The Wall: Chronicle of a Scuba Trial
Chapter 1

The Dive

The Caribbean water is shimmering and blue, transparent on this sunny day. The dive boat ties up at a preset mooring, so no anchor will disturb the delicate coral beneath. One by one, ten scuba divers jump off the boat. Each has requisite air tank and regulator, face mask and fins, and most are clad in a brightly-colored, thin wet suit to protect from accidental abrasions.

A young woman is the leader or divemaster, and she will guide the dive. The other nine are diving for pleasure and buddied up for safety, like kids at a summer camp swim. The nine tread water on the surface next to the boat, until the divemaster asks for the OK sign. After each diver signals OK by forming an "O" with thumb and forefinger, she says Let's go! and the dive commences.

The opaque surface gives way to another world below, one alive with fish and invertebrates of odd shapes and beautiful colors. It is a world that Jacques Cousteau first brought to millions of television viewers in the 1950s and 1960s. At the same time modern scuba gear -- invented by Cousteau and Emil Gagnan in France during World War II -- made underwater exploration possible for just about anyone with the desire. Still, it took several decades of product development and marketing for scuba to become a major industry. As an industry scuba is much like downhill skiing: high-tech equipment; glossy magazines with brightly-colored covers; air travel required to reach the best sites; emphasis on safety; official acknowledgment that injuries can occur if one is not trained and careful.

Each year millions of divers travel to warm waters all over the globe. Especially popular in the Western Hemisphere, with a plethora of healthy coral reefs, are the Bahamas, several Caribbean islands, and the Yucatan coast of Mexico and Central America.

For people whose image of the sea comes only from the beach or the deck of a boat, the first underwater view is a mind-expanding nuevo mundo. It is said that three sites create the most awe when first seen in person, no matter how many times they have been viewed on television: Arizona's Grand Canyon, the earth from outer space, and a healthy coral reef.

It doesn't take the divers long to reach a sandy bottom thirty feet below the boat. The sand is punctuated by ridges of high coral heads. Hundreds of yellow grunts and jack fish dart about, oblivious to their new mammalian neighbors. The divers hover just over the sand while the divemaster counts heads and signs to each for their OK signal, then with more sign language she indicates 'follow me.' She is easy to follow as underwater visibility is almost 100 feet in any direction (the typical inland lake has visibility of only two to four feet). Perfect dive conditions. The water is warm, visibility is excellent, sea life is abundant. Less then three minutes into the dive they reach the edge of an underwater cliff. From this edge, farther than the eye can see horizontally, is an empty blueness. Over the cliff and almost straight down is the wall, a 5000-foot near vertical descent to a new bottom.

The first few hundred feet of the wall is a natural collage of hard and soft coral, in which live some of the more interesting sea creatures: anemones, shrimps, christmas tree worms, crabs, eels, octopi, and a variety of tropical fish. Sometimes along the wall one can also find pelagic species, such as sharks, barracudas, stingrays and giant turtles. These larger, free-swimming creatures don't stay long before retreating to the open sea. Since scuba divers also cannot stay long before returning to the surface (perhaps 20 minutes or so at moderate depths), most attention is devoted to the wall itself.

The divers float over the cliff's edge, eyes on the wall as they descend: 40-50-60 feet. Ten minutes into the dive they reach the agreed-upon maximum depth of 100 feet. The coral collage shows no sign of ending, but for safety they will go no deeper. Instead they will start a slow ascent, to let the accumulated nitrogen in their tissues bubble out slowly. To go deeper would shorten the safe dive time considerably and risk the bends, a brutal pain that comes from nitrogen escaping too quickly and forming large gas bubbles that interfere with circulation.

Another potential problem of going deeper is simply running out of air and drowning. The beauty of scuba, which stands for self-contained underwater breathing apparatus, is that you are free of any connection to the surface, and can go where you will. The downside is that you carry your air supply with you, and there is no more to be had if that runs out (except possibly sharing an air hose with your buddy, always a risky proposition). So divers pace themselves, and rarely run out of air. Strict guidelines mandate how deep to go, how long to stay and how quickly to ascend. As a result, thousands of dives have been made here, on this wall, with no fatality and only a few mishaps. Problems have occurred mainly when divers foolishly went too deep or stayed too long.

Periodically the divemaster turns around to count heads. Otherwise she is busy searching for life that her less-experienced charges might not see (she has been on this wall many times). Her job is to guide the dive and try to make it memorable, even exciting. Who knows what they might find? At a depth of 82 feet she spots a giant crab hiding in a coral crevice. She alerts the other divers, who stop to gawk at the crustacean, or what they can see of it. The crab is at least three feet across, but only the eyes and huge front claws are visible. The claws sweep back and forth, warning intruders to stay away. The crab cannot know these divers mean no harm, and sensibly refuses to come out of its recess. The divers move on.

Each square yard of the wall is alive. Brightly colored forms that look like plants or rocks or weeds are instead coral, members of the animal kingdom, and built up of millions of tiny polyps. Three foot-long orange basket corals, each with an opening two feet in diamater, jut out horizontally from the cliff. In between sway deep-purple gorgonions, corals that look like giant leafs with an intricate, lattice design. And in between them are the pencil thin, ultra long 'whip' corals, that seem to start nowhere in particular and go on forever.

Hugging the wall are rock hard brain corals, so named because their serpiginous ridges -- each an endless colony of tiny corals -- look like the human brain. Dotting the surface in random fashion are intriguing Christmas tree worms, about 2 inches high and an inch wide. They don't look like any kind of worm at all, but instead suggest miniature pine trees growing out of a hollow and stationary stalk. A diver pokes his finger toward one of them; with shutter speed the threatened worm retracts into its stalk. One minute there is a 'tree' and the next second it is gone. (If you wait long enough, and at a distance, you can see it slowly emerge again.)

Colors are muted at depth, due to absorption of the sun's rays by the water. Reds and yellows are the first to go, and beyond 60 feet or so everything tends to have a bluish, brownish, maroonish tinge -- until you shine your light. Then the real colors are restored, and you see ocean life the way it looks just below the surface.

Along the wall are sea anemones, one of the more colorful sea creatures. A sedentary flower-like invertebrate, it sports dozens of bright-white, pink-tipped slender arms that sway gently back and forth, searching for nutrients. Somehow, the anemone manages to cull from the ocean all the food required, and bring it to a centrally-located (but hard to see) mouth. Even more interesting is what can usually be found, almost hidden, among the white appendages: a bright red, diaphanous shrimp. The shimp rests clinging to one anemone arm, waiting. Perhaps to escape its enemies, or to share whatever dinner comes along. One is certain this is a true symbiotic relationship, but how does the anemone benefit?

You could stay in one place for many minutes and not be bored, there is that much to engage the senses. And the perspective changes depending on your distance and field of view. At a distance of, say, three feet from the wall you have your large corals, hard and soft, and whatever fish life swims by. At a distance of 6 inches you have your worms, shrimps and other invertebrates, plus the tiny creatures that live in the myriad nooks and crannies found on any coral reef. And if you happened to have magnifying lens, you would find still more to marvel at, such as the complex anatomy of the individual coral polyp.

The reef is not unlike a tropical rain forest, in its abundance and variety of life. But imagine a rain forest where you can defy gravity, where you can place yourself at any level at will, from the ground to the tree tops. You do this effortlessly, and as a bonus you don't have to worry about stepping on squiggly things or getting bitten by nasty creatures you can't see. True, your time is limited in this underwater forest, but that seems a small price to pay for the experience. And you can always return for another visit.

At 70 feet the group comes upon a diver's delight! The divemaster has found a large green moray eel, its bulbous head poking out from a crevice in the coral. She gives the snapping hand signal that means "moray" and everyone crowds around the opening. The eel's head is fully occupied by its mouth, a cavernous space that is constantly opening and closing, revealing sharp teeth each time the jaws widen. A fascination, this weird sea creature. It could grace the cover of any pulp science fiction as visual teaser for stories about "strange life on strange worlds."

The mouth looks menacing, but the opening and closing is really nothing more than the eel's normal breathing. Still, the creature is almost blind, and will bite anything that comes close. Hands are kept away. The moray refuses to reveal more of its sinuous body, which judging by head size is at least five feet long. A minute or two passes and it is time to move on, to ascend some more.

The divemaster glances back to count heads. One, two, three - - - eight. ONLY EIGHT! She scans the horizon frantically. No ninth diver. She started with nine.

Her head counting alerts others. The missing diver's buddy then notices that his partner -- another young woman -- is no longer among them. Everyone else looks around and counts: one-two-three-four----eight, plus the divemaster. No mistake. Instinctively, everyone looks up (all clear) then down. Perhaps seventy-five feet below they see a white scuba tank on the back of a diver, moving away from them. And still descending!

The divemaster signals the others to continue their slow ascent and get back to the boat. The buddy of the wayward diver shakes his head and begins to descend, intending to rescue his sinking partner. The divemaster pulls on his arm and shakes her head. Unmistakably, with eyes and hands, she gestures No! No! He is to ascend and return to the boat with the others. He is not trained to go deeper, or to attempt any sort of rescue.

The eight divers obey and continue their ascent, while the divemaster descends toward the sinking scuba tank. At 130 feet she realizes catching up is hopeless. The lost diver is now at a depth of at least 200 feet and continuing to fall. To follow the diver is to risk joining her in death. Beyond 200 feet the divemaster would run out of air before returning to the surface and her quest (alive? dead already?) is still descending.

Seven minutes later the other divers surface, 100 yards from their boat. They were not suppose to surface just yet, or this far away. The boat captain and an on-board spotter see them waving arms frantically, the sign of diver distress. But their distress is for the one lost; they themselves are in no physical danger. The surface is calm and they are now breathing earth's bountiful atmosphere.

The captain releases the mooring line and brings the boat around, and one by one the divers climb aboard. The spotter helps them remove their equipment.

What happened?

We lost a diver!

What happened?

We don't know!

Where's Charlene [the divemaster]?

She dove deeper to try to get her! We left her at 70 feet!

What happened?

We don't know. We don't know. We don't know.

Who is it?

Only the lost diver's buddy knows her name. He speaks. She's Jennie Knowlton. My girlfriend. He begins to cry and vomit mucus at the same time.

The captain is in a whirlwind. A scuba instructor himself, he must now act quickly as both captain and diver, and on limited information from his stunned passengers. First, secure their safety. That done, he brings the boat back to the mooring, while making a distress call to the dive shop.

This is Coral Cruiser at the North Wall, he says. We have two down divers. Repeat, two down divers, both in the water. I need boat assistance and rescue divers immediately. Both divers may be at great depth. I need boat assistance and wall divers immediately. I am going down now, and Johnnie [spotter] will stay on the boat. There is more give and take on the radio, and it is clear that help will be coming quickly.

The spotter secures the mooring while the Captain dons scuba gear with the speed of a professional. Half a minute later he is in the water, heading toward the wall. As he reaches the edge he sees his divemaster coming up, alone. They rendevous on the sandy bottom. She takes out her dive slate and writes: "Disapp. at 200 ft & still sinking." The message is sufficient and final.

The divemaster must remain under water for several more minutes, but the captain can go back to the boat right away. He does.

Ten minutes later the divemaster surfaces next to the boat and climbs aboard. The pressure marks from her face mask frame sad eyes, not filled with tears but with a mixture of terror and anger. There is no worse tragedy for a professional in the scuba business than losing a diver. Her first words are to the victim's buddy. What happened? Her tone is accusatory.

I don't know, he cries. He, too, is scared. It is not like some friend is lost in the woods, or in a cave, or on a boat at sea; in those situations, there is always hope. People lost for days or weeks in most circumstances can survive. The one exceptional circumstance of course is if you run out of air. Now his girl friend is lost at the bottom of the ocean, from which there can be no return. The fact is obvious to all aboard Coral Cruiser, on this gloriously sunny day.

He has no explanation. He is intimidated by the divermaster's glare, by the silence of everyone about him, indeed by the silence of the sea itself. There is nothing to intrude on his answer. He mumbles something about looking at the moray eel, of not knowing his girlfriend was sinking, of everything happening so fast. The divemaster realizes further questioning will lead nowhere, at least not now. She, the boat captain and spotter confer at the front of the boat. Then she takes to the radio and speaks with the shop manager. The shop is located at the dock, from where the rescue boat has just left, about four miles away. Divemaster and captain are told to stay put, help is coming.

The divemaster is too upset to query the other divers, who are getting out of wet suits and putting their gear away. The captain speaks to them. We have lost a diver, he says. We have another boat coming to look for her. I am sorry but I cannot take you back just yet. We will need to stay here awhile.

Everyone is afraid to speak to the lost diver's buddy. They want to ask if his girlfriend was sick. Any history of seizures? Of asthma? They want to ask if he knew she was falling away (after all, buddies are suppose to keep track of each other under water). They want to ask him, simply, what happened. But they ask nothing. There is silence, except for the sound of gentle wavelets slapping against the boat's hull.

A few minutes later another boat arrives, approaching at 30 knots. It pulls up quickly, and close enough for the Coral Cruiser divemaster to climb aboard. She confers with two male rescue divers on the second boat, each of whom has dual air tanks strapped on. They are planning a quick search. She knows it will be fruitless but is thankful for their assistance. Having just left the water at great depth, she cannot go back to the same depth so soon, but she can go to a shallower area, and locate the site where the sinking took place.

The three divers jump in. The divemaster stays at cliff's edge (30 feet depth) while the two others go deeper. They reach a depth of about 150 feet and can see another 100 feet further down; no scuba tank, no human form is visible below them. They cannot go deeper without risking the bends. Having reached this depth they must now ascend. And because they went so deep, they must also hover 20 feet below the surface for several minutes, to let excess nitrogen bubble off safely.

Both rescue divers and the divemaster surface and return to the second boat.

Together, the two boats return to the dock. The search is over.