Even in this forbidding location, everything seems to be going OK. I am swimming around in the coal-black waters next to our sailboat Saoirse which we have anchored for the day, far inside an unnamed fiord somewhere on the far flung coasts of Southern Patagonia. If I raise my head a bit I can see the ice blink from the Southern Patagonian Icecap, water temperature to suit. Terra Incognita.
This is not an ideal location to be learning the intricacies of drysuit diving, but it is where we are at home, so we'd better get used to it. We are on one of our perennial trips up the dour coasts of the Chilean side of Patagonia, between the southern village of Puerto Williams and the Golfo de Penas where we are currently engaged in investigating the oceanic movements of a population of sea whales which no one knew existed.
Photo by Keri-Lee Pashuk
Navigating this 1000 mile maze of channels quickly and safely is not a skill which is
generally taught in sailing school and usually requires maneuvering the the boat into tight rocky passages each night, stringing lines up to the nearest trees before the powerful squalls can throw the boat against the very rocks which shelter these “caletas” (coves) from the violent waves in the outer passages. Once secure, we can extract a few moments of relief before the rigor's of the next days travel.
Typically these tiny havens are formed by ancient glacial or river outflows, a river meandering through the ubiquitous swamps at its head. We have done this many times over the years, the lines on our chart plotter almost totally obscuring the watery part of the chart. This trip though, we are trying something different, trying to experience for ourselves the landscapes which lurk beneath the waves.
Photo by Isabel Romina
Fighting in the river current, I glance over to where our divemaster Isabella is preparing to enter the water. I signal OK, but in reality my brain is still trying to chase down the locations of all those wayward pieces of equipment which on modern dive systems conspire to keep us safe, in an environment where survival is measured by the ability to take our very next breath.
I'm starting to realize how important it is to have immediate and instinctive attachment to the way they operate, to feel the difference a second or two's fumbling with unsuitable gear might make. I am not entirely new to scuba diving, having got my PADI Open Water 40 odd years ago in New Zealand, but this was back in the day when we all used the US Navy decompression tables and stuck like glue to an instructor who sold T shirts with "No sea too rough, no muff too tuff" emblazoned across them. Isabella, our friend and divemaster, sighs in exasperation at both those notions. "Its time to start using your dive computer" says she.
Photo by Keri-Lee Pashuk
There are no "dive sites" in Patagonia. If you are determined enough to come here, you will not be able to sift through a comforting array of options on the internet telling you exactly what you are going to experience when you show up with your credit card to book an afternoon excursion. You dive at random, depending on where you can get to. Here, diving is limited to a few shellfish divers who have managed to cobble together enough hardware store odds and ends to provide a bit of air pressure; getting down to harvest enough mariscos (shellfish) to keep their families going for the next few days is enough for them.
Their rigs are insanely unreliable and dangerous, many die or become crippled. Every dive is an exploration. For this dive we have made a few basic measurements; depth, temperature, compass direction to an escape point, but in reality I am still getting used to buoyancy control, especially with the brand new drysuit, and, as Isabella has been at pains to point out, putting faith in my computer.
Photo Isabel Romina
And so here we are. A quick peek below the surface does not reveal the bottom but I know its there, 13m below. It is going to be a bit dark down there. I check in my pocket, dive light is there, that should be enough to penetrate the turbid water I think. Isabella, close by, says to me, "this time I want you to practice your descent, in complete control, monitor your computer, all the way, and points off for hitting the bottom!". I have elected this time to slightly overweight my belt, given that I had been struggling to descend after passing the halo cline caused by the river outflow. I give the OK, empty the BCD and down we go, my eyes are glued to my computer.
Photo Isabel Romina
Seconds later, the world goes black. I see absolutely nothing. I cannot even see the wrist that my computer is strapped to, let alone what it should be saying. I know I must be sinking quite fast, since my ears are needing equalizing at twice the normal rate. Isabella has completely disappeared though she had been only two meters away. I manage to get some air into the suit and my ears stay equalized, so that is some progress. Seconds later I hit the bottom and my view of the world goes from black to blacker.
OK, I think, I cant go down any further, my bubbles go in a stream in a direction which must be up. Fumbling in my pocket I retrieve my dive light, hoping that its beam might actually reveal some of those bubbles, which way they are going. The flash of the beam just reveals the spiky orange legs of some gigantic Centolla (King) crabs as they scuttle away into the murk I have stirred up. I fumble it, and the lamp too drops to my feet, its 1300 lumens swallowed up by the mud. Time to pause, kneel down and take a deep breath, at least I have plenty of air!
Photo Isabel Romina
After half a minute or so, I know I'm not in real danger. Ascending would be difficult in the dark, without knowing how deep I was, or even which way was up. Worst came to the worst, I could just swim along the bottom in the direction of the side of the caleta and make my way up its steep walls. Trouble with that was I couldn’t see my compass either. I could just sense the slight current though, and came to the conclusion that if I could keep cutting across it I would eventually reach the side. Not a palatable idea, but the best I could come up with at the time. But where was my buddy? I waited, mulling over our plan if we became separated. Just as I decided that I needed to get gone I caught a flash of light out of the corner of my mask. Isabella's Shearwater Peregrine dive computer!
The numbers on the display clearly readable. Now I know why she loved that thing so much.
Photo by Will Darwin
Pretty soon, the rest of her appeared, my dive light as well. She had picked it up from amongst the Centolla crabs and figured I must be somewhere close by. Soon we had maneuvered our way towards the shore where the visibility miraculously returned in the brackish water. We could spend the rest of the dive exploring along the 8m contour, but I remained glued to the readout from her Peregrine. Patagonia, like the deep, is still the Land of Surprises and I was relearning a big lesson about exploration. Get the best gear you can and accustom yourself to its use. I knew I wanted one of those dive computers!
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Written by Greg Landreth
Cover and bio photos by Keri-Lee Pashuk
Greg is a climber, sailor and wannabe again diver, living with his wife, Keri-Lee Pashuk, on their sailing vessel Saoirse, at the moment in southern Chile. Greg and Keri use there vessel as a free platform for cetacean research, benthic surveys and conservation studies in the southern waters of South America.
You can see some of the projects they support on @patagoniaprojects
