The Deep

                                                            Photo credits unknown

In the Bahamas, one of our featured dives was called the deep dive. It was a short dash to 120 feet, where the continental shelf ended and plunged into an abyss over 3000 feet. I think our allowed bottom time was 5 minutes. Keeping the ledge very close, we would swim over the bottomless blue for a few seconds. Light was up, bubbles went up, darkness was down, those were our only points of reference. It was an advanced dive for experimented divers with excellent control of their buoyancy. A bumbling beginner would have sunk to a 1000 feet before being even aware that something was wrong, would have panicked and died.

120 feet is not very deep by today’s standards. Free divers go beyond 300 feet. Scuba divers can reach 1000 feet when breathing mixed gas. But the good old diver, breathing from a good old tank of air, is still limited by physiology and physics barriers. I know many an instructor who recklessly went to 180 or 200 feet. But it’s risky business. With nitrogen narcosis not hitting everyone at the same depth and with the same intensity, 120 feet was a reasonable limit for guided, paying customers.

 I didn’t go on this dive very often. But I didn’t go a single time, without feeling the attraction of the void. I didn’t go a single time without scrutinizing the depths and thinking: “It would be so EASY”.

Not that I wanted to die. But if I had, how simple it could be. Just go down to the edge of the ledge… and then keep going. A one way trip, never to be seen again. No barrier, no flag, no warning signs. So easy. It gets darker, colder, heavier. You become narced. You run out of air or you throw your regulator out, either way you drown. No body, no blood. Ashes to ashes, reef to reef.

 
Yos sayeen' (as an immortal cat used to say).