Ninety Feet Below

I am the last scuba diver on the dive boat. I look out to the horizon, where the gray sky meets the vast South Pacific Ocean. We’ve taken a short ride into Matauri Bay along the coast of Northland New Zealand. Not far from the boat, bobbing in the strong current is my brother, Eric, who has already inflated his buoyance control device (BCD) and is waiting for me to execute my entry. With one hand on his head, elbow out, he signals back to the boat captain that he is okay. I step onto the end of the boat platform. I feel my heartbeat echo in my ears. I take a deep breath to calm my nerves. “You can do this,” I tell myself. “You’ve dived before, just never this deep.” But the deeper the dive, I think, the longer the distance to the surface, if anything should go wrong.

Ninety feet below is the sunken Greenpeace flagship, the Rainbow Warrior. The dive master on our boat, a tall, lean, muscular guy, told us that it was moved to this spot as a dive wreck and fish sanctuary in 1987, eight years ago. His monologue about the site also mentioned life-threatening scuba diving dangers: malfunctioning equipment, pulmonary embolism from rapidly ascending, nitrogen narcosis, and sharks. I place my regulator in my mouth. The palm of the right-hand glove of my wet suit holds my mask and regulator in place. I anticipate that the world around me is about to change as I take a giant duck step in my neon pink flippers.

The water is freezing! I feel the ice-cold temperature through my wet suit, down my back and enveloping my entire body. A rude awakening into the underwater world. No wonder the man at the dive shop laughed when I entered the shop in the thin wet suit that I wore last week in the Great Barrier Reef. He took my measurements and age, 5’1”, 105 lbs., and thirty-three years old. He handed me a thick wet suit with instructions to wear this wet suit over my thin one to brave the sixty-degree ocean-bottom temperature. Next, he prepared my weight belt and selected my tank.

In a moment I have my BCD filled with air to put me on the surface. The current is moving me, hitting me in the face, and I somehow swallow ocean water. Were my teeth chattering from the cold? I bite down on my regulator and quickly signal back to the boat that I’m ready for what comes next. To stay in place, I kick my fins and move my arms quickly back and forth to tread water. I scan the surface for Eric. He is approaching me. He points towards the buoy line surrounded by other divers, and we swim to it. He gives me the thumbs down to descend.

I release air to deflate my BCD and bend over to descend but find myself right again. Maybe I wasn’t given enough weight for my belt to compensate for my wet suits? I hold onto the metal guide rope from the buoy to turn myself upside down and try again. This time I manage to turn myself to descend. There is an eerie silence under the water as I hold onto the guide cable and follow it. All I can hear is the voice in my head saying, “I can do this.” I just need to stay calm. I must remain calm to have an adequate amount of oxygen for this dive.

As I descend, I try to equalize my ears. I use every technique I can think of: hold my nose, swallow, and wiggle my jaw from side to side. Nothing about this dive so far is easy. Seeing anything is difficult through the gray grainy water. It’s as though I’m swimming in an old black-and-white silent movie. I keep an eye out for Eric, my diving partner, but don’t see him, or anything else for that matter. What a contrast with last week’s dives into the vibrant Great Barrier Reef. The ocean was warm there, and the visibility on thirty-foot dives was amazingly clear. My first dive buddy on the Great Barrier Reef was a comical dive master. He placed a sea anemone with tentacles moving around on the top of his bald head. My regulator almost flung out of my mouth as I laughed. My last dive buddy, during our night dive of the annual spawning of the coral, was a marine biologist, who pointed out the orgy that I may not otherwise have noticed as we swam through little floating particles that were the sperm and eggs released from the coral.

I was traveling with my father in Australia. He’s a fisherman not a diver. From Australia we flew to New Zealand where Eric met up with us. This scuba diving adventure was Eric’s idea. While Dad went fishing, Eric and I set out for Rainbow Warrior. But where is Eric now? It is cold to the bones and I feel the decrease in the ocean temperature as I continue to descend holding onto the cable.

The outline of a boat comes into view below. I equalize my ears and continue to stare at it in my descent. There is nothing else around except a sunken skeleton of a boat on the sand. As I continue downward, I see the corroded metal boat become larger. Green seaweed-like vegetation on the railing sways with the current. Is this all there is to see?

I have never been to this depth before. There’s Eric. He’s facing me, his eyes outlined in his neon yellow mask. He motions me to swim in front of the wreck. He holds up his underwater camera to capture the moment. I extend my arms and legs—what more can I do?

I grip the side of my arms to show that I am freezing. He reaches out his arm and the camera for me to take a photo of him. He gives a thumbs up for the photo, but I wish it meant for us to head up to the surface. I have seen the sunken boat, we have had our photo op, and now I am ready to return to sea level.

Eric swims onto the wreck’s deck and into the hull. He is my dive buddy; we are supposed to stay together, but I am reluctant. I should have known that we weren’t a good match for a dive. Eric likes to wander off. In our family we call him “the stray dog.” I am fearful of entering a structure that would hinder my ascent. My tank hits the top of the door frame. I hear it, I feel it. I wonder if I knocked the tank off my back. “Just breathe,” I tell myself.

“That’s all you need to do, breathe.” Now the corroded lifeless wreck surrounds me. I am scared and anxious to get out to open water.

After a minute which feels like an hour, we finally exit the wreck. Eric reaches for his instrument console and looks down. It occurs to me that I have not been checking mine. I should have been checking to see the amount of oxygen in my tank. Oxygen is depleted quicker the deeper one dives and I have been taking deep breaths. Oh, my G-d! The needle just entered the RED zone! RED means I need to start heading to the surface.

I point upward to Eric with my left fist and I don’t wait for his response. With my right-hand grip, I push the BCD exhaust valve control. I feel that if I don’t get to the surface immediately, I am going to run out of oxygen. Where’s the cable for me to get to the surface? I rotate my head right and left as a surge of adrenaline hits me. I dart upward in the direction of the cable, kicking my fins back and forth as fast as I can. I am afraid that we have been at the bottom too long! How could I not have been thinking? Think, Lesley, think! My mind races as I sprint toward the cable line and kick my flippers as fast as I can to ascend. My breathing is rapid, my thoughts are focused on getting to the surface.

As I ascend, a diver appears on the line in front of me. I swim around the body and grab an open spot on the line. There are more divers on the cable, I touch their tanks to stay close to the cable and grab the cable as soon as I can. I continue upward. But there’s a group of divers holding onto the cable and they are not moving. The group is stopped at the 30 feet mark. Why are they staying there so long? I need to get to the surface. As I swim over them, I feel myself stuck. I can’t move, something has grabbed hold of my right ankle. I need to get to the surface. I am going to run out of oxygen. I kick with my other leg to free myself. I kick at whatever is holding me back. I use all my strength to kick harder and harder. My right leg comes free. I feel myself move and continue to kick my flippers. I continue to ascend as fast as I can toward the light. I must be getting closer to the surface as I can see light. Rays of light are shining through.

My head and body pop through the surface. My breathing comes in big heaves, but I must keep the regulator in my mouth. The water on the surface is choppy and I am pulled by the current. Exhaustion comes over me as I manage to signal my arrival to the boat. My aching muscles seem depleted as I make my way over to the stern. I stumble trying to climb up the extended ladder onto the boat. Arms are extended to help me as I crawl onto the platform. They remove my equipment as I collapse onto the boat. My head is pounding. I feel a wave of nausea overcome me.

Slowly, I open my eyes and adjust to focus on Eric’s face as he kneels beside me. Another man’s face is above his, scowling at me. It takes time to register the face of our dive master. “Mate, you are always to stop at the thirty-foot mark when ascending; otherwise, you get decompression sickness – the bends! I tried to stop you, but you were determined.”

“She must have panicked; she bolted from the shipwreck,” Eric says.

“I didn’t have any oxygen left! The needle on my gauge was in the red.”

“Really mate, because I just checked your tank and you still have enough oxygen for a spot of tea with the Queen on the Rainbow Warrior.”

They both stare at me, waiting for my defense. “The Queen would have needed a stronger grip on my ankle than you.”

© 2024, Lesley Schwarzman