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Jerry’s Dive Stories
Whale Tales July 2009
Sometimes I just get bored diving the same old wrecks ad-infinitum. Which is why I took the boat out near Crab Ledge, where the water starts to get deep, and just threw in the grapnel hook and jumped in after it. I do this when the current is at it's strongest, I want to get the feeling of flying across the bottom of the sea. I call this the divers version of a Nantucket Sleigh Ride.
It was a perfect day for it, not a cloud in the sky, sunlight penetrating all the way to the bottom, one hundred feet below. I planned this for the flood tide, what we call the "good tide" when the underwater visibility is at it's best. And we were rewarded for our efforts, the vis, well in excess of 40 feet.
I had just entered decompression when one of my dive buddies starts screaming in my ear, I turn and follow his gaze. I swear my heart flat out quit beating in my chest. There above me was the largest living thing I have ever seen underwater. I could not believe my eyes. A full grown Minke whale was directly over head, a perfect silhouette in the sunlight filtering down through the depths.
Had I only known what was to come. I turned my attention back to the fantastic drift dive, stuffing lobster after lobster into my catch bag, figuring that the chance encounter was at an end. I couldn't have been more wrong. The whale began to circle us, over and over. Not wanting to leave the bottom, but mounting decompression and a single 120 filled with air forced me up the line.
To make a long story short, that whale swam around us for over an hour. It must have circled us over a hundred times. I sucked my tank dry interacting with that whale. When the tank was empty, I jumped back into the water in just my drysuit. There were times the whale approached us so close we could have reached out and touched it.
The most amazing thing was the whale actually tried to communicate with us. I'm sure you've all seen those wildlife programs on TV, where they have the hydro phones in the water and they're listening to the whale songs? Every single time I hear that on TV it sends shivers down my spine. Such a beautiful sound. Never in my life did I think someday I'd be in the water, just feet from a whale and hearing that sound. This whale was all by itself, who else could it have been "talking" to?
Check out the pictures. How lucky were we to have a camera? Aren't they the most incredible images you've ever seen?
Words just can't convey the actual experience of our encounter with that whale. From that intelligent eye that fixed upon our own gaze on every pass, to how it rolled on it's side on the really close passes so as to not bump us with it's massive tail.
Just unbelievable.
The most incredible experience of all of our lives.
The divers:
Jerry Cronin.
Bryan Burnham
Jodi Burnham
Don Sack.
The photographers:
Bryan Burnham
Jodi Burnham
The crew:
Kyle Burnham (who jumped in with just his underwear on in the 60 degree water).
Come dive with us if you dare.
~j~
Click Here to view the photos -
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Ice Diving Februay 1, 2009
We had perfect conditions for our ice dive today. Temps in the mid 40's. and light winds to start with. The chain saw cut through the 6 to 8 inches of ice like butter. I want to say that 8 divers braved the 39 degree water and did the dive. We had twice that number show up to tend lines and eat the gourmet hot dogs that Chris Welch provided. Visibility under the ice was at least 20 feet, although there seemed to be a lot of suspended particles floating around. I spent most of my dive just standing upside down so people could take pictures of me doing that. The only person who had an actual goal for today's ice dive was Dave Wood. He's headed to Antarctica in two weeks to dive under the ice pack. Man, that sounds like fun. I mean, just to have the chance to be eaten alive by a Leopard seal. What fun. He was testing out the gear configuration he'll use on the expedition. One piece of gear that caught my attention was heated glove inserts for his dry gloves. He said his hands were unbelievably warm. My hands have always been the first thing that gets cold on me. I think I will get some. He only paid $80 for the setup.
Well, as long as the cold weather lasts we'll continue to ice dive on the weekends.
Come ice dive and eat hot dogs with us if you dare.
~j~
Click Here to View the Video -
Click Here to View Photos On Line at the Cape Cod Times from the Dive!
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Bonaire 2009 - Boka Onima
One thing about Bonaire, if you've never been, is it's all shore diving. Ninety-nine percent of the shore dives are on the west side of the island. There are two or three sites on the south side and none, zero, nada, zilch on the east side. The reason for this is because the trade winds blow 20 to 30 miles an hour almost year round out of the ESE. On eleven trips to Bonaire I've only done one site on the south side on a rare, windless day.
This year was different. We had a stretch of two and a half days of almost windless conditions. We did some fantastic diving on a site called Lighthouse on the south side. On one of the dives, because of the strong currents, we entered at Lighthouse and attempted to drift to Red Slave, which was the first site on the west side. The two dive sites are over a mile apart.
I told the director of dive operations at the resort we stayed at our feat and he suggested this site on the east side that no one knows about. A dangerous spot even on the best of days. The location is called Boka Onima. The whole east side of the island is nothing but iron shore, a twenty foot solid cliff of jagged rock that 15 foot seas continuously pound almost year round. On top of that, strong currents rip up and down the coast. He told us just last month a diver was killed attempting to dive the site.
Well, that's all he had to say, a chance to spice up the trip with an NDE (near death experience). We're so there.
Mark and I enter the water with no idea of what to expect. Huge waves are pummeling us non stop as we try to get deep enough to put our fins on. If these same waves were slamming into us at Sandwich Town Beach lets say, it would be no big deal. A nice sandy bottom, it would be a piece of cake. The bottom was nothing like that. It was all jagged, knife edged coral and rock. One misstep and it's all over but the crying.
Getting back out again was even more insane. The wind had picked up and the seas built to double what they were when we went in. There was serious white caps when I surfaced about a 100 yards out to sea. I surfaced offshore to locate the entrance to this tiny little lagoon. I could only catch a glimpse of the lagoon when I crested a wave, and then only for a second. I couldn't believe how rough it had gotten. I also couldn't believe how far to the north the current had pushed me, even though I had worked hard at maintaining a compass heading perpendicular to shore. I take a compass heading to the center of the lagoon and descend for the last time. I know that no matter what, I can't surface anywhere near the cliffs that guard the entrance to the lagoon. To do so would put me in the surf zone and certain death, to be bashed to pieces. A bloody lifeless corpse to be slowly eaten by crabs.
The current did force me near the cliffs on the north side of the entrance. I can see the white wall of foam and feel the suction from the surf trying to suck me into the maelstrom. Gone is the bravado that I displayed as I approached the dive. A huge wave would go over me and the force of it would throw me 10 feet forward. The opposite would happen when the wave would retreat. I'd lose the ten feet I gained and then some. Being pushed back out to sea 12 or sometimes 15 feet. It forced me to ride the wave forward and then grab onto the sharp, dead coral at the bottom of the lagoon to maintain position. Finally I made it to shore thanking Buddha that I had saved plenty of air for the return. Mark had left before me so we each made our way back solo. Mark told me afterwards that he had only a few hundred psi remaining.
Unknown to me, Jodi and Bryan had decided to do the dive after myself and Mark had headed out. She knew that if we were the only ones to do this dive she'd never hear the end of it.
After that it became known as the dive of death. In fact every dive we did got named the something, something of death. Which brings us to the second dive story I'll write about.
This one is called Blue Water White Death.
Read it if you dare.
~j~
Click Here for Boka Onima Photos
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Blue Water White Death - Bonaire 2009
This was my 11th trip to Bonaire. I've made hundreds of dives there. 53 on this trip alone. After awhile it becomes all a blur of the same old coral and fish. I'm always looking for something a little different. Something to spice up the dive.
Mark and I came up with this new adventure. We'd take a compass heading straight off the wall and just swim out into the blue until we could see nothing of the wall. We would surround ourselves with nothing but the color blue. That color, that you can only find one place in the world and that is in the tropical sea. It's tantalizing. Mesmerizing. Hypnotic. Peaceful. It's unbelievable is what it is.
Mark and I tried to talk everyone else into doing it, and most didn't care for it. Maybe it was the name I came up with for the dive. Blue Water.............. White Death. After Boka Onima, every site we did got named the something something of death. I think they found it boring. If the huge school of fish didn't show up in two minutes they were out of there. Most on the trip weren't aware that I stole the name from an old movie by Peter Gimbel from 1971. There was nothing scary about it.
We'd pick a nice easy depth, usually 50 feet and just hover there, surrounded by the richest blue you've ever seen in your life. I'd pick a piece of plankton or some tiny jelly fish and I'd use that as a reference to maintain my depth. What sometimes would happen is a huge school of fish would appear and feed in front of us. There were times I'd spend over an hour, just watching the fish out there in the blue. On one such foray, I got into this school of Horse Eyed Jacks. They accepted into their school and I became their leader. I know it sounds like a load of bull, but that's what it felt like.
Another time I got into the middle of this massive school of tuna like fish and the school was coming straight up, out of the depths and actually breaching the surface. I got a case of vertigo watching those fish go straight up, past my face plate. I became convinced that it was me who was moving and not the fish. I had this sense of falling straight down into the abyss. Of course I wasn't. But it was hard to shake that feeling. We were really hoping some large pelagic animal would swim by. A whale shark. A manta ray. Something big. Never happened. We did have one big cuda happen by. Not like the babies that live on the reef. He stayed with us for 15 minutes or so.
If you ever get someplace like Bonaire, you've got to try it. That color just stays with ya, you won't be able to get it out of your head.
~j~
Click Here for Pictures from Blue Water White Death Bonaire 2009
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