How did a 1965 "Pool Certification" at Iowa State University lead to organizing adventurous dive trips to remote destinations? It's a long story, but I'll keep it short.
In 1971, I entered a Special Forces Underwater Operations Course and received extensive training in open circuit (conventional SCUBA) and closed circuit (rebreathers) diving. I was soon jumping out of airplanes at 2,000' into dark midnight skies and hurdling toward inky black waters while wondering if I could blindly dump the chute 15' above the ocean surface for a successful entry. After our group finished each clandestine operation, we hoped the submariners could find us. Obviously, they did, but there were more than a few tense moments!
After the exciting little stint with Uncle Sam, I returned to the states and became a safety diver on the instructional team for the California Institute of Technology & Jet Propulsion Lab, completed an LA County course (back when they did emergency accents from 100'), and eventually became the chief instructor for the Cal.Tech/JPL program.
In 1980, I moved to the British Virgin Islands in the Caribbean and turned into a professional SCUBA educator with George Marler's Aquatic Centres, Baskin in the Sun, and most recently Dive BVI. I've been diving these islands for over 15 years and stopped keeping up my log book somewhere around dive 7000+.
What is there about the BVI that makes it the kind of place where someone can do 8 or 9 thousand dives and still look forward to going to work (underwater) every day? The key is diversity. The wide spread sites are each different in bottom composition, and the marine life provides an ever-changing counterpoint to these differing backdrops.
One day we might be working the canyons and tunnels of Painted Walls on Dead Chest and the next exploring offshore pinnacles such as Blonde Rock, Santa Monica Rock, Ring Dove or Carrot Shoal. The many islands that make up the BVI also provide lots of sheltered locations for the less adventurous divers or those prone to mal-de-mer. The area also abounds in what I call coral gardens - shallow and not-so-shallow areas where the coral creates fantastic shapes, terraces, and ledges that seem to stretch endlessly.
I hear a lot about Cayman and Bonaire from our guests because many divers have dove around a bit before they finally make it to the British Virgins. I have never had a diver complain about the diving here being inferior to that of Cayman or Bonaire, but it is different. If you want walls endlessly dropping to thousands of feet, go elsewhere but otherwise, I'll match our diving with any Caribbean destination that doesn't train the fish. We don't feed sharks, eels, or stingrays which probably makes us one of the few islands that can still boast of wild populations.
To periodically "escape" from our home in paradise, my wife Maritha and I organize dive trips to far and distant destinations such as the Sea of Cortez, the Galapagos, Micronesia, Indonesia, and the Revillegedos Islands. Our goal is to find and dive remote areas with wild marine populations and to capture some incredible moments and experiences on film. Our next venture will be to Malpelos.
The Indonesian Sea Snake
The walls of Indonesia started in inches of water and plummeted 1000's of feet into the abyss. It was along these walls that I saw my first Pacific sea snake. Fear tempered with knowledge best describes my reaction to the situation. Sea snakes are among the most poisonous animals in the world, and yet many divers have been photographed and filmed swimming and handling both Olive and Banded sea snakes. This particular snake showed no interest in us whatsoever as my wife and I closed in to try to photograph the "Nikon Moment".
Unfortunately, a strong current was sweeping over acres of reefs and our wide angle lens dictated a close approach. As we split up to bracket the snake, I remember thinking that we may never want to do this again or have the opportunity! Finning like mad, I began to catch up with the snake and Maritha struggled to position herself, camera, and strobe near the wall slightly below the snake. All that remained was for me to move in close - given my mental state and aforementioned mentioned snake phobia, this was easier said than done, however, we were quite pleased with the results.
The above photo is the best of 5 exposures and for those of you interested in the photographic details, the camera was a Nikonos III with a 15 mm lens, twin Oceanic strobes, and Kodachrome 25 film.
Ray Riders
In April of 1992, I read an article in Ocean Realm entitled "The Middle of Nowhere". The accompanying Howard Hall photo was of a giant manta ray shot with a wide angle lens at what appeared to be a very close distance. The story raised my heartbeat and I very badly wanted to experience diving with these magnificent creatures.
Two years later, Maritha and I began to organize a trip to find these manta rays of the Revillegedos, a series of remote volcanic islands some 200-300 miles south of Cabo San Lucas - hence the "middle of nowhere". Research showed that the area was at the end of a 30 hour crossing in possible rough and uncertain seas. We merely THOUGHT we had seen bad conditions on our previous Indonesia Komodo venture and were prepared for far worse on this trip. We received information about motorized boats large enough for 18-20 passengers and a sailing vessel Copper Sky which held only 8. Since our primary quarry was manta rays, we opted for the smaller, less comfortable sailboat. And were we ever rewarded! Sea conditions remained perfectly flat for the first part of the journey.
Our small group of select and exceptionally hardy souls finally reached the Revillegedos, anchored for the night, and awoke to find mantas surrounding the sailboat. Entering the water, we all wondered what to do next. A giant Manta came to me, I grabbed on, and it soared off into blue waters. Amazingly, it stayed within 40 - 70' of depth allowing me to hang on for a good ride, but the boat was quickly receding the distance! I couldn't decide whether to let go and have a short swim back or stay with the Manta in the event this opportunity never happened again. I decided to stay with the ray and eventually had a very long snorkel back to the group.
During my fast manta ride and slow swim back to the sailboat, the rest of our party discovered that the flock of rays wanted to play and were giving them rides NEAR the boat. For all I knew, my manta probably raced back to join the fun (regrettably without me!). After I returned, I managed to catch a great shot of a 70 year old grandmother hitching a ride on a big manta. This proves one is never too old to dive and ride rays!
I can still close my eyes and see those giant rays! They float like giant sea-going spaceships through my dreams. The mantas came to us every day that we dove San Benedicto and we never got enough of them. We photographed them, scratched their bellies, and yes, rode them. Somehow, they seemed to want the interaction. They could easily outswim us, yet allowed our touch and occasional hitchhikes.
We were able to dive with up to five mantas at a time, in depths that allowed six dives a day. Best of all, we had the site and the rays all to ourselves! As usual, we took hundreds of photographs, one of which was chosen as the cover of International SCUBA Dive Magazine and is featured in the photo above and side bar of this web page. We also had additional photos selected for a spread inside the magazine with a write-up and were more than pleased with the experiences and results of our trip to the "middle of nowhere".
MALPELO It's Not For Everyone, But, Is It For You ?
Pelagic - just the name congers up visions of man eating marine life from the depths of the open oceans for most divers. High seas - not just an ATT radio frequency, but a sea state that most prudent divers ponder about before entering the water. Strong current - a forceful flow of water in a definite or changing direction which is a sea condition the majority of divers would like to do without. Open ocean cruise - 36 hours of plowing through the Pacific enroute to an island 240 miles off the Coast of Columbia, 884 ft. high, 3/4 of a mile long, boasting no vegetation and rarely a calm anchorage.
The picture I just painted is not a pretty one for the average person in the diving community but, if you're the type of diver that enjoys a wild rollercoaster ride of pure adrenaline, then Malpelo is for you. The October of 1993, Vol. 18, No, 1O of Undercurrent said, "Our first dive was at the Alter of the Virgin, along the steep cliffs. Visibility was typically 75-80 feet, the bottom was a smattering of boulders and ledges with a variety of fish, including snappers and grouper up to 30 pounds .... but, what made this dive unique was the overwhelming abundance of free swimming moray eels - literally hundreds buzzing around the rock or merely laying about. While recent reports have suggested that the CoCos sharks have been thinned by fishing or driven deeper by El Nino, they are alive and well at Malpelo ... if you are a good diver and can handle the conditions. The draw to Malpelo is sharks".
Not rinky dinky white tips or the occasional reef shark. The emphasis here is quantity and quality: Hammerheads, and Malpelo delivers in spades.
"Hugging the rock face, I inched my way around the ledge only to be greeted by one of the more amazing sights I had ever seen in 30 years of diving: the entire ocean seemed to be filled with Hammerhead Sharks. They moved in an endless column from about 100 feet all the way to the surface. In the March 1994 issue of Rodale's Scuba Diving, Bret Gilliam wrote, "Apparently the 50 hammerheads we saw at La Gringa were just a scouting party. They've called up reinforcements and a vast armada of torpedo-shaped bodies - literally hundreds of hammerheads - stretches as far as I can. see. One of the other divers bricfly brings up his hands to videotape this incredible scene only to be blown head over heels through the boulders like a tumbleweed in a dust storm. We're flying along now under a solid layer of sharks. We look up and are astonished to see that the hammerheads are being approached by an equally large army of blacktip sharks. Their bodies are packed so densely that we can't distinguish where one shark begins and another ends. As we bound back to the ship over the by-now-familiar mountainous swells, I know I've bloody well gotten my monies worth, Malpelo isn't for everyone; but for some, big fish protected by big seas are the flame to which we return, moth-like, mesmerized and helpless."
Aquatic Adventures offers 10 to 14 day expeditions aboard the M/Y "Inzan Tiger" for those who are looking for untamed destinations. All participants involved will thoroughly screened. We require that all divers to have Ideations, "Dive Alert" Signaling Whistle plus Divers Diversions Diver Alert Safety Flag or some type of signal sausage and will not be permitted to dive without these devices.
Call or FAX for more information (284) 495-9705.
--- Randy Keil