The Last Dive by Bernie Chowdhury

Author:Bernie Chowdhury
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2015-06-15T16:00:00+00:00

8

Voice from the Deep

OCTOBER 13, 1991. ABOARD THE DIVE BOAT SEEKER,

26 miles off the coast of Delaware,

over the wreck of the Northern Pacific.

AS I LAY ON THE PLATFORM BENCH where all of us had geared up, I was struggling just to keep on living, praying for the Coast Guard helicopter to come fast. The U.S. Coast Guard station that patrolled this area, in Cape May, New Jersey, received Bill Nagel’s call for my emergency evacuation. The call had gone out over marine radio, which meant the message had been overheard by other boat captains and crews and murmured about among the various dive-boat captains, crews, and customers, uncomfortably reminding them what was at stake every time they jumped into the water. News of an accident like mine not only serves to reinforce caution among divers; it also means that if someone else gets hurt, one potential recompression chamber is already going to be in use. If a diver in southern New Jersey, or in Delaware, was injured right after my accident, he would have to be airlifted to an alternative recompression site, farther away than the one I was heading for. The chances of a diver’s making a full recovery decrease the longer it takes to get him into a recompression chamber.

I was in luck. As I would find out later, a chopper was already fueled and warmed up, its crew having just returned from an exercise patrol when Nagel’s distress call crackled over the air to the Coast Guard dispatcher in Cape May. Although my anguish made it feel as though hours elapsed before I felt the wind disturbance of the chopper’s blades overhead, the response time was only forty-five minutes. If the chopper and crew had not been ready to go when the call came in, I would have had to wait about another half hour for the chopper to arrive at the Seeker, which would have given the nitrogen bubbles even more time to trample my organs.

As I felt the strong gusts blowing over me, I looked up and saw the white helicopter with its blue and red insignia stripes and large, bold black lettering, USCG. Although the sight was welcome, I was struck by how unnatural it was for a helicopter to be hovering only thirty feet above the Seeker’s stern. The only things we divers normally see when we are this far offshore are the occasional boats in the distance; airplanes and helicopters are something that we might see as tiny dots in the sky, not machines hovering off the stern. My hopes soared at the sight of the rescue chopper, which would whisk me to the recompression chamber that promised me a chance at recovery.

I had held out this long by focusing only on the arrival of the chopper. Now I would focus on surviving until I got to the hospital. This was the same philosophy I used when I dived: If I visualized the dive in its entirety, I would be overwhelmed at how complex it was, how much effort was required to accomplish the task.

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