Friday, October 5, 2007
What a Difference a Year Makes
Oceanblue Divers just celebrated the club's First Anniversary. Quite the gala it was.
Much has happened in a year. So much. Much I will always miss having missed out on.
You see, when first I stumbled across the Oceanblue Divers' website I must guiltily confess I was dismissive. I had been talking to a friend about whether there were environmentally minded dive groups. Whether there were divers concerned enough about the waters they enjoy to take some action toward the protection of them. So I went a-googling. "Scuba Ecology New York" One of the first hits was Oceanblue Divers.
"Eh. A month old?" I thought, "Well... mission statement sounds just right," I signed up to the website so I'd get the email updates on the goings on. The first actual meetup I remember seeing an invitation to was at that bowling alley in Port Authority. Great Lebowski forgive me, but I hate bowling. I ignored it.
Mostly I thought a month-old organization, no matter how well-intentioned, would be a flash in the pan. Wow, was I wrong. Very, very wrong.
In a year's time the club has neither petered out, nor gained only a few dozen divers from the New York area, but rather it has gained a thousand. A thousand divers from all over the country who care about the sorts of things that need to be cared about, who wanted to meet one another and to discuss the issues which need discussion.
Over the course of one year Oceanblue has booked a half-dozen flights to as close as the Caribbean and to as distant as the other side of Planet Earth. There have been just as many little, local trips out to good, ole' Dutch Springs (some wanted to arrange a plane there, too, but Michael Feld demanded that some nonsense called a carbon footprint didn't warrant a 75 mile flight). We have gotten the opportunity to see the interesting and important film Sharkwater well before the US premiere. We've got a terrific regular bar with bartenders who make one hell of a Greyhound and where, most importantly, we meet once a month to laugh with old friends and to make new ones.
"Laugh with old friends and to make new ones." Wow, does that sound corny. Like an after-school special or a recruitment ad for a Kool-Aid distributor. I'll have to beg your patience with the corn, because it's true.
Such a crowd of people have been attracted to the happy hours that it is hard not to leave without having made at least one new friend on any given night. The folks are cheerful and easy to laugh; even easier are they to tell their stories from all over the blue world. Converging from hundreds of different streams of life, everyone comes to talk diving. With cumulative centuries of bottom time, there are more stories among us than could be typed out in ten thousand blog postings.
We all know that divers are much, much cooler than non-divers, so we've got that in common from the get-go. Now consider that the divers at our happy hours also share an interest in not just diving, but in also protecting life beneath the surface. That's why Oceanblue Divers are that much cooler.
At the Anniversary Party we listened to a talk by Captain Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. The man spoke eloquently and passionately about the life he has dedicated to struggle against the viscous carelessness with which humans treat the sea. He spoke about the ills of shark-finning and about the crucial work Sea Shepherd does against the insufferable whaling trade. He spoke with a wildfire humor at the expense of embarrassed foes and he spoke with such a deep, personal sadness of the humiliating gaze in a dying whale's eye that one could hear hearts breaking like waves through the crowd.
The claps and cheers for this anti-Ahab were clear proof that I had been terribly mistaken to be dismissive of the gathering of this club for so much as a second. Here were a great many people who found each other through a website who share a common hobby in diving, a common hope for ecology, and a common goal in forging the two together into an instrument of change.
And just think of how many divers ain't found us yet...
If you're one of them, even if you aren't in New York, check us out. Everyone gets to The Big Apple sometime, you should try for the second anniversary. There's talk of having Poseidon himself there. Just be careful, after he gets a couple of Appletinis in him he's prone to start making prank hurricane threats to NOAA.
Much has happened in a year. So much. Much I will always miss having missed out on.
You see, when first I stumbled across the Oceanblue Divers' website I must guiltily confess I was dismissive. I had been talking to a friend about whether there were environmentally minded dive groups. Whether there were divers concerned enough about the waters they enjoy to take some action toward the protection of them. So I went a-googling. "Scuba Ecology New York" One of the first hits was Oceanblue Divers.
"Eh. A month old?" I thought, "Well... mission statement sounds just right," I signed up to the website so I'd get the email updates on the goings on. The first actual meetup I remember seeing an invitation to was at that bowling alley in Port Authority. Great Lebowski forgive me, but I hate bowling. I ignored it.
Mostly I thought a month-old organization, no matter how well-intentioned, would be a flash in the pan. Wow, was I wrong. Very, very wrong.
In a year's time the club has neither petered out, nor gained only a few dozen divers from the New York area, but rather it has gained a thousand. A thousand divers from all over the country who care about the sorts of things that need to be cared about, who wanted to meet one another and to discuss the issues which need discussion.
Over the course of one year Oceanblue has booked a half-dozen flights to as close as the Caribbean and to as distant as the other side of Planet Earth. There have been just as many little, local trips out to good, ole' Dutch Springs (some wanted to arrange a plane there, too, but Michael Feld demanded that some nonsense called a carbon footprint didn't warrant a 75 mile flight). We have gotten the opportunity to see the interesting and important film Sharkwater well before the US premiere. We've got a terrific regular bar with bartenders who make one hell of a Greyhound and where, most importantly, we meet once a month to laugh with old friends and to make new ones.
"Laugh with old friends and to make new ones." Wow, does that sound corny. Like an after-school special or a recruitment ad for a Kool-Aid distributor. I'll have to beg your patience with the corn, because it's true.
Such a crowd of people have been attracted to the happy hours that it is hard not to leave without having made at least one new friend on any given night. The folks are cheerful and easy to laugh; even easier are they to tell their stories from all over the blue world. Converging from hundreds of different streams of life, everyone comes to talk diving. With cumulative centuries of bottom time, there are more stories among us than could be typed out in ten thousand blog postings.
We all know that divers are much, much cooler than non-divers, so we've got that in common from the get-go. Now consider that the divers at our happy hours also share an interest in not just diving, but in also protecting life beneath the surface. That's why Oceanblue Divers are that much cooler.
At the Anniversary Party we listened to a talk by Captain Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. The man spoke eloquently and passionately about the life he has dedicated to struggle against the viscous carelessness with which humans treat the sea. He spoke about the ills of shark-finning and about the crucial work Sea Shepherd does against the insufferable whaling trade. He spoke with a wildfire humor at the expense of embarrassed foes and he spoke with such a deep, personal sadness of the humiliating gaze in a dying whale's eye that one could hear hearts breaking like waves through the crowd.
The claps and cheers for this anti-Ahab were clear proof that I had been terribly mistaken to be dismissive of the gathering of this club for so much as a second. Here were a great many people who found each other through a website who share a common hobby in diving, a common hope for ecology, and a common goal in forging the two together into an instrument of change.
And just think of how many divers ain't found us yet...
If you're one of them, even if you aren't in New York, check us out. Everyone gets to The Big Apple sometime, you should try for the second anniversary. There's talk of having Poseidon himself there. Just be careful, after he gets a couple of Appletinis in him he's prone to start making prank hurricane threats to NOAA.
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
Squalls on the Horizon
Diving off the New Jersey/New York coast in the fall is absolutely perfect. The water is at its warmest of the year. The air temperature is also just right, warm enough to be comfortable, but cool enough that you don’t go into heatstroke in your wet/dry suit. For some reason beyond my non-oceanographic mind the visibility is reliably fantastic in October.
Most superbly for someone who gets seasick as easily as I, the seas at this time of year really only have two possible states: dead-calm and don’t-even-think-about-it. The latter is perfectly easily known as soon as you step out your front door in the morning, so you often don’t even have to waste the time driving to the dock.
Dead-calm is what we had this last weekend. We also had visibility nearly as best I’ve ever seen it. From 40 feet over the wreck of the Stolt one could make out nearly the entire wreck and clearly see for at least 50 feet in every direction. I was especially pleased with the mild water temperature at the end of the second dive, after the bastard shipwreck ripped a gash into the knee of my drysuit and my left leg started filling with ocean.
“Well,” I thought hanging on the up-line, “At least it isn’t cold.”
It was there, on that line, I began this reverie of how nice it is to dive around here in the autumn. And it was there even that the reverie started to turn gothic. For all the boons there are to diving Jersey this time of year, there’s one major drag looming right behind them all in the form of a dark, whipping wind.
Dive season is almost over.
There’s a ton of good diving through October, but I ain’t going to see it. My every weekend from now through Mid-November is spoken for.
In late November the boats will all say they’re going out, but getting enough people to justify the trip will be a chore. What’s more, by that time of the year the Gulf Stream will have moved way offshore again and the waters will have started to cool. The offshore winds will feel cold even in any thermal protection, especially after it’s gotten wet. Those winds will also kick up tempestuous seas that may or may not be diveable as well as knocking the boat around like a cork as you try to walk with gear or try to climb the ladder.
It’s not the most fun diving, but us stubborn few will keep going out to get our butts handed to us, jaws clenched onto the distant hope of “just one more weekend.” Then even these will need to let go.
December and January will come. Perhaps there will be a dive, but probably there won’t. We’ll overhaul gear and tinker with it. We’ll buy new gear. We’ll talk about diving on the interweb. We’ll watch the snow and shiver in the cold and the darkness of winter, and we’ll patiently wait out those long, dry months for the new season to start.
Or, I guess we could hop a flight to the Caribbean.
Most superbly for someone who gets seasick as easily as I, the seas at this time of year really only have two possible states: dead-calm and don’t-even-think-about-it. The latter is perfectly easily known as soon as you step out your front door in the morning, so you often don’t even have to waste the time driving to the dock.
Dead-calm is what we had this last weekend. We also had visibility nearly as best I’ve ever seen it. From 40 feet over the wreck of the Stolt one could make out nearly the entire wreck and clearly see for at least 50 feet in every direction. I was especially pleased with the mild water temperature at the end of the second dive, after the bastard shipwreck ripped a gash into the knee of my drysuit and my left leg started filling with ocean.
“Well,” I thought hanging on the up-line, “At least it isn’t cold.”
It was there, on that line, I began this reverie of how nice it is to dive around here in the autumn. And it was there even that the reverie started to turn gothic. For all the boons there are to diving Jersey this time of year, there’s one major drag looming right behind them all in the form of a dark, whipping wind.
Dive season is almost over.
There’s a ton of good diving through October, but I ain’t going to see it. My every weekend from now through Mid-November is spoken for.
In late November the boats will all say they’re going out, but getting enough people to justify the trip will be a chore. What’s more, by that time of the year the Gulf Stream will have moved way offshore again and the waters will have started to cool. The offshore winds will feel cold even in any thermal protection, especially after it’s gotten wet. Those winds will also kick up tempestuous seas that may or may not be diveable as well as knocking the boat around like a cork as you try to walk with gear or try to climb the ladder.
It’s not the most fun diving, but us stubborn few will keep going out to get our butts handed to us, jaws clenched onto the distant hope of “just one more weekend.” Then even these will need to let go.
December and January will come. Perhaps there will be a dive, but probably there won’t. We’ll overhaul gear and tinker with it. We’ll buy new gear. We’ll talk about diving on the interweb. We’ll watch the snow and shiver in the cold and the darkness of winter, and we’ll patiently wait out those long, dry months for the new season to start.
Or, I guess we could hop a flight to the Caribbean.
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