SCUBA diving is not considered a good exercise for aerobic conditioning. If SCUBA divers do everything "right," by maintaining neutral buoyancy, drifting with currents, and breathing slowly and deeply while underwater, they should expend less energy than when resting on land. MICHAEL STRAUSS, Diving Science
We have a visiting diver in our midst for a few weeks, Nick, aka Puddles himself, and he was bored with hotel life and wanted to get wet. Despite our efforts to plan either boat or beach, Mother Nature kept blocking our path. But we were not to be deterred….. we dove anyway
The waves wouldn’t cooperate for a boat dive and the continuing rain and murky water made the beach dive less than appealing, although Josh really lobbied for it. Next time Josh.
And so we ended up at our old standby, the railroad bridge. By the time we were done, what started out as a fair sized group had whittled down to just four hearty souls, Nick, Ernie, Josh and myself. (the others were the smart ones).
As the last of the light faded, we geared up in a light rain, and Ernie outfitted Nick with a singles setup since he only had doubles with him. We peered out at the black water and wondered if it was moving to slack tide yet. You have to love Josh, he didn’t see any current (he didn’t see anything, it was pitch dark out) so he was ready to go.
We were in the water putting on our fins when Nicks light failed and he was left just with his backup. We realigned out groups for optimal lighting and set out, Nick with Josh and Ernie and myself, with every intention of staying together. Oh yea….the best laid plans……
We dropped down and had not made 2 fin kicks when I grabbed Ernies hand. We were in 0 viz and I wasn’t about to loose him. What Josh and Nick did about it, I have no idea. We headed on down and the visibility opened up to a whopping 2 to 2 ½ foot. I could feel the current under the bridge already and knew we were in for a ride.
As we passed under the bridge I didnt get to look around much at the flora and fauna as I was pretty busy bobbing and weaving the rubble of the old bridge as it appeared rather close… rather quickly as we sped through. There were still hundreds of starfish and small crabs and an occasional small striped bass.
The usual dive for this site is to ride the last of the incoming current through the bridge, hug the bottom out towards the marina and then hang a right and follow the rock ledges along the railroad tracks back to the bridge, back through the bridge on the outgoing tide and then up the canal on the north side until you see signs of the party boats and then back into the bulkhead and out. A relaxing circuit using the tides to your advantage, but now back to the dive at hand…
As the rubble from the old bridge cleared, we swam shoulder to shoulder fanning our lights and looking about. Tons of starfish were locked around muscles enjoying their nightly meals. All really small, some just the size of my thumb, blueclaw crabs and all with an attitude, especially if you poked them. The cutest little bitty hermit crabs were scurrying about and of course the moon snails. I love to pick them up and watch them suck aaaallllll that huge body into their little shell. There were anchovy scattered about the bottom and stripers. Big stripers, in the 2 to 2 ½ foot range. And with the poor viz we came upon them rather quickly startling them as much as they startled us in the dark water. This took some getting used to but by the 3rd or 4th time I was poking and grabbing as we went on past.
Ernie was looking regularly at his compass and I was diligently keeping up and not getting lost as we went along. We then came upon some rocks and a wall that we moved along, with indents and hidey holes and growth up and down. I was looking in and about for some eels and other things and thinking “I don’t remember the rocks along the tracks looking like this….must be farther down than usual”. And then the wall ended and sandy bottom began again…and then a piling…and then sandy bottom and then…..Ernie signed “up”. As we broke the surface and looked around, we both had the same thought “This isn’t Kansas anymore Toto”. Where the hell were we?
There was a marina with really big boats…a bridge with no shoreline in sight and a lot of open water, and nothing looked familiar. Ut whoa. Question was…were we in the bay on the Point Pleasant side or had we cleared the island and were heading for Manasquan? We had only been drifting for 18 minutes, but it was one heck of a current and it could be a long walk back. The surface current was not as bad as the bottom and we pulled ourselves over to the wall to take advantage of the eddy current while we regrouped. The plan was to surface swim back under the bridge and see if we could find a familiar landmark on the far side.
Well, I am pretty sure we swam for a mile or 2, at least that is what a 10 minute surface swim against the current feels like…. But we cleared the bridge and I could make out the unique lighted roofline of the marina near the train bridge in the distance. Dang! we had shot clear through the marina and under the big bridge and were on our way to Clarks Landing for last call the way we went!
We took a heading and dropped down to fin on home. I stopped to play with another moon snail along the way and relocated a small hermit crab dropping him off near an abandoned cinderblock. We then swam though a school of about 15 “mature” striped bass. There was a mad dash for everyone to get out of each others way and as one shot underneath me I made a grab for him almost smacking into a piece of bottom debris that appeared out of the murk. I love poking fish… Some familiar looking debris started appearing out of nowhere (remember the 2 foot viz here) and we were back under the bridge and home again. We saw a light penetrating ahead of us and thought we had found our wayward buddies and so we surfaced. Unfortunately, some additional equipment issues had cut their dive short just after the bridge but next week, we will try to get Nick out again.