DEEP WATER SHIPWRECK DIVING

Published in Florida Keys Magazine, July 1990

Sportsmen and adventurers sift the globe for adrenaline rushes spawned by world-class challenges like climbing K-2, ridge sailing, or maybe back-bowl heli-skiing.  These athletes, who go that extra mile for exhilarating activity, fill a special niche somewhere between weekend warrior and pro.

Within the dive industry, a new breed of scuba diver is making waves by pushing “sport” to the ultimate.  Dubbed “professional sport divers”, these men and women are pushing far beyond the depth limits most scuba divers ever think of, much less attempt.  In these depths they find such world-class challenges as the USS Wilkes Barre, a 610-foot World War II cruiser sunk in 250 feet of water off the coast of Key West.

For years, Wilkes Barre has lured serious divers from all over the world to Key West and to a man named Billy Deans.  Cave diver, wall diver, and wreck diver, Deans is a 34-year old deep water diver renown for safety and skill.  He owns and operates Captain Billy’s Key West Diver on Stock Island.  And he’s the only person who takes small groups to dive on Wilkes Barre, a dive he has made more than 200 times.  His other deep water adventures include dives on the ocean liner Andrea Doria, a sunken U-boat in 300 feet of water off the coast of New Jersey, and fresh water cave diving of up to 350 feet.

“The cave diving community has led the dive industry in developing new equipment,” says Deans as he handles a round-shaped, rubber and steel gadget that looks like a depth gauge, but is really a 30-year-old dive computer.  “These divers were the first to come up with pressure gauges, buoyancy compensators and octopuses – devices which allow more than one diver at a time to use an air tank.  Each new piece of equipment that enhanced safety for other divers was paid for with a cave diver’s life or tears.”

Realizing this subterranean appeal is limited – imagine the fun you can have inching through something akin to a limestone straight jacket…in the dark…underwater – the dive industry has recognized cave divers in the past, but mostly as pioneers who are some of the most technologically sophisticated divers in the world.

Deep Diving 101 is not offered by certifying groups or universities that teach scuba.  And the dive industry, in general, attempts to ignore deep diving, preferring not to address the dangers of the challenge.  In fact, last year when a story about Deans and deep-water diving on Wilkes Barre was proposed to Skin Diver, a dive trade magazine, Editor Bonnie Cardonne told me the magazine will not publish stories about deep diving because it does not want to encourage diving beyond the 60-foot depth range of what has been typically called “safe” sport diving.

Nevertheless, very skilled, very active professional sport divers are out there, paying their dues for decades in caves and on shipwrecks, diving to 200 and 300 feet, testing Navy charts and their own body limitations, and learning about decompression diving through trial and error.

Among the millions of US certified scuba divers, the number of newly recognized professional sport divers is unknown.  Although the National Association of Cave Divers had 500 members and the cave diving section of the National Speleological Society has about the same, there is no organization for shipwreck or deep water divers per se.  But the numbers are significant enough to merit a new trade journal called AquaCorps.  Labeled “the independent journal for experienced divers,” its first issue was February/March, 1990 and it carried on its front cover a stern and comprehensive warning and disclaimer that ends with, “You are on your own.”

“In ten years of diving on Wilkes Barre, maybe 250, 300 divers who heard about the shipwreck through the diver’s grapevine have come to me,” says Deans, whose own deep-water experience began with the spearfishing that paid his way through college.  “As a business owner, the liability is something to think about.  And if I don’t know the diver, or have strong feeling about his skills, I won’t take him.”

Although diving is an unforgiving sport at 60 feet, if something goes wrong at 200 feet, it’s a death sentence.  Skilled use of proper equipment and clear thinking under pressure are mandatory.  And unlike other sports where “pushing the limit” can induce pain that often stops athletes from arriving at life-threatening situations, sheer watery delight can lure divers into activities and stays on the ocean bottom that can put them at serious risk.  While you’re engaged in the sport, diving is painless.  Says Deans over and over again:  “The most important tool a diver has is his ability to think.”

Of course, the inherent risk in diving is heightened when divers go to depths for periods that require decompression.  Because the chemistry of your blood changes under pressure, and pressure gets greater the deeper you go, deep divers must calculate how long they can stay on the bottom with how long they must decompress at specified depths on their ascent to allow their blood chemistry to normalize.  For instance, twenty minutes on the ocean floor where Wilkes Barre sits at 250 feet means a diver will spend a total time of 85 minutes holding onto a rope on the way up, first at 30 feet, then at 20 feet and, finally, at 10 feet to keep from getting the bends when he surfaces.  Deans has reduced “hang time” from what divers used to undergo because the air tanks he has waiting for divers at the three decompression stages are not filled with standard air. 

 Standard air?

On land we breathe a mixture of 79% nitrogen and 21% oxygen.  Divers call standard air “God’s free nitrox”.  It can be used safely in air tanks underwater to about 220 feet.  When more oxygen and less nitrogen is used, or when different types of gases are mixed together, divers can stay down longer and/or decompress in less time.

Armed with experience, state-of-the-art equipment and a degree in chemistry from the University of Florida, Deans’ research and development of mixed gases for use in deep diving is helping to “recompute” dive tables for commercial use, as well as educate the professional sport diver.  In fact, the very knowledge of mixed gases (or lack thereof) is at the heart of the dive industry’s conflict with deep diving.

For years, only military and commercial divers experimented with gases which extend a diver’s length of stay at deep depths.  Because this information meant money to commercial divers who didn’t want competitors to know what they had learned, and because some the military’s experimentation was classified, sport divers were left with their own trial and error.  Those whose trials didn’t err too greatly went on to try deeper depths and different blends of nitrogen and oxygen.  Helium was added to the mix for even greater depths.

 Mixing their own air was a matter of course, and tinkerers and basement technicians were the rule, not the exception.  Physiologist Bill Hamilton, the principal in his own consulting firm in Tarrytown, NY, is among those who have taken the lead in openly developing and reassessing decompression procedures.

Deans recently worked with Dr. Hamilton (whom he admiringly refers to as the “Mix-master”), and several other experienced deep water divers, to develop a Closed Circuit Mixed Gas (CCMG) training program for Florida State University.  This month, he is diving on the famous Civil War shipwreck, Monitor, with a small group of divers who just won a five year legal battle with NOAA for the right to dive to this 230-foot relic.

Designated a marine sanctuary in 1974, no one was allowed to dive on Monitor without a permit from NOAA.  Gary Gentile, a deep water diver with more than 900 decompression dives, and an author with seven books published on wreck diving, first applied for a permit in the mid-80s.  He reapplied 11 times over a five year period.  NOAA refused each application even though it had already allowed The Cousteau Society permission to dive on the wreck shortly after it had been made a marine sanctuary.

Gentile took NOAA to court and Administrative Law Judge Hugh Dolan ruled in his favor citing a 1980 decision which said:  “A venturesome minority will always be eager to get off on their own, and no obstacles should be placed in their path; let them take risks, for Godsake, let them get lost, sunburnt, stranded, drowned, eaten by bears, buried alive under avalanches – that is the right and privilege of any free American.”

The decision to open this deep water national marine sanctuary to all divers will have a rippling effect on the dive industry.  Deep water critics fear that inexperienced divers will see this ruling as a green light even though the court also found that Gentile “and other staged decompression divers are not sport or novice divers.  Their training, experience and certifications reflect a substantially greater proficiency.”

They are professional sport divers.  And the men and women who push diving to the ultimate are neither timid, nor macho.  Most have known underwater tragedy, and all are prepared for mishap the second they roll off the dive boat into the water.

 “I thought I was going to die,” says Deans as he recounts a near-lethal dive to Wilkes Barre.  “I was way inside the wreck, in a complete silt-out situation.  I lost the guide line.  I was trapped.  I had two minutes of bottom time left.

“I told myself, ‘I’m in God’s hands now, and all I can do is go ‘til I run out of air.’  I was lucky.”

Deans’ dive buddy on Andrea Doria a few years back wasn’t so lucky.  He drowned.

The skill development and the personal challenge keep deep water divers coming back for more.  Says Deans, “You try to learn something on every dive.  If it’s easy, you don’t make progress.  You need stressful conditions to learn.”

Deans, who wears two of nearly every piece of dive gear ever made when he deep dives, and looks like he intends to camp out on the ocean floor, religiously reviews dive plans and safety signals with other divers before entry.  It is precisely this attention – this double-checking, safety first, be prepared attitude – that allows him to keep coming back.

Because Deans thinks planning and preventive care are alien to human nature, deep water diving filters out the divers who can’t make the final cut:  “It’s one hell of a process of natural selection.”  In other words, you are on you own.

© Barbara Bowers, 1990