A first look at realism - A Fascination for Fish: Adventures of an Underwater Pioneer - page 32

the top of the pinnacle and dropped anchor on it. My dive buddy John
Hart and I were first in the water o¤ the swim step at the stern of the
boat. There was a strong current running and we had to work hard
just to swim the fifty feet from the stern to the bow, where we could
grab the anchor line to descend. As a result, when we started down we
were already quite out of breath.
The water was clear but we couldn't see the bottom, so we kept head-
ing down the anchor line. It seemed like we had gone quite a distance,
but still no end was in sight. Finally I could just make out the seafloor.
I looked at my depth gauge; it said one hundred and seventy feet, and
we still had another fifty feet or so to go. All of a sudden I found my-
self struggling to breathe as I was hit with a bad case of nitrogen nar-
cosis, the intoxicating e¤ect on the brain of nitrogen in the blood un-
der pressure. My mind was a blur but functioned just enough for me
to realize that the anchor must have slipped o¤ the top of Farnsworth
Bank and we were now drifting away over very deep water. Quickly
we started back up the anchor line and made it to the boat. By then I
had a splitting headache and was wiped out for the rest of the day.
Analyzing the situation later, I realized the strenuous swim to get to
the anchor line had caused a major buildup of carbon dioxide in my
system. To this was added the mind-numbing nitrogen narcosis, and
I was in big trouble. This event was a vivid demonstration to me that
deep dives when you are physically stressed can be dangerous. I was
careful to make all future deep dives only when I was feeling physi-
cally and mentally relaxed. If I didn't feel good, I didn't dive.
THE MYSTERIOUS SUNKEN PIER
Just o¤ the beach of Redondo at the south end of Santa Monica Bay
is the head of a precipitous submarine canyon. With the nearest nat-
ural harbor being far away in San Diego, the city of Redondo Beach
took advantage of the canyon's deep water and the partial protection
of the bay to erect a pier that could handle ships carrying goods and
people to the growing area of Los Angeles. In 1913, however, the con-
struction of an eight-mile-long breakwater created the safe, protected
waters of the new Los Angeles Harbor, and the Redondo Beach pier