Nejat Ezal Memorial

A memorial plaque mounted on a huge boulder lies in the shade of the kelp beds of the Casino Point Dive Park, Avalon, Catalina Island.  

NEJAT B. EZAL, 1969 – 1994.  Dreaming of Orcas.  Friends Forever We Will Be

Nejat was my friend.  Today marks the 40^th anniversary of the accident that claimed his life.

A diver sharing a report of his dives on Scubaboard in August 2010 remarked “visited the Sue jac (an old wreck that marks one corner of the park)…the Cousteau memorial. I came across a small memorial plaque to "Nejat B Ezal" mounted to a rock in the vicinity of the Sue jac but shallower. Can anyone share the history of this? I didn't see anything about it elsewhere.” 

One reply simply stated “Nejat B Ezal suffered a shallow water blackout while freediving in 1994 and died. He had just turned 25.”  Another referred him to the memorial page at nejatezal.com. 

Many years ago...I met Nejat through his brother, Kenan.  We all worked at Delco Systems Operations in Goleta, California, but it was outside of work that I got to know them.  In 1984, I got certified as a Basic Scuba Diver in a class at UC Santa Barbara and quickly became obsessed with all things diving.  I would swim with fins along the swim buoy line at Goleta Beach to stay in condition for diving.  I encountered Nejat and Kenan launching their sailboard from the beach one afternoon.  Prior to learning to dive, I too had done a fair amount of sailboarding on my Windsurfer Sport.  We struck up a conversation and quickly bonded over our love of the sea. 

The brothers also did scuba diving.  Nejat advanced to become a divemaster through a course taught at Santa Barbara Aquatics.  I recall advising him that despite the real frustration he might experience during the course, there was no better instructor for potential divemasters than Curt, the owner of the shop. 

In 1987, I started a Ph.D. in Political Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The degree provided the vehicle for me to change fields from Aeronautics to Ocean and Coastal Management.  A few years later, Nejat asked me about my experience using graduate work as a means of changing fields.  He wanted to move from engineering to marine biology.  He easily made the transition. 

I would see Nejat around campus and when I was jogging along the dirt trails of Ellwood Mesa.  He would fall in with me allowing me to set the pace.  He was much faster than I.

At UCSB, Nejat quickly built a reputation among the professors and researchers as a friendly, highly competent, and resourceful graduate assistant.  I recall one story when Nejat was on a research cruise to the Antarctic to study krill when the expedition scientists discovered a shortage of test tube stoppers.  Using the machine tools onboard the vessel and rubber bar stock, Nejat produced the needed stoppers. 

He continued to dive as a UCSB scientific diver through the Marine Science Institute and as a member of the UCSB dive club.  The latter included camping/dive trips to Point Lobos State Park, Anacapa Island and the annual dive weekend at Avalon, Catalina Island.

I recall, in particular, a series of four dives that Nejat made over the 4^th of July weekend in 1992.  On Friday, July 3, I was working on my dissertation with the radio tuned to a local station.  The station featured an on air marketplace.  I heard the announcer offer two spots on a Sunday dive boat out of Ventura at half off the regular price.  I immediately called the dive shop and reserved the spots.  I called Nejat to ask if he wanted to go.  Luckily, I got ahold of him.  Of course, he said “yes.”

I picked up Nejat at his nearby apartment early Sunday morning and we headed for Ventura to board Spectre.  We settled in, rigged our gear, and after a quick trip across the Santa Barbara Channel arrived at Anacapa Island.  Conditions for diving were ideal, calm seas, partly sunny skies, and great underwater visibility.  We did four dives that day at three different locations to typical depths for kelp forest dives: 60 feet for 37 minutes; 40 feet for 45 minutes, 50 feet for 40 minutes; and 50 feet for 40 minutes.  Normally, I would only have done three dives.  To do four dives on Spectre a diver had to rush given the tight schedule for opening and closing the gate. I usually enjoyed a more leisurely pace. However, given Nejat’s enthusiasm, I did make all four.  When Nejat told others at Santa Barbara Aquatics, their incredulous response was “Jim did four dives?!?”

The Day 30 years ago...The UCSB Scuba Club has made an annual end of April pilgrimage organized by Ed Stetson to dive the waters off Casino Point since 1979.  I first attended the Catalina Island trip in 1986, then in its 7th year.  I continued to make the trip annually as one of the divemasters until 1993 and have made the event sporadically since 1998.  I did not make the trip in 1994.  My position as a lecturer teaching a course in Public Administration during the UCSB spring quarter prevented me from going that fateful year.

Sunday morning, April 24, found me home at the kitchen table grading a stack of term papers when the phone rang.  I still remember Nejat’s girlfriend, Claire, tearfully informing me that the day before Nejat had drown while freediving.  I was stunned and shocked with a dose of disbelief.  After the call, I drove to the nearby Santa Barbara Aquatics dive shop to see if anyone had further details.  From what they gleaned, Nejat had made multiple solo free dives in the vicinity of the Suejac, probably succumbed to shallow water blackout and drown.  Everyone was in a state of shocked disbelief.

The following Saturday, family and friends gathered at the Cliff House overlooking the Pacific at
Coal Oil Point for a celebration of Nejat’s life.  During a poignant slide-show narrated by Nejat’s dad, I was overcome with a profound sense of grief.  While I was there to help comfort the family, they ended up consoling me. 

Within a few months, people endowed a number of scholarships in Nejat’s memory.  One of the scholarships supports Marine Diving Technology students at Santa Barbara City College.  Nejat’s friends organized a Dive Rescue Workshop in the following years that trained divers in rudimentary dive rescue techniques with the goal of reducing tragedies like the one that took Nejat.  

A short time later… How the metal plaque came to be placed at the site is something of an local legend.  It seems that Avalon had a policy against installing such monuments.  Shortly before I left Goleta to take up a faculty position at Troy University in Alabama, Kenan, queried me about how such a plaque could be affixed to an underwater rock.  I suggested that a waterproof epoxy adhesive much like one used to repair a swimming pool might work but I was not certain.  As I heard the story sometime after.  It seems a number of Nejat’s friends, many who went through the Santa Barbara City College Marine Technology program, clandestinely installed the plaque during a couple of night dives.  The marker is not only secured using adhesives.  They drilled into the rock and secured the memorial with fasteners.  The plaque is permanently affixed to the rock!

A few years later…A sunny, warm, and partly cloudy late April morning, the kind of day that makes the annual trip to Catalina Island legendary.  On the calm surface, surrounded by kelp, Kenan and I check the line-ups using the peak of the Casino with one of the dome’s flag poles and another landmark.  We drop down and start searching the boulders for the plaque, which we quickly locate.  I have the honor today of cleaning up the marker to remove any algae or marine growth that may have accumulated on the plaque.  Our tools are simple, white nonabrasive scouring pads (sometimes refered to as “magic erasers) and other implements for removing more stubborn encrusting organisms.  Cleaning the plaque was a privilege. 

More years later…Since moving to Alaska in 2002, my trips to Catalina with the UCSB Scuba Club have been fewer and fewer—2004, 2014, 2022, and 2023.  On some of the trips I locate the memorial on others I search but don’t find it.  The lineups to geographic references are meticulously recorded in a travel journal that disappeared from my bookshelf.  I knowthe plaque is there, other divers reported seeing it in 2022 and 2023. The plaque stands as a testament to a man who loved the sea and the wonders he found in the deep.  

I think inscription of “Friends Forever We Will Be” most eloquently sums it up.  I miss my friend.

Nejat's memorial page can be found at www.nejatezal,com

 

My First Experience Teaching Scuba--The Beach Dive

The graduation dive took place at Hendry's Beach near Santa Barbara. The weather reruns from the previous day.  I suspect we will have the same tomorrow. The beach offers all the attributes for a great dive, lots of parking, an area for gearing up, easy access to the water, a decent rock reef with kelp close to shore, freshwater showers, and a good restaurant for the apres-dive debriefing. It also offers a beach break large enough to show students how to do surf entries and exits but not so large as to knock them down in the process.

Fins on and shuffling backwards, we enter the water in a line. Ed takes one end of the line and I take the other. We act as choreographers for what looks like a line of drunken sea lions doing the cancan. Only Dave, who carries the dive flag, float, and anchor, is excused from the dance. I think if I started doing the conga, all would follow my lead. The line breaks as students stop and brace for the two-foot wave that comes in. At chest-deep water, we roll over and kick out. At this point, I play border collie, working to keep buddy pairs together and the pairs together as a group, reminding divers that the slower swimmer sets the pace for the team.

We drop down into 25 feet of water on the edge of the reef. I stay on the bottom while Ed brings the divers down one-buddy-pair-at a time. Visibility, a spotty 20 feet, gets driven lower if the students begin to thrash around. These kids are pretty good. Ed goes down the line doing final skill checks with each student--mask removal and replacement, regulator removal and recovery and so on. I'm an outrider, swimming back and forth in the event that anyone needs assistance. After the checks, we break into two groups. I show the divers how to use sand ripples for navigation. We see many crabs and kelp bass. We even get checked out by a bat ray, who undoubtedly came by to apologize for being absent from Bat Ray Cove the day before.

The dive ends uneventfully. We hold our dive debriefing. We pose for the obligatory after-dive photos. Today's dive will be number 47 in my log book. I was certified as a basic diver one year ago to the day.

Dave hosts a graduation BBQ at his apartment that night.

He pulls me aside and asks, "who's this guy Mike Nelson that you guys keep talking about? Was he a student of Ed's who had really screwed up?"

I mention that Lloyd Bridges played super diver Mike Nelson in the TV show Sea Hunt.  “Every week, for four seasons, Mike would get into some situation underwater that only his skill could overcome.”

“When was that on TV?” Dave asks.

Just then I knew that there was a generation gap, even though I was only nine years older than the person asking the question.  I had seen Sea Hunt in reruns on after school afternoon TV. 

Teaching scuba is a lot like love affairs. They come and go, they last a short period of time (but what a wonderful time), and while you may forget faces and names of the participants after a few dozen, you will always remember most the details about your first, even though it was the most awkward. So it is with mine. So it is with mine.

The saying, "a journey of a thousand miles begins with a small step," appropriately describes my life path that began in that instant. Over next decade-and-a-half, I helped as an assistant instructor/divemaster in dozens of scuba diver certification courses. At times this underwater activity has been a hobby, a vocation, a job, and an obsession. I have met a lot of interesting people along the way and it’s been a lot of fun. I've also met a fair number of people for whom diving was a bucket list activity; they never went diving again.  But that's another story.

One of the divers in this story, Dave, went on to become a very good friend and an excellent dive buddy. We took the UCSB dive club trip over to Catalina for a weekend that is still talked about. He became an assistant instructor and went on to teach one season at the Club Med in Playa Blanca, Mexico. I visited him for a week at the Club. When I walked in, Dave and the Chief of Scuba asked if I would be interested in staying for two weeks and teaching scuba, since they were unexpectedly short-staffed at the end of the season. Despite the tempting offer, I could not accept since I had an obligation to get back to in the states. I did work as a dive guide for that week on the morning dives, which allowed the regular dive staff a little relief time. When I flew out at the end of the week, Ed flew in to finish out the one week left in the season.

 

My First Experience Teaching Scuba--The Boat Dives

The honor of breaking me into the rewarding career of assistant scuba instructor fell to Ed Stetson, a diver and waterman without equal. Ed taught an assistant instructor certification course to several proto-instructors just a few weeks before. When he put out a call for volunteers to help assist a class offered through the Outdoor Recreation program at the University of California, Santa Barbara, I immediately volunteered.  It was the same arrangement that certified me as a basic scuba diver one year earlier.

Dive classes are divided into three parts--classroom instruction, pool skills training, and open water dives. The class took advantage of all the facilities a university has to offer, a good classroom, an Olympic-size swimming pool, and in the case of UCSB, the Santa Barbara Channel for open water dives. Ten students enrolled for the four-week-long class. During the swim test, we discovered that while ability varied, they were all competent swimmers. Some would swim like dolphins, the others just kind of paddled along. None swam like an anchor, for which we silently thanked Poseidon.

Students did not comprise the entire group.  A mother-daughter pair enrolled in the course.  Joy, the daughter, worked on campus.  Gladys, her mom, was doing the course because she thought it would be fun.  She was the trouper in the class and became something of a “den mother” to the group.  She was adventurous and very well-traveled, striking out on all kinds of treks around the globe.  She told me that she went solo on many of these travels because her retired Air Force husband just did not want to leave Santa Barbara after so many overseas assignments during his career.  One of the youngsters told me after the class “when you see Gladys going through the drill without complaint, you just kind of suck it up and do it.”

The group of ten soon coalesced into a class. We rotated buddies throughout the pool skills sessions. The class met two nights a week, with each evening session split evenly between classroom and pool skills.  The classroom exercises covered essential knowledge in a typical lecture format.  To emphasize a point, Ed would occasionally make reference to a hypothetical diver who thought he knew everything as "a real Mike Nelson.”

The first pool session consisted of showing the students how to hook up the scuba gear and then monitoring as each worked with a buddy to assemble their rig, practicing various entries and surface dives, swimming with the equipment and essential skills.  We watched to make sure that each diver adjusted the equipment properly and did each skill correctly. We emphasized the importance of working as a buddy pair.  We also made sure that each diver was paired with a different buddy for each session.

Confident of their abilities, the class was ready for the scheduled open water dives at Anacapa Island for July 26 and a beach dive for July 27--one year to the day that I was certified as a basic diver.

You may know the typical July Southern California weather pattern--low clouds and fog, with partial clearing along the coast in mid-afternoon. (In fact, people speculate that one reason our TV weather personalities are such clowns is that they have to be entertaining since the weather seldom varies.) We boarded the M/V Captain Midnight owned by Jerry Shapiro, attorney-turned-dive-boat-owner, and skippered by Capt. Don MacIntyre, from whom I learned a great deal about reading the moods of the sea. The crossing from Channel Islands Harbor in Oxnard to Anacapa Island went very smoothly, the seas behaved with little swell.

First Dive--Bat Ray Cove

The appropriately named "Bat Ray Cove," scene of our first dive, did not live up to its billing on this day, at least for my team. Ed asked me to take four students on a tour. Jurgen was an exchange student from Germany. Bruce graduated a few weeks earlier and spent the summer tying up some loose ends in his academic record before moving on. Dave, in his third year of Pre-law wanted to learn to dive so he stayed around for the summer session. Bill, a temporary refugee from urban Los Angeles, came to UCSB for summer school to escape USC.

When we got to the site, Ed gave the class an overview on conditions and the purpose of the dive.  After the briefing, we told everyone that they could gear up, cautioning them to don their gear from their station.  We asked that they not to spread gear all over the deck as it not only constituted a tripping hazard, but inevitably someone’s gear always came up missing from a pile.  Luckily, the boat did not rock much at anchor.  Gearing up on a pitching deck can present a real challenge for student divers.

After carefully checking each student's gear at the gate, we entered the water one at a time, faced the divemaster and gave the "OK" sign. We dropped down the anchor line and began our underwater tour. The marine life cooperated; we examined sea hares, identified scallops and the plentiful abalone, and tried to play tag with an octopus that really didn't want to be "it." The twenty-five-foot visibility made the dive seem effortless, the group stayed together. We surfaced near the stern of the boat, climbed aboard the swim stair, shed our fins, and boarded the boat. I learned working with later classes things do not always go so well.

Second Dive--Barracuda Rock

After recovering all the divers, and taking roll call to make sure, we moved the boat to Barracuda Rock. This time the location lived up to its billing. My team consisted of the same four divers with the addition of Mattius, another German student. I check each diver's repetitive group computation. We visited a nearby underwater arch, but had to cut the excursion short when the first diver with 750 psi of pressure signaled "low-on-air." We stay longer, 30 minutes, and go a bit deeper, 30 feet, on this dive. On the way to the surface, we spotted the silver torpedo-like silhouette of a barracuda. On the surface, we practiced the kelp crawl--a necessary skill to learn.

If you dive in California, you will eventually find that a rather large kelp bed positioned itself between you and the boat or the beach during your dive. Also, for some unexplained reason, you will not have enough air left in the tank to drop down and swim through the kelp. If you can't go under the canopy, and can't go around it, you have to go through it. The boat will not come and pick you up. California divers relish telling horror stories about how "man-eating" kelp drowns unsuspecting divers when they become entangled in the algae, akin to the Sargasso Sea trapping ships. My own optometrist related how he quit diving after finding the body of a diver wound into the kelp at Catalina. Don't believe it! To listen to these stories, one would conclude that the kelp beds are littered with bodies and that more divers are attacked by the kelp than are certified in any single year! Crawling through kelp can be a pain-in-the-ass, but if done correctly is a mere nuisance. The secret is not to panic, keep air in the BC, pass over it, and next time plan your dive a little bit better!

When we got back to the boat, I mentioned to Dennis Divins, the UCSB Diving Officer, that we saw barracuda. He grabs a spear gun and hops into the water. Next thing I know, he comes back with a fine specimen for the evening's dinner.

Third Dive--Barracuda Rock

We don't move the boat for the third and final dive of the day. On this dive, I show two divers around the area. Both divers adapt well to the ocean, but the look in the eyes of one of the divers makes me a little more cautious on this dive. Despite the OK sign, I see in one of the divers the onset of wide-eye apprehension. I do what my training tells me to do, I stop the tour, evaluate the situation, and decide on a course of action, which means getting the diver to the surface. The situation did not turn into limb-thrashing panic nor was it likely that it would have. I still have a conservative approach whenever I work with new divers.

We again took roll-call. In the decade that I worked as a dive master, I always had an irrational fear of leaving someone behind. Can you imagine coming to the surface only to see the boat sailing away? Can you imagine getting a call from the Coast Guard as your boat pulls into the slip inquiring about the one you left behind? 

I always insisted on positive verification that all the divers were indeed back onboard before we pulled the hook and headed for the barn. That habit started on this trip and has served me (and my divers) well. Not only have my boats always returned to shore with the same number of divers, they were same divers who got on board the boat that morning.

Celebrating Diving Milestones

 

On a trip to Kona in 2023, my buddy Luke logged his 50th dive. We also logged our 50th dive as a buddy team.  I christened the event,  “Hawaii Double Five-Oh, 50th in 50th” I took a picture of Luke signaling his 50th dive at the boat ramp. The dive itself was very memorable for it was the manta encounter night dive.  Back on board we removed and stowed our gear before heading back toward the harbor.  I mentioned that this was Luke’s 50th dive.  It elicited congratulations from our fellow divers but a “meh” from the crew.  I was a bit disappointed by that response.  On past trips with that operator I have seen similar milestones result in a moment of recognition by the dive leader and crew.

The next day we did our 50^th dive as a buddy team.  I snapped a picture of Luke giving me the “5-0” underwater.  Not a bad accomplishment for the two of us.  We have been diving together since Luke got certified in 2016.  The narrative of those experiences runs to many dozens of pages when transcribed from my dive journal.

Humans customarily mark various milestones or accomplishments with ceremonies, rites and rituals.  Aviators practice the tradition of cutting off the shirt tail of a student pilot upon completion of the first solo.  I recall the entry hall to the Civil Air Patrol building at Santa Barbara Airport in mid-1970s decorated with the shirt tails of several cadets.  The khaki shirt tail of my friend, Lee Ross, featured his name, date of solo, flight instructor Ernie Gabard’s signature, and the phrase “Jim missed his boat.”  That phrase alluded to me kidding Lee that the day he soloed I was going to be on a boat getting away to safety and that it would be a “damned crowded boat.”  When he called to tell me he soloed, I was greeted with “you missed your boat.”

Sailors crossing the equator become “shellbacks” with on-board ceremonies ranging from simple to elaborate. Scouts advance from “Tenderfoot” through “Eagle Scout” in formal ceremonies done before the entire troop.  Fraternal organizations conduct elaborate initiation ceremonies.  Head coaches get doused with Gatorade upon winning a football championship.  Military officer candidates choose from whom they receive the “first salute” upon commissioning.

What rituals does sport scuba diving use and for what accomplishments?  Not many come to mind.  I suppose receiving the initial certification or completing a new rating might qualify.

My instructor, Dave Rowell, upon completion of our basic diver course called us to the back of the boat, congratulated each of us, handed us our temporary certification card, and took our individual pictures with a Polaroid camera for our permanent card.  He then announced “you may now make a dive on your own with a buddy.  You are responsible for monitoring your repetitive group, depth, and time.” We all paired up, geared up and made our first dive.  It felt really good to be cut loose that way.

I recall Ed Stetson in Santa Barbara hosting a “meet and greet” with local dive instructors when his students completed their assistant instruction certification.  Other instructors I know host social events when a class finishes an open water certification course. 

The folks at CocoView Resort in Roatan use the Friday night dinner to recognize the accomplishments of guests during the week.  These events include specialty courses completed, certifications earned such as master scuba diver, and dive milestones such as the 100th, 500th dive and so on.  The enthusiasm of the awards is kind of infectious.  Everyone likes to be recognized by their peers.

Today, savvy dive shops and operators announce completion of certification classes via a social media post.  However, with few exceptions, most post certification milestones need to be individually or collectively planned among dive buddies.  You need to toot your own horn because no one is going to toot it for you.

Brooke Moreton of PADI noted that “doing something special not only helps you remember the hallmark dives, but also builds excitement moving forward.”  She suggests trying a new skill, like a night dive; diving a new location, documenting the dive with photos, making a souvenir, celebrating at dinner; and telling buddies and friends about the event.

On a trip to Catalina Island in 2001 with the UCSB Scuba Club, one of the members passed the 100-dive milepost. She made the Century Club at the turn of the century. (Yes, I am one of these purists who believe the millennium did start in 2001 A.D.) In a sport where most participants quit before their number of logged dives equals the age of majority, achieving five score dives is an accomplishment to be celebrated. 

While we did not have a brass band playing or even the Catalina barbershop quartet singing "I did it my way" upon her exit from the underwater park, you can see from the picture that the threesome dive team does have that infectious enthusiasm for the sport. If you look closely, you will see they are holding up fingers to form the numbers 1-0-0. I learned something about photography that day. Hands in black gloves do not contrast very well with a background of black wetsuits. Still, look at their expressions. This is one happy trio celebrating individual achievement.

So why can’t everybody have that kind of experience?  

Goleta Beach Christmas Gift

 

In the entrance to my townhome, a small wood sign shows a diver sitting on the stock of an anchor with an octopus perched atop of the diver’s head.  I JUST LOVE GOLETA BEACH DIVING captions the artwork.  

This item was a Christmas gift from John and Mary Erdahl.  I worked with John at Delco Systems Operations.  He was a contact engineer, I was a senior technical writer.  I got my start in sailing when I crewed with John on Max Lynn’s CF36, Tranquility, in the summer of 1982.  John purchased a 29-foot sailboat, Windover, a few years later which he kept in a slip in the Santa Barbara Harbor. 

I crewed for John during many of the summer “Wet Wednesday” races sponsored by the Santa Barbara Yacht Club.  He very generously let crew like me take the helm during the races, something few other skippers would do.  He always offered a cold beer to the crew as the boat crept along on the downwind leg.  After tucking the boat into its berth and folding and stowing the sails, we adjourned to the Yacht Club for cocktails and to await official race results.  I have a couple of SBYC cocktail glasses, awarded to the winner of each class, that John shared with his crew.  Also, when my out-of-town friends visited, John gladly took us out for a cruise.  People awed at the panorama of the city against the backdrop of the Santa Ynez Mountains.  Nothing quite says “Santa Barbara adventure” like a sail on a sunny and breezy afternoon.

The idea for the gift originated in conversations about my scuba diving at Goleta Beach with John and Mary.  With a few exceptions, I absolutely did not like diving there and expressed that opinion freely.  Goleta Beach is a giant sandbox—acres and acres of it.  The littoral cells that move sand down the Southern California coast seem to be particularly favor Goleta Beach.  Sand constantly moves, suspended in the water column, rendering underwater visibility zero.  I have compared it to “diving in a sand storm.” To say the water is turbid is akin to saying the night is dark.

Even if you could see more than a few inches, not much of interest to sport divers lives on the sandy bottom except an occasional sting ray, a treasury of sand dollars, and a catalog of other invertebrates.  I suspect rays don’t bury themselves in the sand at Goleta Beach.  Rather, they just kind of lay there and get buried by the sand grains precipitating out of the water column like snow in an Alaska blizzard. 

Some marine life clings to the hard surface provided by the Goleta sewage treatment plant ocean outfall pipeline—at least the parts that are not buried in the shifting sands.  Even then, a diver moving along the pipeline seems to be a target of the fishers on the pier that parallels the pipeline.  Some anglers relish aiming their casts at the submerged diver’s air bubbles. 

John and Mary came upon the sign while enjoying the Sunday afternoon arts and craft show that extended along Cabrillo Boulevard from Stearn’s Wharf toward East Beach.  One of the exhibitors offered various hand=painted signs.  After spying the diver, they immediately thought of my remarks about Goleta Beach diving.  The vendor added the tongue-in-cheek caption that made this most prized gift complete. 

The gift has proven a great conversation starter over the years.  Placed in the front door entryway, guests to my home see the sign as they remove their shoes—following the Alaska custom.  First-time guests to my home ask, “where is Goleta Beach and why do you love diving there?”  I animatedly regale them with tales of Goleta Beach dives.  That may explain why, on subsequent visits, they pretend not to notice the sign as they hurry into the adjacent living room.

Bob's Christmas Abalone Iron

My brother Bob graduated from San Diego State University with an industrial technology degree.  At one point we spoke about projects for his upcoming manufacturing course.  I suggested that he might consider producing good quality abalone irons.  Many of the abalone irons I had seen in the dive shop were ok.  Other irons I had seen on boats looked like someone used a grinder to cut down rear leaf springs from a ‘65 Ford Falcon.

Bob’s group, named Abscam[1], created and produced an abalone irion that was an aesthetically functional device. With its steel blade, bicycle handle grip,  surgical tubing lanyard, and weight, it just felt like the right tool. Bob gavepresented me with an iron just before Christmas.  I was so impressed with it, that I purchased a few extra to gift to dive buddies.  I gave one to Mark Bursek for Christmas in 1985.  Wrapping was easy—I merely placed the iron in  a cut down gift wrap paper tube and sealed the ends.   

I showed the abalone iron to Curt Weissner, owner of Santa Barbara Aquatics.  He too was impressed by the design and feel of the iron.  The iron was limited to its initial low production run.  While I have no doubt that this was a great design, the question was whether it could be produced at a wholesale price point that made it competitive with commercially available irons.  The market is somewhat limited.  Bob related that they manufactured approximately 100 irons at $12.95 per unit.  The irons were sold at a local San Diego dive shop but large scale production was not really practical.

The iron designed and produced by the class had to be compliant with California Department of Fish and Game regulations which have specified standards for abalone irons since 1974.[2].

Abalone may be taken only by hand or by devices commonly known as abalone irons. Abalone irons must be less than 36 inches long, straight or with a curve having a radius of not less than 18 inches, and must not be less than 3/4 inch wide nor less than 1/16 inch thick. All edges must be rounded and free of sharp edges. Knives, screwdrivers and sharp instruments are prohibited.

Divers also needed to carry a measuring device to ensure the abalone taken was a certain minimum size, which varied by species.  These were either stamped from thin sheet metal or made from orange plastic.  I recall one year the plastic devices were rumored to be inaccurate.  The result was that a "short" abalone would measured as "legal."  Apparently the manufacturing process did not account for shrinkage of the plastic as it cooled.  Whether this really happened or if it was a dive shop urban myth is anyone's guess.  I do recall checking mine when I was told of the discrepancy.  ! carried a sheet metal gage as a spare.  Woe to the diver stopped by California Fish and Game wardens without a legal iron and measuring device.

Over the years, I did harvest a number of pink abalone, a common species around the northern Channel Islands, and a few red abalones which seemed to favor deeper and colder waters.  Any abalone was considered a prized and wonderful gift from the sea, not only for the tastiness of its meat but also the beauty of its shell. The folks I dived with only took for immediate consumption.  Abalone is best prepared fresh!

Abalone harvest in Southern California ceased in 1997.  I understand the need to close the harvest after a precipitous decline to near extinction for all the abalone species. While diving the last two years at Catalina Island, I have seen abalone among the boulders of the Avalon breakwall.  I am hopeful for their recovery.  Still, I can't help think of the divers that will not experience the great fun of finding, taking and preparing an abalone, especially when done communally with good friends.  That aspect will be covered in a future blog.

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[1] According to Bob, the group name, Ab Scam, was a play on the FBI investigation and sting operation involving public corruption that made the news in 1980.  https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/abscam

[2] See Historical Summary of Laws and Regulations Governing the Abalone Fishery in California.  https://www.oceansciencetrust.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Historical-Summary-of-recreational-abalone-fishery-laws-and-regulations-for-California-5_16_2018.pfd accessed on December 10, 2022.  Since 2013, the Department of Fish and Game became the Department of Fish and Wildlife.

A Coffee Cup for the Decades

 

One of the great benefits of scuba diving is the people you meet and the friends that you make.  Some of these friendships last a lifetime connected, over the years, by posts and messages on social media and an annual exchange of Christmas cards.  

For me, one such friend is David Porter.  I met Dave when he learned to scuba dive in the very first class that I taught as an assistant instructor with Ed Stetson in the Summer of 1985.  As it turned out, David needed a place to live for the 1985/86 UCSB school year.  He wanted to move out of the college student ghetto of Isla Vista in order to raise his GPA as he would be applying soon to law school.  I mentioned that I had a spare empty bedroom in my mobile home that it would rent cheap.  The class ended, nothing more was said.  A few weeks later, days before school started, he called and asked if the room was still available.  I replied it was.   He moved in shortly thereafter. Having another diver living in your home means you will always have a dive buddy.

At the same time I was assisting with Dave’s certification class, I was finishing up my SSI Dive Control Specialist (e.g., Divemaster) certification with Curt Wiessner at Santa Barbara Aquatics.  Between the two, I was spending a lot of time in the water.  When the summer ended, the number of dives declined.  I started swimming laps with my mask and fins in the 25-yard pool at the nearby Los Caneros Court Club in order to keep in condition for diving.  Someone once remarked to my brother Bob, who was also a member of the club, “some nutjob is snorkeling in the swimming pool.”  Bob replied, “oh yeah, that’s my brother” and quickly added, “he does that to stay in condition for scuba diving.”  

I kidded with Dave that“I am getting waterlogged.  I need to dry out before these wrinkles on my hands become permanent and I grow gills.”

After final exams were completed in early December, Dave was packing to go home to San Francisco for the Christmas break.  We exchanged Christmas gifts early.  

“I saw this in San Francisco and knew I had to get it for you” he said as he handed me the package.  I opened it and immediately got the joke.

Inside I discovered a Federal Penitentiary Alcatraz Swim Team” coffee mug. I have that mug to this day!

As many of my dive buddies will attest, I am a coffee hound.  Black, no cream or sugar.  I could not start a day of diving without a cup of brew from the 7-11 across the street from my house or board a dive boat if it didn’t have “navy coffee” already brewing in the oversized percolator.   Nearly 40 years later I still have and use that mug. 

Dave took the Rescue Diver course taught by Dennis Divins and Ed Stetson in the spring at UCSB.  Dave moved back into Isla Vista for his senior year. That summer, Dave and I worked for passage as rescue diver and divemaster, respectively, on weekend dive charters to the Channel Islands.  I monitored dive operations, he responded to divers needing assistance.  We would harvest scallops during our dives and barbeque them at my place when we got back.  We did lots of diving that summer. 

Dave went on to become President of the UCSB Scuba Club.  We had great times diving, skiing at Mammoth, visiting Marineland just before it closed, and on the annual UCSB Scuba Club dive trip to Catalina Island.  He also got certified as an assistant instructor before graduating in June 1987.  The assistant instructor rating allowed him to be a scuba instructor that summer at the Club Med in Playa Blanca, Mexico.  Years of French classes in school sealed the deal.  I went down to the Club for a week that August.  When I got to the Club, the Chief of the Village asked me if I would consider taking a two week position as a scuba instructor to fill in for an injured instructor.  It took me about 10 seconds to say “yes.”  It turned out I could only stay a week, so Club Med flew Ed Stetson down to work the second week.

He married his college sweetheart, Annie, graduated from law school, started a practice, renovated a house in Sausalito that had been in his family for years, and, with Annie, raised two boys into adulthood.  The bio on the law firm’s webpage states “he enjoys hiking, mountain biking, surfing, snow skiing, and fishing. He was a rescue diver and scuba diving instructor before becoming an attorney.”  He sure was, one of the best.

Every so often, I will be clutching the mug filled with hot coffee and remember with great fondness the great times we had diving.  It is funny how an inanimate object can evoke such strong and wonderful memories.