O mother, mother, hear the sea!
It calls across the sands;
I saw it tossing up the spray, like white,
Imploring hands,
Mary Artemisia Lathbury
Like Alice in Wonderland I woke up this morning to a strange place, some foreign land. It was 49F and the wind was blowing in huge gusts…..where was my Indian Summer……my warm sunny days and mild ocean waters?
I was meeting a group at the Back Bay for a relaxing beach dive, some final wetsuit time, the last of the tropicals, soaking up the last warm rays of the season……you know the drill. But somehow, when the night….. met the morning sun, the air temperature had dropped 20 degrees and the wind was blowing just below gale force. This was not good.
Maybe I will skip this one…..Okay, maybe I will go down and look, and talk a little dive talk and skip this one…..Okay, maybe I will put my gear in the truck just in case, but I know I will skip this one……
When I reached L Street beach in Belmar I was met by the sight of a dozen divers milling around debating the scene playing out before them. It was high tide. I don’t ever remember seeing the tide quite this high. The bay water was coming up over the bulkhead all the way to the street. There was no beach, no boat ramp and there threatened to be little parking lot. I believe you could have giant stride off the curb of Rt 35 into the water. The gusting winds were blowing white caps across the bay.
We walked down to the end of the pier where the water was over the bulkhead and ankle deep. As I waited for John to find a shell to check the visibility, my jeans soaked up the water nearly to my knees. Well, now I was wet, might as well dive.
Three of the group had left to get a late breakfast and we called them on their cells with messages of “get the hell back here…we’re diving”. Within minutes they were once again in the parking lot, announcing loudly that this was crazy as they geared up.
An AOW class took to the water first to complete their Search and Recovery dives looking for a lost fin……. And then with all the speed of molasses in winter, John, Chris and myself were in the water followed by Tony and Vince, and Dene and Eddie. Ron was left on the dock with some free flow issues which he was going to attend to while we were gone.
After some discussion of my navigational abilities, it was decided that John would be lead compass and Chris was charged with the flag. Everyone else was to stay in tight and not get lost. My job was to poke things and I was perfectly happy with that.
We slipped beneath the water and were greeted with about 3 foot of cloudy visibility. As we swam the length of the boat ramp the theme was small. Miniature blue claw crabs scurried about the sand and tiny little hermit crabs made their along the bottom. As we made our way to the channel the vegetation gave way to the expanse of silt and sand and very little else.
With the water temperature at a comfortable 59F and the current doing our work for us we continued on turning south to check out the docks and the wall.
As we approached the docks you could see a change in the water. It was much lighter and clarity improved some. The crabs got a little bigger in this area and some spider crabs and starfish began to appear. Several small flatfish were spied and scooted along and upon shaking one bottle an irate little eel stuck his head out and with a final shake was dislodged and swimming away. Several fish skeletons were scattered about with small crabs picking the bones clean for their midday snack. Some small bait fish swam about and orange sponges and purple sea urchins were scattered around the area and the hermit crabs here were the size of baseballs.
As murky as things were, if you looked closely, there were still things to see. I really think you need to do a few dives like these during the season to truly appreciate the others. I have had better dives and I have had worse…..but I don’t regret any of them. The water is a good place to be.
As we loaded our gear back in our cars, the wind still howled putting a chill in the air and the wet divers. It was time to go. John opened his car door and the wind blew his “favorite” hat out into the bay. It floated on the current making its way out to sea, the white caps threatening to sink it as it moved along. A group gathered and tried to corral it by catching it with the dive flag and towing it back. It didn’t work….it especially didn’t work when the flag was thrown and “someone who should have known better” (not me) forgot to hold onto the line. We were now rescuing one hat and one dive flag…. John did what he had to do and put on his suit again and waded out to retrieve the errant equipment so we could be on our way.
A quick stop at Pete and Eldas for a beer and a burger and it wasn’t such a bad dive day after all. Some diving, some talk, some dive stories……some time with dive friends…..there are worse things.....like the Jets game…….