Underwater thoughts - A Fascination for Fish: Adventures of an Underwater Pioneer - page 9

FIRST NIGHT DIVE
One day one of the French divers at the U.S. Divers store mentioned
that he had gone out the night before with an underwater light and
caught some spiny lobsters ( Panulirus interruptus ). That sounded pretty
exciting; besides which, it had great gastronomic possibilities. As a
working college student I couldn't a¤ord to buy luxuries like lobsters,
but this could be a way I could get some virtually free, just for the
picking. The diver showed me the light he used. It was a basic two-
cell flashlight inside a specially made rubber case, with a hose clamp
where the rubber fits around the plastic lens. Of course, the dive shop
wanted more money for the light than I was willing or even able
to pay.
At the time, I was working the graveyard shift in a gas station, and
we quite often replaced burned-out headlights on cars. A car headlight
has two filaments, for the low and high beams. When the low beam
burns out, the lamp has to be replaced, even though it still has one
perfectly good beam. I suspected those lamps had just the kind of bright-
ness I needed for my first underwater venture. What's more, the sealed
headlights were designed to resist both water and pressure. All I needed
was a big enough battery and a long, heavy electrical cord, and I'd have
myself a remarkably serious underwater light: a car high beam under-
water. At a war-surplus store I found fifty feet of heavy-gauge, well-in-
sulated, very cheap electrical cord. After soldering the two wires se-
curely to the lamp terminals, I waterproofed the connection with some
tar-impregnated electrical tape and then melted it together with a flame
over the kitchen stove. When connected to the battery in my car, the
light was really bright, and it worked quite well underwater in a bucket.
I was in business.
I talked Norman into coming with me, and one dark evening we
rowed my little plywood ski¤ from the Santa Monica Pier out to the
harbor breakwater. Decked out in tank, mask, and fins, I rolled over
the side into the black water. Taking the light from Norman, I aimed
it downward—and saw nothing but murky water, the bottom nowhere
in view since it was beyond the beam of the light. It was spooky to be
surrounded by nothingness, and for a moment I wondered if I was to-