Blennies and Panic

It was late spring, a beautiful Saturday morning the water was crisp, and I was at the beach on what I considered a boondoggle. Actually it was serious science. Earlier that week in my fish identification and classification class we were discussing blennies, the group of fish that include many of the colorful characters that hang out on brain coral acting as cleaners.

I had casually mentioned that a type of large horned blennie resided in shipwrecks around Nags Head. Dr. Ross jumped on the statement, saying that was above their range, and that they must be summer visitors or washed ashore from the gulf stream. I said they were always there, and appeared to be territorial. Not being one to lose an opportunity, by Thursday he had equipped me with two graduate students, a van and an expense account to travel from VPI in the mountains of Virginia to the Outer Banks to get him a blennie (at that time I had no clue about publish or perish).

What a gas, a free trip to the beach, a little diving and here I was. The two grad students and I were sunbathing on the beach, putting off the chilly water getting our gear ready. The collection gear consisted of one hand net and a bottle of rotenone solution to drive the fish out of its boiler tube and into the net. We also had a couple of small dowel rods with small fish hooks to extract him if necessary. Our scuba tanks were in the car since I was sure this was simply a freedive to about 20 feet.

While we were on the beach, two divers in their 40s complete with wives came up and proceeded to suit up. They had walked over earlier and sneered at out simple gear. We decided it was time to get the fish before they scared them deep into their holes. Rushing to the water in our wetsuits we swam to the outside section of the wreck where the less than elusive blennie herd resided in the broken boiler tubes, like a pack of prairie dogs. One fish per tube.

I freedove down to the tubes, and placed the net over the first tube that I could see had a fish, squirted in the rotenone and out he came into the net. The whole process took about 20 seconds. My A in the class was assured. I folded the net to keep the fish in and I popped to the surface to show the incredulous grad students, who now were believers. Prior to the capture, they were not so sure of the project, and my failure to produce could reflect poorly on their status.

We swam in and dropped the fish into the bottle of preservative and started cooking the flounder I speared on the way back in. We also broke out a sixpack. No reason to go back to Blacksburg so early in the weekend. We were not expected back till Sunday afternoon or evening.

One of the other divers came out of the water alone. "Where was John?" he asked. One of the women screamed. He was nowhere to be seen.

We scanned the surface of the water and in a couple of moments a diver splashed at the surface about 20 yards beyond the breakers. I grabbed a mask and fins, and streaked for the water with the two graduate students following behind. When I got to the splashing diver, he had panicked. He was drowning at the surface, his regulator was out of his mouth, his BC was uninflated and he was kicking like hell to stay on the surface as he gagged and coughed, inhaling and sputtered up big gulps of water. One look in his eyes told me not to let him get a chance to clutch at me so I slipped under him and released his weight belt. He started floating higher in the water, but was still in a state of panic.

The first grad student arrived and took the weight belt, heading for the shore. Next I hit the BC fill button and floated the diver on his back, he started calming down just a little. I checked his air supply, it was fine. When I cleared his regulator and stuffed it into his mouth he gasped for breath and eased up a bit. He offered no help or resistance as I pulled him in backwards in by the tank valve with some help from the other grad student. He kept that regulator in his mouth all the way through the breakers to the beach. He didn't move a muscle on the way in. He sat down on the beach as his buddy helped him out of his gear. We went back to our lunch of fish and pit cooked corn.

That was my first exposure to surface panic. I thought it was unique–but in conversations with other divers, I find that it happens often. When brother panic hits, it hits hard. I remembered the day at that same site when a little sand pebble almost got me.

Interestingly enough, the diver we saved never came over to thank us. His wife did and the other diver came over to talk with us for quite a while, but the subject of our heroism was probably too embarrassed. He had quite an attitude adjustment. I was on that wreck for hundreds of times since then and never saw those guys again. The conversation on the long trip back to Blacksburg now had new elements. The experience had bonded us and of course the trip was a success. The pickled fish assured me an A because of the extra credit (although I still flunked out that quarter), both of the grad students got their names on the paper as did I, even though mine was last in accordance with the status code of Academic publications, and I had a couple of new friends. All together a profitable weekend that ended well for everyone.