Life as an underwater explorer (Blog #1)

Okay, so that's not my actual job title, although it is definitely what I perceive myself to be. My name is Mark, and I'm a diver, both commercially and recreationally. After logging thousands of commercial dives and hundreds of recreational ones, I'm now almost more comfortable in the water than out of it.

This is a blog (or an attempt at one) about my life so far as a diver. It is a blog telling about the trials, troubles, and tribulations of working in the commercial industry. It is a blog telling some of the funnier stories, and more interesting happenings in what has slowly become my average working day. It is intended to educate, amuse, and enlighten people on the ups and downs of the world in which many of us work daily, but I'll be happy if I can just keep my readers from getting bored.

I have been fortunate enough to dive in a wide variety of conditions all over the world. My career has taken me from salmon farms in the North Sea to gold fields in California, and almost everything in between.
I've left surface in places with water as clear as gin, and 'blown bubbles' in water so dark, polluted, and disgusting that I was glad that I couldn't see my own hands touching the face-plate of my diving helmet.
I've metal detected for gold and silver coins on ancient shipwrecks, and helped build massive modern renewable energy projects miles offshore.
I have had buckets of cold water dumped over my head to keep me cool, while sitting as a standby diver in some of the warmer climates, and I've also had to urinate on my own frozen hands so that I could use them enough to cast off the boat in the middle of a blizzard.
Like most of us who've been in the industry for any long period of time, I've blown weeks worth of pay in a single weekend, and I've had to eat canned soup and moldy bread, while praying that the phone will ring soon with news of another job so that I could get paid again. And so far, it always has.

I realize that the whole point in a blog is to almost keep an online diary with current up to date events being related as they happen, and for this reason I will not only tell stories that have happened, but also try and keep you all updated on events as they are unfolding on a somewhat weekly basis. So this is just the first of hopefully many blogs that I will be posting, although for the most part names of people and companies that I have worked for will be changed, unless I have the express permission of those involved.

Although I have never lost my keenness towards being willing to get in the water at every opportunity, I have definitely lost my naivety about the job. I have realized that its nowhere near as glamorous as I first thought. I was told that within a year of dive school I would never have to worry about finances ever again, and stupidly thought that my biggest problem by this point in my life would be as to what color I wanted my Ferrari to be.

The promise of good money wasn't the reason I got into this industry though. It was the opportunity for adventure, the chance to travel the world from a young age and see and do things that most people wouldn't be able to imagine. Some people join the military for the same reasons, and fair play to them, but I decided to join the ranks of the working divers, and helped build the harbors that house the merchant, oil, and fishing fleets of the world.

The industry now, as I'm writing this, is very different from the one which I started out in over a decade ago. Work is a lot more scarce now then there was, but there are many times more divers fighting for it. The safety culture of the oil industry has slowly made it's way down into the minds and heads of the civils or inshore diver, and accidents, though they still happen, are a lot less frequent. This is mostly thanks to changes or checks that have been put in place, usually after a fatal incident has happened.

At the age of 12, I moved from my home just outside Carlisle in England, to a small town named Greenville in northern California. Before this move, my only real experience with water had been swimming lessons at the local pool. On arrival in the Sierra Nevada mountain range in California though, I soon found myself surrounded by lakes, rivers and creeks. In fact, my new house had a creek that ran right at the back of the property. This was full of swimming holes and was the perfect place to explore for a young boy and his brothers. It was here that I first found 'black sand' and a small amount of gold dust. We would take sand from the bottom of the creek, and pan it at the waters edge for hours, hoping to find just a little speck of gold in the bottom of the pan.

Fast forward a year and we had moved again, but this time it wasn't as far away. We now lived in the town of Paradise in Northern California. Still surrounded by lakes, rivers, and creeks, if possible this gave my brothers and I even more opportunities to mess about in the water. Dad was always fishing , and before long he realized that there were many fishing lures at the bottom of the river that he was fishing in. So we would be recruited after the big salmon runs to snorkel around looking for these fishing lures, usually worth at least 5$ each, and would dive down and find them, as well as crawdads for dinner that night.

As you can imagine it was only a matter of time until I took up scuba diving rather than free-diving. Although I always preferred the freedom of freediving, the ability to stay underwater without coming back up for air, gave me a lot more time to explore. I had just graduated from high school and Dad bought me a couple of lessons at Paradise Dive Center. The deal was that I had to buy my own gear and he bought the lessons. I was working two jobs at the time, and was able to save up the amount needed after a few months of barely spending a penny. So at the age of 17 I got certified at Paradise Dive Center and my first open water dive was up in Lake Tahoe. If you have never been to Lake Tahoe, I would highly recommend it. Beautiful, clear water, and in my opinion one of the most peaceful places in the world. I got up at about half past four (Not that difficult, considering this was when I usually started work at the coffee shop) and drove up to the Lake to be ready at the dive site for 8 o clock. We all had a quick dive, (which I spent mostly flapping about underwater, looking like an idiot who couldn't control his buoyancy), trying to pass the necessary skills tests, you know the ones where you take your mask off etc.
As much as I had done a lot of free-diving at this point, I was by no means a natural at scuba diving. Getting used to all this heavy gear underwater, took a little bit of doing for me.
After the two dives that day, I set off to drive around the lake, which I soon realized was a lot bigger undertaking as I first thought it was going to be. A few hours later, in the dark, I drove into the campsite and set up my tent using the headlights of my car. Exhausted I fell asleep and was woken up by the instructors loading dive gear into their cars for another day under the surface of the lake.
Regretfully, I didn't take any pictures on that trip to Tahoe, but here is one taken years later of my brother-in-law and myself post dive up at the lake. I'm on the left.
My first dive that second day didn't quite go to plan. At a depth of about 60ft my BCD started inflating by itself, and I shot to the surface. Inexperienced and unsure as to what to do, all I managed to do was to lay out flat and breathe out to stop my lungs from exploding as I rocketed upwards. At the surface my BCD continued to inflate and I swam the short distance to the shore with the loud hiss of air venting from my jacket. The instructor on the shore was able to help me out of my gear as we tried to figure out what the problem was. Turns out that because I hadn't cleaned my gear properly the night before, and instead had gone driving around for hours, one of the valves in the BCD was clogged full of sand, and had stuck open. Valuable lesson number one was learned as I realized the importance of cleaning and maintaining the gear. If I had been much deeper than I had been, this could have stopped my diving career in its tracks due to coming up so quickly, but thankfully I was ok, and went back into the water later on that day. My second dive of the day was uneventful, but while flapping about trying to get my buoyancy under control, I found $3.50 in quarters lying on the sand at a depth of about 40 feet. These must have fallen out of the pocket of someone on a boat above. Enough to buy myself a cheeseburger on the way home.

As I drove back to Paradise that night I was exhausted. I can still clearly remember driving home, Weezer's blue album playing over my car cd player, and a massive smile on my face that stayed for weeks. Even though I'd had a few troubles with buoyancy etc, I was completely hooked. I didn't know what I was going to do with my life at that point, but I knew it was going to be something in or on the water.

I'll leave this for now, but stay tuned for more of what I've gotten up to. My next blog I intend to cover my time at dive school, and a few current jobs I've done in the last few weeks.
Thanks for taking the time to read this, and please don't hesitate to leave feedback.