Scuba-Diving Delights
Humans used to dump large amounts of garbage in the ocean and Vancouver Island was no different. In an early newspaper from Victoria, BC, there was actually an article encouraging people to visit the beach, but bring a rake to help clean up the garbage. The source of the garbage? Barges transported large amounts of garbage just outside of the main harbor and dumped it – and a joke at the time was that the garbage made it back to shore before the barges got back to the dock – thus the newspaper article about bringing a rake to the beach.
It has been a thrill for me to be able to scuba dive and look through literally hundreds (actually thousands, but each dive doesn’t give enough time to get through thousands) of bottles dating into the 1880’s, if not right back to the 1850’s. This site of the specimen below was beyond my wildest dreams. Nature will try to re-purpose human garbage and in this case bull barnacles have grown over the 1890’s gin bottle and they were kind enough to grow in such a way as to allow the logo of the bottle to be exposed, creating a beautiful piece of art.
Diving for bottles is not all adventure and fun – there is of course a dangerous side to it. I have run out of air while trying to swim to the surface with a goody bag full of bottles weighing me down and a bottle in each hand. They would have found me on the bottom of the ocean still clutching those bottles. I only ran out of air once as that was enough to learn that lesson. I have back-flipped off a boat to go dive down for bottles in calm conditions, only to come to the surface with heavy winds blowing, big waves crashing, and a very strong current pushing me along. Getting into the boat was very challenging as at one point the boat was right beside me but on top of a wave – I looked up at the bottom of the boat – somehow when it came down it was not on me and I bear-hugged the ladder and crawled up it and into the boat – don’t forget that I was of course heavily loaded down with a goody-bag full of bottles! Somehow with scuba diving I manage to stay calm in these situations. More photos to come and some specimens will be available if people are interested.
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British Columbia, Canada