Final Exam on the Channel Islands

Anacapa Island, of the Channel Islands, sits about 11 miles from nearest shore off the coast of Southern California.  From a distance, it sits like a pointy brown rock alongside its island neighbors.  Topside, there isn't much to see.  Dense vegetation cascading over steep, jagged cliffs and a lighthouse built in 1932 are pretty much the only attractions.  In stark contrast, the undersea world near Anacapa could hardly be more vibrant and alive.  This has made Anacapa and the Channel Islands in general a hotspot for Southern California scuba divers for as long as there have been scuba divers.  Lucky for me, it was also the location of my Advanced Scuba Techniques class final, our first "deep" dive.

My class showed up bright and early (more like dark and early) in Ventura Harbor and loaded the Spectre dive boat with all of our gear.  Soon, we were underway for an approximately 90 minute cruise out to the dive site.  In the meantime, the boat served some pretty solid breakfast burritos.  Our plan was to make a dive to 120ft with particular attention to our buoyancy, air consumption, and descent/ascent rates.  It was to serve as a final test for a class in which we have been put through the ringer of scuba diving techniques.  I was excited.

Arriving on the dive site, we were met with incredible conditions.  Negligible seas and what appeared to be incredible visibility had students racing into their gear as the boat crew set two anchors.  After an in depth safety brief a group of 8 along with our instructor splashed and headed down.  I'd never done a dive deeper than about 50ft before and was expecting to suffer nitrogen narcosis, feel the effects of pressure, and to generally have a harder time.  As we descended our down-line, I couldn't help but feel like it was easy.  My ears equalized easily and quickly (thank God) which made for a fairly rapid descent with our instructor shepherding us every inch of the way.

On the bottom my depth gauge had us at exactly 120ft.  The visibility was easily 75ft and the water was surprisingly warm (though un-hottub-like).  For whatever reason, my head felt clear and though others later noted they felt narced I felt pretty much myself. We had only 15 minutes for bottom time but still took the opportunity to have a swim around a nearby reef.  We saw lobsters, garibaldi, and some sheepsheads.  Our dive site being in a marine reserve the local wildlife seemed unafraid and interested as they didn't risk being impaled by an eager sea-hunter's spear.

Every glance at my submersible pressure gauge confirmed that I was consuming air very quickly.  We had to budget a good amount of air for the lengthy return journey to the surface along with a 5 minute precautionary stop.  We planned to really skirt the limits of our air supply and were constantly communicating our rapidly dwindling tank pressure to our instructor.

As our available breathing gas diminished our instructor led the group back up the down-line and at around 20ft we left the line for a safety bar which was also suspended from the Spectre's bow.  The safety bar was a length of pipe about 10ft long covered with surface fed regulators for us to breath from if our air got low on the trip to the surface.  When I reached the bar I had only 500psi remaining, the absolute minimum, and so my instructor handed me one of the regulators from the safety bar.  This allowed me to keep some air in the cylinder on my back for the final ascent.  After our 5 minute stop we swam around off the stern of the Spectre, surfaced, and awkwardly climbed onboard.

For my first deep dive, I can't complain.  We had perfect conditions at a breath taking dive site and my classmates and I made safe dives like the competent divers we're becoming.  After the Spectre's cook prepared a tasty BBQ lunch we were even able to take a fun dive.  Our fun dive was on a horseshoe shaped reef about 35ft deep and was also a memorable dive.

The rest of the week was all of our written and practical finals in physics, equipment, and rigging.  I studied hard and did well.  It's a relief get through the first round of finals and to truly feel like part of the diving program.  Soon enough, we'll be diving surface supplied gear (think hardhats) and I couldn't be more ready to get started.