My Scuba Stuff Blog

When you see the ice, do you still slip into your dive gear?

As I sit in my warm house, looking out the window at the neighbors shoveling snow, two dive trips come to mind from my younger years.  The first was about ten years ago, on the "Dina Dee" out of Point Pleasant, NJ.  It was late December.  The air temperature was 29 degrees, the ocean in the low 40's.

As I arrived at the dive boat, the mate was there early, prepping the boat.  It had snowed the night before, and he was shoveling about 3 inches of snow off of the deck.  He greeted me:  "So, what kind of mental problems do you have that bring you out here today?"


You couldn't have blamed him, how many other people go swimming in the Atlantic in the winter?

We were vising the "Delaware," a frequently dove wreck very close to the NJ coast.  We enjoyed two very nice dives, the ocean was calm and the water clear.  Not a lot of sea life this time of year, but a wreck is always fun to visit.

Fast forward about a month.  Now it's late January.  The air temperature was in the mid twenties.  The ocean was a balmy 39 degrees.  I was on The Outlaw diveboat, from Belmar NJ, visiting a wreck called the IdaK.

Swimming along on the cold bottom, I thought I saw an antenna sticking out of a dugout hole under some wreckage. I quickly stuck my hand into the hole, hoping to grab a lobster.  I couldn't feel it though - was something pinching my fingers, or was I shoving my mittens under a piece of wreckage?  To be honest, it was so darn cold, I couldn't tell.

Because the water was so cold, I decided to do a 5 minute safety hang at 15 feet, just to give whatever nitrogen was dissolved in me a few more minutes to bleed out.  After only a minute, I was shivering.  Five minutes was pretty close to torture, but safety first, I don't want to get bent.

My safety degassing obligation met, I let go of the grapple line to surface.  Wait a second - my fingers were still holding onto the line.  I tried to move them, but they wouldn't listen to me.  I had to use my right hand to peel my left hand free of the rope.

Climbing up the ladder to the  boat was a bit challenging - my hands didn't want to bend around the ladder.  Removing my BC was difficult because my hands didn't want to listen to me when I told them to squeeze the clips.  A kind, much warmer dive buddy helped me.

This isn't a story that ends with frostbite, or any permanent damage.  But after I finally struggled out of my gear, I slipped into my parka and sat down next to the heater.  I turned to another diver and told him, "This is insane.  I'm not going in for a second dive."

And somehow this was supposed to be fun?

"M...M...MM...ee.ee    E..e...e...th..th..e...r" he muttered through chattering teeth.  As a matter of fact, none of the divers on the boat went in for that second dive.

I know there are lots of more hearty guys that don't think twice about going diving in the cold.  Since I'm now over 55, I've decided to avoid diving once the water gets below 50 degrees.  Okay, maybe 49.  Well, 48's doable.  Okay, I'll go in at 45, but only if the air temperature's warm.

Does anyone have any cold water diving stories they'd like to share?  It would be nice to know that I'm not the only one suffering from Nitrogen cravings in the winter.

Thanks for reading - DSAO!  (Dive safe and often)