I drove a little more than an hour north to meet a fellow instructor at Venice Beach, Florida today. Some 10,000 years ago it was a huge delta and nursery to the biggest sharks in the world. She dives there often and had invited me to join her. We met at 9 am and were pleased to see that conditions on the beach were almost ideal — clear sky, not a breeze, hardly a ripple on the Gulf and about 10 feet of visibility, which is plenty to keep track of your buddy and way more than you need to hunt for the Megalodon.

In the water by 9:30, we swam out past the sandbar before setting the compass for a little reef that lies not far off shore. If you are not looking at rocks, you are looking at sand. Or rather a thin silty layer on top of a mixture of sand and course sand filled with black bits of broken up fossils.

I watched my guide to see her fossil hunting technique: Stop where there are little indentations that look like fish holes in the sand and make small waving motions to remove the silt without wrecking the visibility too much. This worked well.

And then I tried out another technique: Run your hand along the surface and when you feel something hard or see any break in the surface grab it and pull it out. This created a bit more turbidity. . . . okay, a lot more turbidity. But it did yeild some nice teeth and fossils.

Now, I do have a fondness for history. So maybe it isn’t surprising that before long I could feel the presence of the now extinct Carcharodon Megalodon as well as its cousins that survive today. While the teeth we were uncovering were tens of thousands of years old, it was almost as if they were circling just outside of our visibility watching us, wandering about these slow moving and noisy creatures that seem to be looking intently for something.

We found a good bit of black treasure; about 30 teeth in all, and we kept a few rib bones, and a well-preserved vertebrae. Only one tooth was from a Megalodon, and that was alright. I had spent 100 minutes swimming with the giants of old and their like, and survived to tell about it. On the way back home, I stopped at a friend’s house and gave the teeth to her eight- and five-year old girls along with the 10,000 year old story of a shark nursery that attracted the biggest shark of all time.

There was one tooth I kept for myself; a little bigger than an inch across the top, it is a perfect Snaggletooth that will go on a necklace as a reminder of the responsibility we have to the ocean and its creatures that were doing so well before we got involved.

Even before a dive begins, any diver can call the dive for any reason. And stress is a very good reason.

One of the hard and fast rules of tec diving is “Any team member can call the dive for any reason at any time.” No questions. No fear of getting an earful when you get back to the surface. Whether it is because of an equipment failure or simply because someone has a bad feeling, the thumbs up “turn the dive” does not begin a conversation about what is wrong or why. It is a command that the rest of the team responds to by immediately. The dive is over.

Another common rule among tec divers is that if three things go wrong, abort the dive. Too many little things can add up to one big thing, a cascading series of failures. Or too many things can add up to a whole lot of stress, and when you are diving tec you need to have your head on straight so you can execute your dive plan and deal with issues calmly and effectively. Even with plenty of gas and gear that is functioning perfectly, errors in judgement can cost you your life and possibly that of your team.

So you pay for a private class and for the last two days of diving you drive four hours, spend the night in a hotel, and when setting up your gear you discover a series of minor problems. A couple pieces of gear left at home, but your instructor has extras you can use. A short fill in one of your deco bottle, but it can be topped up right where you are. A few minor incidents. Each problem has a solution. But each problem adds more stress. It no longer feels right.

Would you call the dive? Or would you feel pressured by the effort and expense of getting here? Would you feel pressured by knowing it would be five months before you could reschedule? The additional expenses to reschedule? Or would you be too embarrassed? Would you tell yourself to suck it up? Would you “challenge” yourself?

It is hard to know what you might do when faced with situation that is not black and white, and that is why I am so proud of what my student did this morning. This scenario really happened, and he had the self-awareness and confidence to know his stress level was too high, too many things were going wrong, and call the dives before we even got to the water.

“It just doesn’t feel right” is and should be reason enough to end any dive, even before it starts. It may be the best guarantee that you will have a chance to come back and dive another day.

“Hands-Only CPR” has been talked about a lot lately. While victims of a heart attack are more than twice as likely to survive when they receive CPR, they rarely do. Telling rescuers not to give rescue breathing increases the chances that they will actually use their training and help someone suffering a heart attack on the street.

Dive accidents and drowning are different.

Victims of dive accidents and drowning still benefit from rescue breathing when they are not breathing on their own. And while it is impossible to administer CPR in-water, rescue breathing alone can help until they can be moved from the water.

Read the Hands-Only CPR Statement from DAN Education at Divers Alert Network (DAN)

For more information on dive accident management or to become a Rescue Diver, contact your local dive shop or ask Lucky Scuba.

In a few weeks I will be heading up to Tampa for the 2010 Fall Heritage Awareness Diving Seminar at the Florida Aquarium. This two-day conference is sponsored by the Florida Public Archaeology Network, the Florida Bureau of Archaeological Research, and the Florida Aquarium.

The material we will discuss is good stuff–artificial reefs, ship construction, federal and state laws, even seafaring cultures and their impact on the New World! But I find myself just as excited about getting inside the Florida Aquarium and doing the dives with my buddy Bob Eskew of Blue Water Explorers (Cortez, Florida) the next day.

About 12 years ago, I was Divemaster on one of Bob’s three-dive trips when I blew out my knee getting people into the water for the first dive. I made it through the trip, and Bob graciously dropped me off at the boat where I was staying at the time and handled all the tanks and gear by himself. I wonder if he remembers that.

View more pictures

View more pictures

Patrice and Romain were excellent hosts, and I look forward to going back when there is more time to visit the cenotes.

Travelogue

Day 1: Thursday, October 29

We met the group from Seven Seas Scuba at Miami International in a 15-passenger van with a trailer for dive gear and drove down to Key Largo. Relaxing in the hot tub we talked about the next five days of diving.

Day 2: Friday, October 30

After a continental breakfast at the hotel we walked across the parking lot to meet the Horizon Divers‘ boat at 8:00 am. We dove the USCGC Duane and Molasses Reef, where we saw Spotted Eagle Rays, Nurse sharks, Florida Spiny Lobster, Queen and French Angels, Parrot Fish, Hog Fish, Spotted Moray, Sting Ray, many variety of coral, tube worms, crustaceans, and other tropical fish. Since this second dive is only in 30 feet of water, we got plenty of bottom time in John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park!

Day 2 Gallery

Day 3: Saturday, October 31

We left the hotel early to make the drive to Key West, where we met the Starfish Enterprise II, Subtropic Dive Center‘s 42′ vessel that took us to the Vandenberg.

The Vandenberg was just sunk as an artificial reef in May of 2009, and she is one of the largest shipwrecks in the world. Being 522 feet long, it is impossible to survey this entire wreck on one dive. We had two 30 minute dives on this site, and with 100 ft of visibility and only a light current, we were able to explore the forward part of the ship on one dive and the aft on the second. Two of us were finishing a course in decompression and did one 80 minute dive. They were the guys with the camera, so most of the pictures show this beautiful ship through their eyes.

We had lunch at Pepe’s in Key West and watched people gettting ready for Fantasy Fest at the southernmost point of the continental United States before heading back up the length of the Keys and north past Miami to West Palm Beach.

Day 3 Gallery

Day 4: Sunday, November 1

The continental shelf comes very close to the shore on the east coast of Florida, so we had only a short boat ride on Sirena before arriving at the Mizpah. The conditions today were not as good as they typically are. We didn’t have much of a current to flush out the turbidity and help us drift along. The folks at Pura Vida did a wonderful job of taking care of us, and everyone had a wonderful couple of dives in spite of the unusual conditions.

Day 4 Gallery

After our dives we made our way north and west to drop one person off in Orlando before heading to Williston, and Florida cave country.

Day 5: Monday, November 2

We slept in today, slowly gathering in the Williston Motor Inn’s Hilltop Family Restaraunt between 7:30 and 9:00 am. After we had all eaten breakfast and shared stories, we loaded up in the van for a five minute drive to Blue Grotto. After taking some picture in and around the bell, Louis led a couple groups around the loop that goes down a passage to 90 ft and back up the other side.

And when our dive was over, Jimmy was waiting with a catered lunch of pulled pork, beans, corn, potato salad, and the most amazing banana pudding. Hearing Jimmy’s stories was as good as the food he cooked for us.

Then we headed to Devil’s Den. Only a mile or two away, this opening into the Florida aquifer offers a totally different dive experience.

Day 5 Gallery

Day 6: Tuesday, November 3

It was a little early in the year for Manatees. And we were not certain we would see any at all. Jon walked out of our hotel room to the edge of the river and saw several coming up for air right off the dock! They were still there an hour later when we got out on our party boat. Some actively came up to us, looking to be rubbed and even rubbing against us or rolling over for us to rub their bellies. A young Manatee only about 4 feet long was the most interested in us, kept coming back for more attention, and even nuzzling and hugging us!

Day 6 Gallery

Other commercial boats soon followed with a number of snorkelers speaking a variety of languages. And after diving down to take pictures at the monument, we had experienced more than we had hoped for. By 10 o’clock we were back at the dock, heading for our rooms to shower and pack up into the van for the last time as we headed back to Orlando.