Cucumber dive page three

  After a good long hour break (closer to two hours) Mike and I idle up the bay a ways to some marks I have on the computer from years gone by.
  "Hope we find something here," I comment to Mike, shutting off the engines and letting the boat drift to a stop.
  "I guess We'll know in a bit," he quips back. "At least we have enough on board to make our trip paid off."
  Mike helps me back into all my dive gear and I once again plunge below the surface.
  I drop into the inky depths and right into a bottom covered in sea cucumbers.
  "Wow!" I shout into my regulator. It sounds like some space alien to my ears, gurgling and burgling. I have to laugh.
  I find myself talking alot under water. During hour long dives I will talk, hum, and sing. The weird bubbling gurgle sounds tend to amuse me and break the long lonely time underwater.
  For years we have talked about getting a dive system with com (communications). This would allow the tender on the boat to hear the diver and the diver to hear the tender. Sounds good in a perfect world... this is not that perfect world. I suffer major cramps in my legs while diving. When the "charlie horses" lock my legs up I crawl along the bottom with my arms but find myself screaming into my regulator. "Owe! You stupid cramp, let me go!" The screams are sent upwards in a swirl of bubbles never to be heard by anyone but me. I kind of like it that way.
  If I were linked to the boat by com and did my charlie horse screaming I fear my tender would think the Loc Ness monster had ahold of me and would either jerk my up by my air hose, or... cut my air hose and get himself and the boat far from the danger below.
  That settled I like the no com system.
  I am picking cucumbers as quickly as I can move. They are all over the bottom, but most of them are in huge piles of kelp. With the kelp leaves is powdery silt. I can see a dozen or more cukes in one kelp but by the time I have grabbed five or six the silt has me blindly feeling for the rest of them, the braille method. I can usually get a fix on most of the ones I see, and finish them by blindly patting the kelp and silt, but every once in a while I grab a crab, a fish, or star fish.
Cucumbers have no movement at all when I touch them. When something starts moving, jerking, or squirming in my hand I always Jerk away and quickly move to the next batch of cucumbers, outside of the silt!
  I am popping corks and Mike is hoisting bag after bag into the boat.  I keep watching my dive computer as it counts the minutes of bottom time. I know I should have about three hours on the bottom before the dive day ends at 3:00 p.m.
  I have swam quite a bit down the shore and have come to a creek area. Even though I am way below the surface I can tell when I get to fresh water coming into the ocean. Cucumbers do not like fresh water. They will stack in masses on each side of the creek flow. I have found that these areas are the best picking, but once you get through the big batch of product you must swim to the far side of the creek to begin the next big gathering of cucumbers.
  I realize I am going to have to swim a long ways on already cramping legs. For almost an hour I have been battling cramps in my thighs and calves. I have screamed, whined, bitten the regulator till I'm surprised it does not leak water, and crawled with my hands and arms.
  I decide I've had enough for this day and slowly head for the surface. I like to make my final accent of the day very slow to make sure I do not blow the dive tables. I trust my dive computer, but it does not hurt to go a bit extra.
  My head breaks surface to rain. Mike helps me back on the boat and I inform him that I'm done.
  "Good job, man," he says while shutting down the machines. "I'm guessing we have eight or nine hundred pounds."
  I agree with him as I have kept track of the bags I have been sending up all day.
  "Sure not as much as I had hoped for, but I guess not bad for a decrepit, one eyed, old guy," I comment, while wriggling out of all my dive gear.
  I struggle out of all my wet dive gear and into some warm dry clothes. I turn the boat heater on high and pour steaming hot coffee.
  Mike cleans up the deck and stows all the dive gear.
  while he is still tiding the deck I start the engines and idle in the direction of the tender.
  Glacier Bay Seafood's normal tender(A commercial boat usually a crabber or seiner) notified me last week that he would be out this week, installing a new transmission in his boat, but there would be a replacement tender, and gave me the boat name.
  I call on the radio to find where the tender is anchored and arranged for off loading our day's catch.
  "I'm anchored close to the beach near Appleton Bay," the packer's voice comes booming over my radio.
  "Sounds good. I'll see you in just a few minutes," I reply, turning the boat towards his location.
   Mike readies the deck, removes the tarp cover, and has the tie up lines ready by the time I pull up to the packer.
  "Looks like a purse seiner," I say to Mike as we tie to the lines tossed to us.
  "Hey guys, how's it going?" I shout over the deck to the crew on the packer waiting for us to off load. "Have you got a price for us?"
  Fishing in Alaska is a lot like farming. You grow the crop, weed it, water it, then harvest it. As the load of crop harvest starts getting old in your trucks, the farmer finds out what price the buyers are willing to pay. Most of the time you are disappointed at the low price offered you. Your choices are dump the load for compost, or sell to the person so willing to cheat you out of your hard work.
  Diving is the same way. All week before the first dive we are getting calls from the buyers.
  "Earl, are you diving this year?" I hear over and over. "We sure hope you will sell your cucumbers to us."
  "Yeah, I plan on diving, what price are we looking at this year?"
  It's always the same... a long silence, followed by much throat clearing... stuttering a bit... "Ummm... Well... Ahhumm... Well, you know, cough-cough, the market is not all that strong this year. The Yen to dollar is not looking good..."
  Oh come on guys. You are begging for our product. You need it, but you are trying to pay the lowest price known to man to the divers risking their lives to harvest it for you.
  "We have not been told the price yet... we'll announce it on the grounds on Monday," is the response always given.
  The price echoed over the radio just happens to be about a dollar a pound less then the year before. The divers start calling each of the buyers complaining about the low price... as the evening wears on the price will start crawling up to where it should have been at the start.
  I can sure see why unions were established. If all the divers could work together and hold out selling until a fair price is offered, we could save all the games played each year.
  A couple years ago, some divers flew to the orient and arranged to sell directly to the guys who want cucumbers. The price they came back with was more than double ever paid for cucumbers. As soon as we started committing to these diver friends the other big company buyers jacked the price above them to make sure and get our cucumbers. It made for some very lucrative years... until the little guys faded out and now it is back to the big company guys again. sigh...
  Mike and I bucket cucumbers out of my fish holds and into brailers, which the packers raises up and weighs. As the girl calls out the weights I write it on my grease board. One can never be too careful. Once the product is dumped into the hold of the packer it is gone.
  "689 pounds minus 39 pounds tare weight," the buyer calls out.
  I write it down, then get back to my bucket and more unloading of cucumbers. 
  We have done fairly well on our first dive. If I had been able to spend about one more hour on the bottom we would have been about half way with our poundage... but, as usual, it seems I'm just a tad bit behind schedule.
  We pull into Appleton cove and drop anchor. We wait for Scott and CJ to sell. They drop by for a quick visit. We make plans for the next day's dive. It is always good to be able to get together with another boat while working on the ocean. It is like the old days where drop by visitors were always welcome.
  Scott heads back out into Peril Strait and we head back into Rodman Bay.
  "Good luck, tomorrow!" We shout as they pull away, "Be safe!"
  Day two finds us picking up where we left off yesterday. I swim hard and pick like crazy, knowing that I only have four hours to dive.
  I have put on my newer dry suit for today's dive, but find it is leaking badly through the chest inflator valve. Each time I hit the inflator button to pressurize my dry suit, water gushes in with the air. I feel the bite of ice cold water flood my chest little by little, as the day progresses it fills the entire suit.
  By eleven I'm freezing cold and swimming in water from the flooded suit. I can feel my arms slosh in water.
  My teeth chattering on my regulator, I head for the surface, done for the day.
  "I'm freezing!" I shout to Mike as my head breaks surface.
  "Let's bag it," he replies. "Our deal is safety first. If you are wet and cold, the dive is over. We've done alright for this opening.
  We pack up and head for the tender once again. We find that we are just a couple hundred pounds shy of our quota for the dive. Not bad for a couple of old guys.
  We head back to town wore out but contented. We have made our first dive without too much trouble. And... lived to tell about it!

                                      Scott and C.J. swing by to visit

 

2014 Cucumber Opening page two

  Rodman Bay remains relative calm all night. We had one blast of wind come through around two in the morning. I get up to make sure the anchor holds. All is well, back to bed.
  Our morning starts at five thirty. We have cold boiled eggs and cold bacon for breakfast. We have learned over the years this is the easiest way to get the day going quickly and still have good protein for a hard day's work.
  Mike works  quickly getting all the machines warmed up. The new dive compressor is fired up and ran to the pressure settings, the hauler, that lifts the bags over the side, is warmed up. The kicker motor is fired up and left idling.
  "It looks like everything is good to go," Mike exclaims over the roar of all the engines.
  "Ok, I'm going to start getting into my dive gear," I reply back.
  Time vanishes so quickly in the morning. One minute is it six, and it seems only a minute later it is seven o'clock.
  At seven thirty I'm in my dive suit and beginning the process of attaching the dive gear. My pony bottle is hefted on by Mike. I arrange the shoulder straps, tighten the belt, and plug in the dry suit inflater.
  "Ok, ready for my 'best friend'," I say to Mike. My "Best Friend" is what I have named my very heavy dive weight belt. I have never weighed it, but I can assure you, it is heavy. By the end of a dive day it feels like it has bored through my back and is planted into my kidney.
  In a morning I will put on a heavy duty set of smart wool long johns, a top of expedition weight polar fleece, two pair of smart wool socks, and then the heavy full body suit of hallow fill material, which is like putting on a form fitted sleeping bag. Trust me, it is very warm, but also very buoyant.
  All these under garments, plus a crushed neoprene dive suit, has to be weighted to get me below the surface.
  I groan as I tighten the weight belt onto my back. "Just as heavy as last year," I grumble to myself.
  Two pair of gloves, one light weight under glove and one pair of heavy weight neoprene with enforced fingers go on with much tugging. My wet suit hood and my mask are in place. I sit on the back of the boat with a bag in hand waiting for Mike to count down the minutes to eight o'clock.
  "It's time," Mike shouts over the roar of the compressor motor.
  I glance at my wrist out of habit to check my computer. It's not there.
 "Mike, I need you to get my dive computer out of my dive bag. I forgot it!" I shout over the roar of the machines.
  He races inside and then back with the computer. He has to strap it on as I am so bulked up in dive gear.
  "Ready?" I shout to Mike.
  He gives me the thumbs up signal.
  I jam the regulator into my mouth suck in a sweet breath of air and push off the boat.
  The bitter cold water of the Alaska ocean bites my face and hands.
  I give Mike the OK sign and he OK's back. I deflate my suit and slowly sink out of sight into the dark early morning water.
  I pinch my nose every ten feet of depth and clear my ears. I want to make sure I get them good and cleared on the first dive.
  The water is not super clear as the rain from Saturday and Sunday has murked up the bay. Visibility is still about twenty feet.
  I see the white shells gleam on the bottom as I descend into the inky depths. I constantly check my computer to make sure it is reading properly as I descend. All systems go.
  I unroll my cucumber bag and start swimming to the clumps of kelp I see close by. Nothing. I swim a bit further, still nothing.
  Thirty feet. Drop to forty feet, still no cucumbers. I look up and cannot see the surface or the boat above through the dingy water. I start to feel a little panicky...
  "Come on Earl, you've done this a thousand times. Just put your head down and find some product," I tell myself. "Slow and steady breaths."
  Tug, tug, tug. Three tugs on my air hose. That is Mikes signal that something is wrong and for me to get up as quickly as possible. I look at my dive computer, I've only been down five minutes.
  I tap my chest inflater and head for the surface.
  Mike pulls me to the boat by my air hose.
  "A hose broke on the compressor!" Mike shouts above the roar of the machine.
  I give him the cut throat signal to turn off the noisy machine.
  "What's up?" I ask in disbelief. "This is a brand new machine, nothing should break."
  I drop my weight belt and get out of the bulky gloves and then out of my swim fins.
  Mike is holding up a hose that goes from the compressor to the reserve tank. It is broken off cleanly.
  "You've got to be kidding me," I whine. "How can a brand new hose like that snap off in the first five minutes?"
  "There are extra hoses inside the left hand compartment in the cabin of the boat," I instruct Mike. He races in to find them.
  I stand and watch him unscrew the broken one and replace it with a used hose from years past.
  "Hope that one holds up," I comment, more to myself than to Mike.
  "I was a tad bit panicky down there," I inform Mike. I've never been this way before.
  He stops his work and looks at me. "Are you alright? Sure you want to do this?"
  We have always said that we will never push ourselves if something does not look good.   "Safety first" has been our motto from day one.
  "I think I'll be fine. Kind of crazy though..."
  Mike had the hose installed and fires up the compressor. It pumps out air into the reserve tank. All systems look good.
  Back into my dive gear and into the cold water.
  This time I get to the bottom and feel totally comfortable. I guess I needed that little break to settle me down.
  I swim and pick cucumbers for nearly an hour when I get the tug, tug, tug signal again.
 "Now what?"  I say to myself as I head for the surface.
  Mike helps me on the boat, informing me that the pressure relief valve is malfunctioning on the new compressor. It pops and then allow the air pressure to drop way to low before it re-sets and brings it back up to the 110 pounds of air I need to breath at depth.
  Another hour delay as Mike fixes this problem. At last he announces that all is well and I am holding at one hundred and ten pounds of air in the reserve tank.
  Back to the bottom.
  The cucumber picking is very slow. I fill my first bag and look at my dive computer. It has taken me nearly an hour. I need to pick at least twenty minute bags in order to get my two thousand pounds in the day and a half opening.
  "Not good," I say to myself and just keep swimming.
  Noon rolls around. I am chilled through and tired from hard swimming and very little picking.
  I come up and Mike helps me on the boat.
  "Hey at least nothing broke down for a while," I said.
  "Isn't it amazing how new stuff breaks down so quickly now days," Mike comments. "It seems like the old stuff is just built better."
  "I'll take an hour's break and then let's find a different place to dive," I say to Mike. "Let me warm up a bit, and then we'll go from there. At least I've found enough to pay for our fuel and food!"
  Our goal each week is to just pay for the trip. Once the expenses are met, then all money from there is a bonus.
 continued...

                                           the new dive compressor

 
                                        Mike working a bag of cucumbers

Sea Cucumber Opening 2014

  I get up at five and look out the window. I can hear the wind in the trees but I need to see. Sure enough, the trees are leaning over and shaking limbs like they want to rid themselves of every leaf left from the fall droppage.
  Wow, I think to myself, it is really howling.
  I fire up my Ipad and check the ocean weather; "forty knot winds increasing to forty-five by noon, then diminishing in the afternoon. Seas 12 feet, building to 22."
  It is truly dive season. The rain is pounding down like it can only do in October.
  I text Mike, my dive tender. "Looks horrible outside. We might want to wait until later in the day to make our departure from the dock."
  "Sounds good," he texts back.
  We had been planning on taking some shrimp pots with us to set out prior to our dive season and then picking them up on the way home. It would require running through a big wide open span of water that we now feel would be howling with wind. Leave the shrimp pots behind.
  Mike calls in a bit. "Did you see in the paper that the Coast Guard is going to enforce a blue and white international dive flag this week?"
  "No, I've never heard of a blue and white dive flag. All the divers fly a red flag with a white stripe."
  "Yup. The article says that this year the Coasties will be enforcing a blue and white flag with a fine of up to $4,000 for not having it."
  I grab my trusty Ipad and start doing research. The Alaska state law says a red and white flag, but most states do not have any laws in place regarding a diver down flag. I go the the Federal Government sight. Red and white flag is good for them. Then I go to the Coast Guard sight. They are enforcing a blue and white international dive flag for diving on inside waters, even though the State of Alaska claims ownership of all inside waters in Alaska.
  I call Scott, my old dive partner and ask if he had read the article. "No, but we'd better get blue and white flags ordered right now and then take pictures of the order conformation to show the Coast Guard in the event of us being boarded. That is our best hope of not being ticketed with the outrageous fine."
  The crazy thing is that we don't think any person running a boat here in Alaska would know what a blue and white flag means. For the past twenty years we have all been flying red and white flags.
  "We'll get run over by every boat on the water, except the Coast Guard," Scott comments before hanging up.
  Scott calls me back in about an hour. "Hey, I'm here with Michell at the old dive shop. She has two blue and white flags we can buy. I've got one set aside for you."
  Our dive shop in town closed its doors a few years ago and just yesterday they had an out of business sale.
  We quickly cancel our order online and my good wife races to the dive shop to get the last remaining flag.
  I'm wore out and have not even left town.
  We chatted later about how all the divers have an organization and send e-mails back and forth all the time. Wouldn't it have been in the divers best interest for the Coast Guard to simply send one e-mail to the dive fleet a few months ago, instead of placing an ad in the local paper, which most of us refuse to read as it is so slanted.
  That makes way too much sense and you are dealing with the government. They never make sense or do things the best way for others.
  At noon the wind has calmed to a roaring 30 knots and we untie to head for Peril Strait, our dive area this season.
  The wind pushes us for the next hour as we motor northward. We are very uneasy about turning the corner into Peril Strait.  Peril is known for being nasty at times. Wind pushing against the tide can really stack it up at the corner.
  Past Poison Cove, Down Dead Mans Reach, and then around the corner and into Peril. No wind at all. The Strait lays glass calm.
  "Wow, can you believe this?" I comment to Mike.
  "Hard to believe, but I'll sure take it," He comments back.
  For sure!
  We race down the strait and into Rodman Bay, where we have decided to dive the following day. We anchor for the night and listen to the gentle lap of the waves against the hull.
  Tomorrow is dive day. Oh Boy.
  
Continued...