WE ARE BARELY AFLOAT, my son and I, hanging vertically on a ring buoy twenty feet astern of the dive boat. A salty Caribbean chop slaps us in the face, over and over, insistently - like someone trying to rouse a drunk. Despite last night's rum swizzles, we, however, are stonecold sober. We are in fact readying ourselves for our first scuba dive together in the open ocean.

Fifty yards away, sun gleams on the thorny vegetation of Capella Island, a coral outcrop off the southwest tip of St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgins. From our water level vantage, a lighthouse there stands stark against a Tradewinds sky. Certified open water divers, both of us are yet novices.

Fathers and sons drift on different currents in this world. Until a chance remark neither knew the other had taken up scuba. Now we are paired as "dive buddies", each dependent on the other for support below. I think on a pal long ago who took up flying without telling his dad. One day the old man accidentally dropped a pilot's log at my feet. I presumed truth had "outed" ... his father had grounded Charlie. Not so. It was the old man's log book! Neither son nor wife knew of his new passion - he swore me to secrecy on the spot.

A generational gap is truly "in the nature of things".

To certify, Travis and I have made ocean dives with others before. He in Boston, where he lives and works; I in southern Connecticut. Both have known only the cold, dark waters of the New England coast where sepulchral gloom reigns at twenty feet and bottoms are drab and muddy.

Mickey, our blonde, long-haired divemaster (the prototypic beach boy), tells us we are going to 80 feet this morning. We exchange glances, say nothing. Mickey says, "You guys from New England are all the same. I'm telling you this is not like that up there at all..."

Already in the water while the rest of our fellow divers suit-up, we perform our last minute checks. Thirty hours of professional instruction have implanted a behavioral routine; I let this take over. I pull the regulator from my mouth and go onto my snorkel, saving air while at the surface. I'm glad I remembered that. Neither owns to apprehension. Travis burps the dive resort's greasy bacon on which we breakfasted a short while ago. I duck my face beneath the surface for a quick glimpse of a confused, sunlit bottom improbably far below my dangling legs.

I'm wearing the top to my quarter-inch wetsuit. Local divers mostly favor eighth-inch suits in these warm waters, but I dive "cold" and am glad for the extra warmth. Travis is diving this morning, depending as many of the locals, on cotton Tee-shirt and the hot blood of youth. Mickey says water temperature is 79 deg. clear to the bottom.

I think on New England's thermoclines and marvel. To my question, he adds there are no currents.

We are at anchor above a coral reef describing a vague arc several hundred yards out. There are no sharks, Mickey says - looking us straight in the eye. We may see barracudas (we do), and the coralheads are full of morays. Don't touch the spiny urchins. Watch for stinging corals. The dive plan is a free descent. On the bottom, those who wish may accompany him on an excursion along the reef. More experienced divers, paired in the mandatory "buddy system", may explore on their own. We opt for the guided tour.

In addition to my wet suit top, like all the other divers I have on a BCD or buoyancy control device (vest) and about 17 lbs. of lead weight on a nylon belt around my waist. The last diver tumbles over the stern and takes his place on the rope. I feel for the weight belt buckle, verifying again it will release with a righthand grab if emergency arises. Mask, snorkel and over-the-foot fins complete my outfit. So that he may wear his heavy heel-strap diving fins, I have loaned Travis my new neoprene diving booties. Mickey assures me the lighter full-foot fins I must now wear are sufficient to drive me on this dive. I chide Travis about still being his "keeper"; his gloved hand replies in a very wet version of today's favorite obscenity.

The seven other divers, including Mickey, are in the water now bobbing alongside us. It's time to go down!

One by one the divers extend the oral inflation tubes of their vests, vent their support air, and slip beneath the waves. I duck under, venting, and sink into a Winslow Homer sea. The visibility is startling, being at least 70 or 80 feet. The colors! We sink in a vast crystalline inkwell of marine tints. Lime green water shades to blue, farther off to purple. On the bottom I see mauve patches, faint swirls of lavender. Down, down, trailing columns of silvery bubbles we descend into the Spanish Main! Down to a coral bottom far below shot with fire red, yellow, and blue gleams. Are they, perhaps, rubies, emeralds and sapphires from a broken pirate's chest?

More sensed than seen at the periphery of our vision, wavers a diffuse indigo curtain, streaked with cobalt and patches of translucent ink-stains as though all the artists of the world were mixing tides of "Dr. Martin's Synchromatic Water Colors" upon the flood. This blue curtain-wall surrounds us as an ampitheatre. Its watery opacity hides the submarine ramparts of nearby Capella. Farther beyond, who knows? Arcing across the globe hundreds of miles to the south and east lie the islands of the Lesser Antilles. Perhaps Russian submarines lie silent and listening beyond the blue wall, supersonic gear eavesdropping on our rasping and blowing as we descend. Perhaps the mind-numbing White Shark hangs suspended somewhere out there in that vast blue depth, at one with the mythic creatures of unknowable deeps who grace margins of Rennaissance maps ...

The others sink fast below me. Trapped air plus the greater lift of my cold-water suit continues to buoy me. Mickey grabs my elbow and pulls me down. I pinch my nose and blow to equalize pressure. At 80 feet we will be under about two and a half atmospheres. Those technological wonders, the modern dive tank and regulator will, however, feed us air balanced precisely to the surrounding sea pressure, nullifying it's effect. On the bottom we breathe as easily as at the surface!

My instrument console trails behind me. I fish it up between my legs for a look. It has two meters: a tank pressure meter (air remaining), and a depth meter. We are at eighty feet! Like an astronaut landing on some alien planet, my flippers touch in the coral sand ... "One Giant Step for Mankind". I half-crouch and look around. Ten feet away, Travis sets down, too - his eyes plainly grinning behind his mask, prompted no doubt by the bug-eyed stare looking back at him from behind mine!

And what a sight it is! No gloomy, featureless mud plain from the Home of the Bean and the Cod here. All dazzles. Sunlight sparkles on coralheads and sand patches as upon a meadow on a May morning. But such a meadow as few have known...

Thousands and thousands of fish surround us. Some outbound in schools, travel by like hurried commuter groups, dissolving from view in the blue wall and taking little note of us. Other fish, singly and in pairs, float close at hand. Some fin up sideways, ogling us with bulging orbs. Some pursue, others are pursued. Many are preoccupied with activities incomprehensible to the layman.

A jackleg naturalist since youth, on later dives I start sorting them out by name. For now, I see only forms, colors, movements. Sudden swishings and scurryings. Bright nymphs flash among the corals, their brilliant colors the spilled treasure from the pirates' chest glimpsed on the way down. Eyes stare from crevices. Unknown creatures, polyps, all manner of headless, sightless, waving life forms retreat into burrows with lightning speed as our shadows pass over them.

Ahead, the divemaster tumbles a sponge as big as a barrel down a small slope. One could easily hide inside it! We swim over a clear sandy patch supporting a waving field of plant stalks. Up close, the stalks transmute to thin, cylindrical trumpetfish, standing erect on the tips of their tails and swaying in the gentle current! An undersea crop - of fish! Later we decide this is a protective adaptation.

Off to either side, other divers hang motionless in the water, or swim in our general direction. Up from the exhaust ports of each regulator ascends a silvery, inverted pyramid of surface-bound bubbles. Here below all is soundless, save in each diver's ears the rasp of his incoming breath, and the outward gurgle of his exhaust. I think of the soundtrack from "2001", dubbing a scuba diver's breathing into the sequences of the lone astronaut working in deep space. There is, in fact, an affinity between Diving and Space... the weightlessness, the silence, the sense of being where "man has not trod"...

Travis leading, we proceed down a gentle slope. This levels to a flat sandy bottom at eighty feet (my depth meter is "right on" - which pleases me). We are at the edge of the reef.

There is a sudden flurry. He grabs my arm and points up ahead! But the ”old man “ is doing "mask clearance" just then to defog and expel leakage. Dimly, I see a giant circular form rise rapidly up and disappear in the lime-green waters off to our left. I think, "There goes the biggest damned crab I ever saw!" Later, topside, I learn we swam upon a huge sea-turtle, according to our divemaster well over 200 pounds ...

I focus down and stop trying to see everything at once. I float about two feet above a huge brain coral. The brain coral has a scab picked away on its surface showing fresh, grainy limestone. Above it, a Stoplight Parrotfish idles "on station". It is he who has nibbled this living stone! Together with a few other species, parrotfish have a hard, beak-like mouth (hence their name) and actually feed on coral - crunching up the stone to extract the polyps, and in the process reducing these reefs to sand.

There are many hollows swept full of this coral sand about us. Feathery sea fans wave in the current at our passing. Branched corals, staghorn corals, massive corals surround us. I see a parrotfish, again, this time angling into a coralhead, gills extended wide. A small yellow fish darts in and out of the gill covers, removing parasites.

The dive becomes more routine. We swim lazily along. I fish up my console again: I'm down to 1500 lbs. of air: the "turnaround point"! Motioning Travis near, I check his console: he is still around 2000 pounds. Though pacing my breathing, I am using air at a high rate. A common experience for initial open-water dives. The depth we are at promotes air consumption, too.

I find Mickey and show him my console. He extends his forefinger horizontally, moving it rapidly back and forth in line, pointing where he wants me to go: back toward the boat. He then "thumbs up's" me in unmistakeable fashion: I must surface. Rule is you must exit the water with at least 500 pounds of residual air in your tank. To my raised eyebrow query of "What about my diving buddy?", he indicates he will take him over for rest of the dive.

I signal to Travis and retrace my route up the gently sloping reef. Between fifty and sixty feet the hull of the dive boat appears bobbing far overhead. Upward bound now, slowly, careful not to ascend faster than my bubbles (about one foot a second), I rise into an ever brighter, lighter realm.

My breathing continues, slow and regular. It is critical that I continue to exhale high-pressure air on my way up - venting it all, and arrive on the surface at normal pressure. Never hold your breathe underwater is a scuba diver's first rule!

Now the grid of the dive platform breaks the surface over me. I do lazy "360's" as I rise, "eyeballs out". My arm is extended overhead, approved fashion, necessary in dark or murky waters. I traverse the last few feet and pop into the sunshine! I pull the regulator from my mouth, use my last breathe to clear my snorkel and go onto it now for surface breathing. I grasp the ring buoy and start to pull myself hand over hand toward the exit platform.

I check the bezel of my diver's watch: I have been down exactly 20 minutes!. You never forget your first dive on a West Indian reef. It is unlike any other experience. The rule is "Do your deepest dives first". Today's trip is a two-tank-dive trip, meaning we will be making another, shallower dive when all the divers are back in the boat. Soon all are once again aboard, we up anchor and take leave of our dive site - "Barracuda Point", so-named our divemaster tells us, from one "Bernardo the Barracuda", a six-foot representative of his species, who once frequented the vicinity.

In a welter of gear - tanks, regulators, dive suits, knives, towels, sea bags, booties, and swim fins, we run on eastward for a mile or so to the new dive site: "Joe's Jam". This is a reef at 50 feet, not actually dissimilar from where we were. The choking diesel smoke boils in over the stern of the small dive boat as it races through the swells - running four to six feet out here today.

At anchor over "Joe's Jam", we must wait another half hour before suiting up and going down again. Our divemaster wants us to decompress a bit from our deep dive, moving us into a new "dive classification", so that we operate always within the decompression tables established by the U.S. Navy. The "bends" are no fun; no one objects. We sit, for the most part, silent. My fellow divers are younger than I am. They are my son's generation.

I think, "What am I doing out here, anyhow?" Then recall a time long past when Travis and I first climbed Mt. Marcy in the Adirondacks. Almost alone on the grey, wind-whipped peak, we were sunk each in his own reveries that day, too. It was the era of the Hippy. A young, pony-tailed hiker, offering his wineskin aside to Travis, asked, "Who is the old guy with you?" When told, he shook his head wonderingly, observing "We don't get many old guys up here!"

It stayed the gap for awhile...

The divemaster passes laconic remarks about the new dive site. We listen, many sorting out in their minds what they have just beheld and anticipating this, the day's final dive. Someone asks about nitrogen narcosis - "rapture of the deeps". Reported by some divers as shallow as 70 feet, it more commonly appears around 125 feet. No one today has noted any effects. Apocryphal tales are exchanged of divers-at-depth giving away entire catches of lobsters (18 in one instance!), and other silliness under nitrogen narcosis.

Again, a circular reef of vague extent is said to surround us. The dive plan is free descent and for those who are interested, Mickey will attempt to find a galleon anchor sometimes seen on the bottom hereabouts.

Back in the water. We are more confident now. Travis says he has quit burping greasy bacon. We laugh at each other as we recall our sober breakfast, each then wrapped in thoughts of what was to come. As we lugged our dive bags out to the dock, I told Travis about another long ago pal, a paratrooper. Asked about jumping, he would say, "The first jump is easiest. After that, they get harder and harder because you know more about what can go wrong..." We both wonder if diving might be something like that...

I feel fine. I have a few more extra weights to keep me down now - stowed loosely in my BCD pockets (not approved technique, but the mate has cut this corner at this time). Later, on deck, one falls out and lands on the divemaster's toe, underscoring why corner cutting sometimes cuts ...

Again, we deflate our vests, and slip beneath the waves. Were it calm, from the deck one could see a coin on the bottom 50 feet below. Down feet first we string out in a long descending spiral of divers. Ten feet from the bottom, I glance up. Our boat hull bobs far above us. Staring into the sunlight and bubbles of the breaking waves, I see a long cigar-shaped fish hanging there just under the surface! He has materialized out of nowhere. I guess he is about 2 to 3 feet long. As I stare into the bright confused chop, I see another, then another, and another... Soon, I count seven of them in watery file!

Are they 'cudas? I hope not! The divemaster is nearby. I grab his arm and point. But they are hard to see. I'm not sure he does see them. To aid him, I extend my fore- and middle-fingers in a "Y" - the diver's sign for predatory fish. I point again, and then I count them off on my fingers: one through seven - and look questioningly at him. He shrugs. Maybe - maybe not, he seems to imply, turns, and swims off. Lore on 'cudas is ambivalent; some emphasize their demonstrated habit of sometimes attacking humans, others stress their usual indifference. (Some emphasize their tastiness! I wonder if these culinary chroniclers have actually beheld "... His Wonders in the Deep" firsthand!)

"When in Rome...". I shrug too, and swim after the divemaster - looking warily back over my shoulder. The troop of cigar-shaped fish doesn't even seem to notice us way down below them and swims off enfilade, soon lost to sight in the chaotic pattern of froth and sunlight. (It was a later surmise we had seen a school of large harmless trumpet fish).

Mickey's sense of direction is unerring: in no time with few cues to guide him, he locates the galleon anchor. He later tells us he surprised himself: he doesn't always find it. The anchor is about four feet long, being mostly the shank and one arm only - heavily crusted with coral. It seems unusually light: one diver easily lifts it free of the bottom. I presume it is mostly rusted away. One thinks back on that day when the "hook" sank to the bottom for the last time. To the days of the Spanish Main, when Dutch, and English, and Spanish contended fiercely for these sunstruck islets ...

At this site, I discover a small rubber mouthpiece lying on the bottom! I hand it to Mickey. The mate has lost it a few days ago! Man the universal litter-er - even at the bottom of the sea!

Air consumption this dive matches Travis'. All divers return about the same time with the mandatory 500 pound safety reserve. We gather as a loose group on the bottom under the boat, and start our ascents. Those on the bottom look up, checking activity at the exit platform and waiting for their turn to rise. At one point, the spiraling column of divers, with outstretched arms, singly, some in pairs, with upturned faces, rising through the clear water reminds one of cherubim ascending heavenward in Renaissance paintings. I float face down, snorkeling on the surface. My angelic reverie is interrupted by a flurry of activity on the bottom. One diver has his knife out, others surround him in a semicircle. Attention is directed at a large rock in their midst.

On deck, we learn someone has seen a small octopus hiding in the rock, and which despite the knife-wielding diver, made good his escape. Yet another charge against facetious Hollywood, which has always portrayed these innocent sea creatures as baneful monsters of the deep.

We make our "deep water exits": first heave the weight belt onto the platform, then the BCD, then boost yourself up, shed your fins and flop into the cockpit. No problem, till I remove my prescription dive goggles and in the fuzzy world of the nearsighted, stumble forward to the cuddy and grope for my glasses in my seabag. I trust my sharp-eyed youthful companions attribute my lubberly progression to the roll of the boat.

The diesel roars to life; in a moderate following sea and a cloud of fumes we race for the dock at the dive resort and the first of the afternoon's Pina Coladas ...

Thus, our introduction to ocean diving in the Caribbean. We made another two-tank run the following day. This time, back out to "Joe's Jam" and down again in about 50 feet of water. Travis and I head out on our own - a new thrill. We travel north to the edge of the reef where it begins to drop toward the blue depths below.

Soon, it is just the two of us moseying along at the bottom of the sea. I turn and do a "360". In every direction, out about a 100 feet or so, the cobalt blue curtain against which the diver's adventures are played, diffuses softly, silently away. The dive boat hull is lost to view, as is its anchor line and anchor. Within the sunlit circle of the encircling ocean wall, we swim lazily along. Troops of bright fishes fill our amphitheatre. From the waterproof, plastic field guide hanging at my side I identify small Damsels, and flat, brightly colored Butterfly fish. Slender Trumpet Fish glide furtively by in schools. There are Wrasses looking as if someone had snipped their tails short, and regal Angelfish holding court with waving anemones on the bottom. Lumpish-looking groupers eye us dispassionately from under ledges.

Hamlets, and Squirrelfish with the large eyes so often the sign of nocturnal feeders, are abroad by day, too. Sergeant Majors sporting their black stripes like newly-appointed noncoms hang effortlessly in the water ahead, and part reluctantly at my passing. Little, reddish Blackbar Soldierfish hover in the lee of a large seafan. Spanish Hogfish with purple cowls pass in and out of the holes in a limestone outcrop. I see Yellowjacks, Spotted Drums with erect dorsal fins half again their own length, Sriped Grunts, and myriads, shoals of others as yet unknown to me. Alone, at the bottom of the sea! A lifetime ago, N.C. Wyeth illustrated Jules Verne's "Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under The Sea". From boyhood's adventure stories, I think on his 19th century aquanauts trooping over the floor of sunlit seas ... How remarkable to actually be there now!

A compass is a "must" for all my future dives, but we have no problem. With the clear skies far above, bright sun, clear water, and no current - navigation is a snap. Just to be on the safe side, we make an ascent to the surface for a look around - and there is the boat rocking in the swells maybe a hundred and fifty yards off to the south of us, between us and Capella Island.

We dive again.

Suddenly, Travis pulls at my wet suit. I look up - and there maybe 15 feet in front of us is a 'cuda - sure enough. No doubt about it this time. He (she?) is about two feet long. Hanging there motionless. We are off the fish's right quarter. I blink once - and the 'cuda dematerializes! One moment it's there; the next it's gone! It vanishes into the background, either through coloration or actually hiding. We scan for others. Seeing none, we continue on. Of two species of 'cuda found from the West Indies to the Florida Straits, it is this one - the Great Barracuda - that is of most concern to divers. They look much alike; the manuals say the distinguishing characteristic of the Great Barracuda is his always open mouth: he can't completely close it! Hence his toothy, gaping grin - and display of rows of needlesharp teeth!

Shortly after this, Travis again draws my attention to a large overhanging ledge. Peeping out at us from under the ledge is easily the biggest lobster I have ever seen! Maybe the biggest in the world for all I know. He is huge! This is the Caribbean Spiny Lobster or Crawfish. He lacks the big forepincers of our New England lobsters. I have seen these latter caught in ship's trawls by accident (they are too big to enter a trap). They commonly run forty or fifty pounds or more and when held waist high by the fishermen their tails sweep the ground.

But this West Indian denizen dwarfs New England's best! Water, we divers learn, magnifies everything by 25 percent. Okay - take 25 percent off what we see. It's still the world's biggest lobster! I swim up to the ledge and peer back in. Like a wary, multilegged boxer the lobster shifts a bit and dances to one side. I estimate he is as big through as a grown man's thigh. Travis determines the tips of his antennae - sticking outside his ledge - are at least three feet apart! He is so big in under there he looks like something out of a Spielberg movie! We leave him to his devices and swim on.

Our fourth and final dive is off Buck's Island - not far from yesterday's Barracuda Point. This is our first wreck dive! On the bottom, on the reef, half buried in coral sand, lies the hulk of a small coaster. The "Catansar", which went down way back in the 1940's, they say.

"Catansar" lies in about 50 feet of water. We come up on her from the bow. She is over pretty much on her port side, and the bow section has broken off in a storm in the early 80's. Clouds of fish hang in the water about her. I guess she is maybe 70 to 80 feet overall, with a 20-foot beam. Her forward cargo hold deck hatch is missing. Ahead of me first the divemaster, then Travis, swim into the opening, duck down and disappear!

I follow. We swim down under the deck plates and come up into the engine room. The engines are still in place in their ways, and we swim along the gangway between them. I hold my trailing "octopus", console, and other gear close to me and keep my hands along my sides. I have no wish to foul up here, and no further wish right now to meet "Heineken" - a six-foot Green Moray Eel who makes "Catansar" his home! Fortunately, "Heineken" must be a deep sleeper, for he does not hear us as we swim up into a combined charthouse and galley. Travis notes pots still on the galley stove. Later, our divemaster relates an event of the preceding week. He had taken a group on its first night dive. They were threading their way through "Catansar's" engine room, when a woman in the group turned her light onto a beautiful foot-long parrotfish a short distance ahead.

Suddenly, from the inky blackness over her shoulder, "Heineken" uncoiled his six-foot length in a lightning strike! He, too, saw the parrotfish in the light. With two snaps of his powerful moray jaws, the parrotfish disappeared entire! The divemaster, nearby, said even under fifty feet of water he heard the woman screaming behind her facemask! Small wonder ... for my money. I'd say something like that might go a long way toward spoiling your whole day (or night)!

"Catansar" however, seems a safe wreck: I fancy the pros have removed some of the more dangerous snags from her. She is very open and broken and not dark inside so you can see well at all times. As you exit the charthouse to starboard, you see a porcelain toilet bowl someone has left on deck. It sits forlornly in dappled sunlight. Travis, ever the joker, poses for us on the pot!

I swim to the rail. The bottom is maybe ten feet below so I do an over the side waist-bend dive, and swim down along her hull, pressure popping my ears as I go deeper. I pause on the white sandy bottom to blow, and note I am at the stern. "Catansar" is rudder-deep up her bilges in the sand and the rudder gone into the bargain. In under her overhang a large group of fish sways in faint shadow, like cows nooning beneath the trees of an aerial meadow. Off to starboard amidships is a "strewn field" of gear and wreckage. There are pipes and gear wheels and bits and pieces of machinery, cables, and what all, trailing off toward the blue wall and slowly rusting away. Bright red, blue, and yellow fishes hover over this submarine junkyard. Limey coral encrustations form slowly on exposed metal surfaces.

We sport on the bottom, doing headstands in the near-weightless environment. As the hands on the tank pressure gauges creep inexorably toward the red zone and "500 lbs. remaining", we turn lazily back toward the dive boat. Again, I consume more air than I like. To ease consumption, I go up to about 15 or 20 feet. Directly below me around 40 or 50 feet swims the divemaster. As he exhales, his bubbles rise toward me through the clearwater like "ack ack" coming up to a bomber in the old World War II movies!

As these bubbles rise, they assume a mushroom shape, expanding rapidly under the lessened pressure. Their upper surfaces are convex away from me and their edges are delicately scalloped by the vortices of obscure hydrodynamic forces. The bubbles burst against my facemask, their shattered remnants continuing to the surface above me. When they are about two feet below me, I see my entire reflection, as in a Dolly Madison antique mirror, growing suddenly on their bullseye surface. A miniature diver suspended in space in a wet suit, behind him the surface of the ocean overhead. Farther out still, in this wonderful, expanding dynamic cameo, I even see details in cumulus clouds as they race along in the Trades of a blue Caribbean sky!

All this I see again and again, repeated on the topside of each magic rising bubble. I shall remember it always.

Postscript

The blue swells of a following sea again lick hungrily at our stern. We race shoreward in the late forenoon of the second day. Diesel fumes boiling inboard discourage conversation among the tired divers sprawled in the small cockpit. A rain squall races down on us from windward. Travis and I rest against the leeward rail. Across from us, a diver stares and says, "I wish I could have gotten my old man to dive with me". Travis and I grin at one another, say nothing. We are thinking about the good rum swizzles they make at the dive resort.

The gap is stayed yet once again...