spit out a ball of mucus and then swim inside it (their mouth is open all night holding the bubble that they are inside of).  The photo that these two men showed us had the sleeping fish inside a light blue globe.  Here is an example photo of this behavior, you will see that some sand is resting on the top of its bubble and if you look closely around on the right of the fish, you will see the edge of the bubble.  During the dive our instructor told us to shut off our lights.  With the moon above us, and still quite a bit of light from the moon to see with, he came over to each of us and waved his hand quickly in front of our masks creating an incredible swirling pattern of flashing lights.  He was agitating the luminous algae that floats suspended in the water all around us.  In the day time, it looked like small bits of paper but at night, when agitated, it releases a blue/green light for a few moments.  It was as if the stars had fallen down into the water and were dancing in front of me.  We dove to 60 feet that night and the water temperature was a steady 27 degrees C.

Two Wreck Dives

The next day, we were up early and on the road back into Jeddah, and this time, instead of going to a hotel, we went right into the center along the coast to the commercial harbor area where we boarded a small private dive-boat and went out to the Jeddah Reef which is just 15 minutes our from the land and right opposite the harbor – what did we find there?  We found ship wrecks on the bottom of the sea!  We visited two of them during the day.

When we arrived at the dock, we had to wait for the coast guard to approve our trip. We all handed in our identity cards. One of the men was called from our group after a bit longer delay than we had anticipated.  He returned, smiling and chatting with the boat-owner and another local on the boat.  We later found out that the officials thought that ‘United’ States and ‘United’ Kingdom were the same country and that a girl in our group (US citizen) was the sister of the man from UK.  With a little bit of creative footwork, the owner and the officials, both wanting the trip to be a success, fabricated the official documentation for the trip so that these two became siblings of different fathers.  Oh, and that either me, or the other older man (we did not ask to find out) was the father of the girl.  This arrangement permitted them to sanction the trip as the girl would have family along.  

We had three dives at two different locations on the day – all off the back end of the small boat as it was anchored.  One was a ‘deep’ dive, down to about 120 feet and the accompanying decompression stop at 15 feet on our way up.  The second was a recreational dive we chose to take on a shallower wreck. The third, was, rescue and recovery. The deep wreck was about 20 years old.  The wreck reminded me of what I have seen in the IMAX movies on the titanic. Spooky!  On the way down on the deep dive we passed some table-like coral structures.  These corals were larger than 12 feet across and were just like underwater juniper bushes, the variety that spread out and hug the ground.  Diving is so much like flying as you pass horizontally over the weird landscape, plants and animals.

On our Recreational Dive I saw what I took as a species of sea horse.  It was not curled up like the classic variety but stretched out and moving.  During the final third dive of the day, when we were taught the search and recovery pattern of ‘move in decreasing square patterns’ I spotted a huge blue/green Moray Eel.  Its head was as large around as my calf – it sure had big teeth!

Oh, and I think I found Davey Jones' Locker on the second ship.  No one seemed to have opened it lately either.

Reality check  

I was talking to one of the janitorial supervisors here at the University and they commented that their manager had ‘missed’ recording his overtime this past month. These people are all hired by external companies who contract to the University. This man works 7 days a week, 12 hour shifts, the company he works for will have his passport so that he cannot leave the country and he will be on a two or three year contract.  He was shorted 60 hrs of work this month worth CDN $113.  You do the math… what does he make a month?  Great place…?