Ben Oostdam's Autobiography: 1960-1963

page 56

Hawaii I I I - oh! Maui, Ricky Grigg, first B.C.dive March 9, 1963

On March 9, 1963, I was ready to make my first black coral dive. Having just met Larry Ackerman the day before, I was duly impressed by the risks, mainly nitrogen narcosis ("rapture of the depth") and the bends. Larry, who was one of the original discoverers of black coral off Maui in 1958, now was partly paralyzed and used a wheelchair. At the end of a deep dive, he had passed out and when his buddy had dragged him on board and looked around for help, he had headed for a nearby vessel, which just so happened to be one of only two Navy diving vessels in the World. That saved Larry's live, because he was immediately put into the shipboard decompression chamber.
After loading up our boat with diving gear and oceanographic sampling devices including the lightmeter with what seemed miles of wire, and launching it from the small beach next to the harbor, we headed for Lanai barely managing to skirt some rocks. We rigged up the fathometer and started looking for ledges deeper than 25 fathoms (150 feet) which are most likely to be settled successfully by the relatively rare black coral. We also used the line-ups (ranges) of landmarks revealed to Rick by an earlier buddy, Harold, who had also suffered from the bends and had sold out his original share for some $ 4K. We dropped anchor near a ledge at some 130 foot, and dropped the current cones which fix speed and direction after a sugar cube dissolves. At noon, we measured the light transmission at standard depths (1,3,5,10,20,30,40 m) after which we went down through the extremely clear and transparent water. I had some troubles with my ears and admired Ricky who went down all the way without any trouble. I also felt like a Christmas tree with my knive, chisel and sledge hammer. There was no black coral, only some Lepastrea purpurea , and after Rick took some measurements and I filled and tied two watersamplers onto the line we ascended with some 400 lbs to spare.

We took quite some time to locate the second spot at 170 foot depth. The bottom was flat, but we did find some black coral bushes in the hazy blue. Rick went for a large bush, while I collected some smaller ones trying to avoid the slimy red polyps and using my sledge hammer and chisel to break them loose. All too soon I experienced nitrogen narcosis and talked myself into avoiding greed and keeping track of time.

We ascended, Rick rather fast, while I hung around at 20 feet to decompress. I noticed that Rick had dropped his trees and when I reached the surface I noticed that the boat was quite far off and he was racing to catch it. I waited quite a while because he had trouble with the hook and had tied a pillow to the anchorline. When he picked me up he complimented me on being "cool" because I had not dropped my trees or weights and had stayed right above the spot where his trees had 'landed'.

That was the end of diving for that day and I was not only excited but also disturbed about the various risks, deciding that from now on I'd use a separate descending line.