online JOURNAL

15 August 09
Last month, 1.5 years after applying and about 10 months after interviewing, I finally began diving in the Steinhart Aquarium at the California Academy of Sciences!

My first dive was in the 100,000 gallon Flooded Amazon River exhibit, a warm, freshwater tank with a tunnel where visitors can walk through and see the fish swimming over their heads. I went in with the Diving Safety Officer to do my "check-out dive" where I demonstrated some basic skills--basically, verification that yes, I know how to dive. Then I spent the next 20 minutes swimming around the tank, getting used to aquarium diving. I can now say I've swum with piranha.

Despite what I had expected, it is not easy diving in an aquarium, especially the way they do it at Cal Academy. In order to minimize damage to coral and other organisms, Steinhart divers do not wear fins. As a diver you normally rely on your fins not only to propel yourself, but also to maneuver and hover in place. Good divers never use their hands/arms, but without fins you are forced to swim with your hands. It feels very wrong, like you are unlearning years of excellent diving habits.

Unlike being in the wide-open oceans, in an aquarium you are in a small, confined space with plenty of obstacles. And people staring at you. It's weird being an aquarium exhibit.

The next time I dove I went into the 212,000 gallon, 25-foot deep Philippine Coral Reef exhibit. In the past I've dived in some difficult situations--strong currents, surge, waves, etc.--but this first PCR dive was one of the most challenging I had ever done. I'm in a confined space, wearing unfamiliar gear, no fins, strong currents coming from multiple directions, hanging on to a convex acrylic window by means of a suction cup, trying to not touch my feet to the window (hands and knees are fine), I've got dozens of people staring and pointing at me, and all the while I'm trying to keep calm and pretend I know what I'm doing. It took 5-10 minutes before I remembered to look around and enjoy the scenery, and I wasn't completely comfortable at all that dive.

My second dive into the PCR tank was much better. I knew what to expect, I had learned where the water jets (and therefore the currents) come from, and I was getting much better at stabilizing myself against the window in order to clean it. A few more dives and it should no longer be a big deal.

This aquarium diving is fun! Sure, there is a learning curve involved, but it's also a spectacular, unique experience that I am very lucky to have. I am looking forward to doing much more diving at Steinhart.

Oh, and the answer is yes, we can see out of the tank just as easily as you can see in.

26 July 09
It's summertime! Prior to May we've travelled very little in the past year as our kitty Kisa was ill. But after she died in April we decided to make this into a summer of travelling, attempting to give our very black cloud a silver lining.

This past May Frederick and I joined Susan, Ashley, Charlotte, and Aaron in Chicago to celebrate Angela's graduation from art school. It was a fun, long weekend, and I got to explore Chicago for the first time. It's a pretty nice city. It definitely has a much more urban feel than San Francisco, but at the same time it was never dirty or scary. However, I was a little surprised at how flat it was!

A month later had me heading East to Ottawa, to visit family for a week. I try to make it back there every couple of years to visit; the funny thing is I see some of my Canadian family members more often than I see some of my Californian family. Oh well.

Our June trip was a lot of fun! We've started organizing a group diving trip each summer, and this year's trip was to Loreto, Baja California Sur, Mexico. Frederick and I had been there once before and thought it would be a good destination for a group, so we flew down there with Fifi, Jenny, Mona, and Bahman, while Aneel and Chuck rode their motorcycles down and met us at the hotel.

We had a full week of diving, although I did take a couple days off as I was just getting over a cold. (What timing! I go years without getting sick, then I get my second cold in seven months a week before leaving :( ) Most of the diving was average for what you'd expect in the Sea of Cortez: rocky reefs, a good number of colorful fish, and lots of eels, stingrays, and little critters hiding in the reef. Unfortunately the entire area has suffered through decades of intense fishing and there are pretty much no sharks to be seen. I only saw two live sharks, both horn sharks 2.5-3' long, during this trip. I did see the remains of two dead scalloped hammerheads, including one baby whose head was only about 8 inches wide, on a fishermen's beach littered with fish skeletons. Seeing the baby was a real shame as it means it was never able to reproduce before being killed.

Highlights of this trip were:

Snorkeling with a pod of 12-20 pilot whales! They went right under me, turning and swimming on their sides to watch me floating above them. I could even hear their squeaking sonar.
Thirty minutes later we saw some dolphins. Well, not just a few dolphins like we did at other times, but a whole section of the sea that was alive with dolphins! There were so many it's like the surface of the water was alive. We could see maybe 200 at any one time, and our boat captain estimated the pod to contain about 2000 dolphins! Here's a little movie showing the craziness.
On our final evening we went swimming with Humboldt squid. You know, those "red devils" with teeth on their tentacles that supposedly drag divers to a watery grave? Well, it's true that they do have teeth on the suckers on their arms (they feel like metal velcro), but we were able to dispel the rumors of them being voracious killers. They never touched us, and in fact, didn't come very close to us at all. The biggest danger was from being squirted as they were lifted from the water on a squid jig. (Our divemaster brought a couple squids on board so we could see them up close and touch their tentacles before releasing them back into the water.)

We were supposed to have a second trip this month, a return to Roatan, Honduras. But alas, I injured my back last week trying to pick up a dead sea lion, and had to postpone it. There will be more travelling in the near future!