WW #46 - In case of shark attack...

DIVER TIP: Never enter the water without one of these Hawaiian Shark Sticks!

"If attacked by shark or moray eel, hold stick vertically and insert into animal's mouth to prevent closing of jaw... If the animal should bite you, insert stick in animal's eye and push. DO NOT BLEED! This will only excite the shark or eel..."

[Click on the image to read the rest of the easy instructions.]

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Easter Weekend - 1974

by B. N. Sullivan

Recently we've been reminiscing here about the Marathon Diving Club, the organization that first trained me as a diver so many years ago. Last week I wrote about the kinds of adventures members of that club enjoyed together. Here's another in the Marathon Diving Club (MDC) series.

The photos below belong to my friend Lorna, who was kind enough to let me use them for this story. They document a trip made by several MDC members and their children over the Easter holiday in 1974. The destination was Paros, a Greek island in the central part of the Aegean Sea. [Click on the photos to enlarge.]

The group traveled by car ferry from the Greek mainland to Paros. In addition to the usual assortment of dive equipment, they took along an inflatable boat that was owned by Lorraine and Leonard, two MDC members. The group posed for the above photo at the Paros ferry dock. You can see the inflatable boat on the roof of the car behind them.

Here are the divers on the beach, preparing for the day's activities. In the foreground of the photo are MDC divers Big Jer (standing), with Lorraine, Frank and Leonard (left to right) seated on the boat. The inflatable boat belonged to Lorraine and Leonard. The woman in the blue bathing suit, in the background, is Lorna.

Here's Big Jer consulting a nautical chart, and briefing the others on what he thinks will be the best spot for the next dive.

Fast forward to: Big Jer with his catch of the day -- a grouper that's big enough to feed the whole MDC team, and their families.

Before returning to Athens, the group formed up at an outdoor taverna in the port area for drinks and food and chat. These 'taverna debriefing sessions' were a standard part of every MDC excursion.

Thanks very much to Lorna for unearthing the above photos and sending them to me. Considering that they were all scanned from snapshots that are thirty-four years old, they still look pretty good!

By the way, not all of the MDC members went on that particular trip to Paros. Some of us stayed behind in Athens that weekend, and -- just for the record -- here is what the rest of us did.

We got together at the home of MDC member Phyllis, for food, drinks, and a group sing-along. (Those were the days!) Here we are on Easter, 1974, on the veranda at Phyllis and Jim's house in Kifissia, Greece. That's Phyllis on the left.

I feel very fortunate to have met all of these wonderful people way back when. I feel even more fortunate that so many of us have remained in touch all these years. We became the best of friends, and the adventures we had during our times together have been unmatched. It's no wonder that we are willing to travel thousands of miles for our periodic reunions.

Happy Easter to everyone. And to all the MDC members, thank you so much for the memories -- and for your enduring friendship.

Introducing the Marathon Diving Club

by B. N. Sullivan

I wrote last week that I had just returned from a reunion with some long-time friends, all of whom had been members of a dive club in Athens, Greece many years ago. The name of the club was the Marathon Diving Club, and it was organized by a couple of American men who were living and working in the Athens area at that time. (The image on this page is a patch bearing the Marathon Diving Club emblem.)

The founders of the club had learned to dive while serving in the U.S. Navy, and had continued to dive for recreation. The idea for a club arose as a way to attract and train other sport divers living in the Athens area, and thereby increase the pool of potential dive buddies.

The club name might be a head-scratcher at first. It does not imply that we did marathon dives! Rather it reflects the fact that the focal point for many of the club's early activities was an area known as the "Marathon coast" - the region on the eastern shore of Greece's Attic peninsula, near the site of the ancient Battle of Marathon.

In the early days, most of our organized dives, and some of the club's training activities, took place at beaches along the Marathon coast. The club also had a small facility located at Nea Makri, a little town situated on the Marathon coast. The facility (more like a little shack!) was where we stored pieces of communally owned dive gear. It also housed the compressor that filled our scuba tanks.

Recreational scuba diving was a relatively new sport in the late 1960s and early 1970s when we first met and began diving together, and it was almost unheard of in Greece. As I recall, there was only one dive shop in Greece at that time, and it was in the port of Piraeus. Certified training for new divers was non-existent there, so the founders of the Marathon Diving Club put together a training program of their own.

The club's instructors all were -- or had been -- U.S. Navy divers. I have no idea exactly how many new divers were trained over the years by the Marathon Diving Club's instructors, but it was a good number. What amazes me, when I think back, is just how good that initial training was, and how many of the divers trained by the club's instructors stayed with the sport for years -- even decades (including yours truly).

I'd like to thank my friend Lorna for unearthing a Marathon Diving Club patch -- in mint condition, no less -- and bringing it to last month's reunion. Lorna's husband was a founder of the club, and was my first dive instructor. You'll meet him in the next regular post (right after Wordless Wednesday) , when I write about the Marathon Diving Club's training program for new divers.

The Silent World

by B. N. Sullivan

I doubt there's a serious diver or ocean lover who has not read, or at least heard of, Jacques Cousteau's landmark book, The Silent World. For many of us, it was our first introduction to the notion that people could put on a mask and fins and underwater breathing apparatus and explore the wonders beneath the surface of the sea.

I still have the paperback copy of the book that I acquired as a kid. That's it on the right. It's been read and re-read more times than I can count, and lent to more people than I can remember. Somehow it always managed to find its way back to my bookshelf.

The pages are brown and brittle now, and the binding barely holds those pages together, but I still like to look at it. The photos are as amazing as the text.

The book was first published in English in 1953. The paperback edition I have, from Cardinal Books, was published in 1955. I probably acquired it a year or two after that, although I'm not certain. I only know that it's been on a shelf in my personal library as far back as I can remember. It's still a good read.

The Not-So-Silent World

The Silent World figured as a great lure to visit the underwater world, but as it turns out, that world often is far from silent. Some sounds are annoying -- loud engines on boats passing overhead, for example. Other sounds, like whales singing or dolphins chattering, are sheer delight.  Many kinds of marine life make clicking sounds, always amusing. A strangely soothing sound is pouring rain splashing on the water's surface, or a strong wind whipping across, creating a visible froth and an audible shhh, shhh, shhh for divers below.

Then there are the startling sounds. One instance that stands out in memory was the sound of sonar pings from submarines. We heard those while diving in the Straits of Tiran, in the Red Sea, during the first Gulf War.

In another instance, we were in the Caribbean, diving at the top of a wall near the southwest tip of Grand Cayman. We were by ourselves and just poking along, taking pictures and watching a hungry hawksbill turtle (Eretmochelys imbricata) lay waste to what had been a large sponge. We heard what at first sounded like a low thrum, and then sounded like an intermittent whir. We could tell that whatever was making the sound was getting nearer. We craned our necks, looking this way and that, but we couldn't see any boats passing overhead. Then one of us looked down.

There was a strange light well beneath us, and it appeared to be ascending the wall toward us. We were transfixed. We had no idea what it was. After a few minutes we could see that the light actually was several lights, and they were attached to a bright yellow mini sub. It was a deep-diving mini sub -- the kind that operates as a tourist attraction -- and its pilot was shining spotlights on the wall to illuminate the scenery for the sightseeing passengers. Since we were positioned literally right above the sub, they couldn't see us.

For a moment we looked at each other, considering whether we should stay put and surprise the tourists -- maybe even give them the scare of their lives. But we quickly came to our senses and swam away, well to the side of the sub's path, fearing the whirling propellers. We stayed clear as it reached the top of the wall and then motored away across a sand flat. The people in the mini sub never did see us.

In case you are wondering, I didn't get a photo. As luck would have it, I was set up for macro photography that dive -- and you can't change lenses underwater. My luck!