2008 Woodie Awards
Under the sea with Scuba Scott
Aislinn Sarnacki
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Off the Maine coast, University of Maine students swim beneath the waves, exploring a world accessible to few. This is the realm of the UMaine Scuba Club, a small group of certified divers who spend weekends alongside the fishes.
The club consists of four or five devoted divers, but they are looking for new members.
The president, senior mechanical engineering technology student Scott Brown, joined last year, stepping up to the plate when the former president graduated. He received scuba open water certification in 2004, completing a four-week, $475 course at Johnson's Sporting Goods in Portland.
Members of the club must be scuba certified. For this, Brown points students to Downeast Dive Shop in Dedham, which certifies new divers year-round. The three-week course is taught by certified instructor Bruce Loring. Between eight and 10 UMaine engineering students will be completing the course this Saturday, according to a shop employee.
Diving is purely a hobby for Brown, but most club members are marine science students. Two of the members cannot attend meetings regularly this semester because they are working at the Ira C. Darling Marine Center in Walpole. The research and teaching center has large flowing-seawater tanks and a complete scuba facility.
"It opens up a lot more opportunities in the long run," said sophomore marine science student Maddi Peek, active member of the Scuba Club.
Peek earned certification through her high school in Minnesota in 2006, completing her open water dives at a site off Grand Cayman Island in the Caribbean.
"All of the things you talked about in class you could go out and see," said UMaine marine sciences associate professor Paul Rawson, who obtained his certification as an undergraduate.
The club doesn't normally dive with an agenda - except to observe and explore. Maine's marine environment is full of sea anemones, flounder, crabs, starfish, sea cucumbers, shrimp and sand dollars, according to Peek.
The club takes daytrips to local dive sites, usually near Acadia National Park. This semester they have visited Somes Sound and Little Hunters Beach.
At Schoodic Fraser's Point, they ran into a massive lobster.
"Its claws were probably as big as my hand," Peek said.
Diving can be an expensive hobby. A diver should expect to pay approximately $1,400 for a basic set of quality equipment, according to Brown. He ended up spending closer to $2,400.
In Maine, diving requires a mask, fins, boots, gloves, wetsuit, tank, weight belt and regulator - a breathing device. Divers also wear a buoyancy compressor, a device that allows divers to maintain neutrality and float freely at a specific depth.
Club members aren't required to own their equipment. Peek rents her gear from Downeast Dive Shop for $65 per weekend.
"Maine diving has its challenges," Brown said.
Diving in cold water is more expensive than diving in warm water. Cold-water diving requires a wetsuit, boots and gloves to retain body heat. Also, because water density increases as temperature drops, Maine divers must wear weight belts to weigh them down.
Visibility is also different. In Maine, the amount of plankton and nutrients contribute to cloudy waters, according to Peek.
At a depth of around 60 feet, a flashlight is required.
"Here a good day is 10 feet [of visibility], where a bad day in the Caribbean is 20 feet," Peek said.
The club requires members to dive in pairs or groups of three, maintaining visual contact at all times. At 10 feet, this proves to be fairly tricky.
For the one-hour dives, club members generally stay at depths of 30 to 50 feet, although earlier this semester they swam at a depth of 65 feet in Somes Sound.
The deeper the dive, the quicker the oxygen supply is used. Usually divers begin with a tank pressure of 3,000 PSI and return to the surface once the pressure has dropped to 500 PSI.
"If you learn to control your breathing, you can stay under longer," Brown said.
The club communicates underwater with hand signals. They would like to eventually purchase an underwater notepad, similar to an Etch A Sketch.
Divers often collect treasures from the seabed. Brown's favorite dive was exploring the Bohemian shipwreck in Casco Bay with his father, where they retrieved more than 100 buttons from sunken cargo. The passenger steamer sunk in 1864.
"[Buttons] are still sitting right at the surface … and there were chunks of coal. The ship ran on coal," Brown said.
Peek's most memorable dive was at Grand Cayman Island where she swam through naturally formed tunnels in coral reefs. By waving her hands, she directed schools of tropical fish that resembled colorful clouds, she said.
Downeast Dive Shop certifies through the Professional Association of Diving Instructors. The program includes classroom time at the shop and pool sessions at Husson University. Students complete training by testing their skills in open water.
Brown was certified through National Association of Underwater Instructors. His education included rescue skills, such as handling situations where a diver may be unconscious or experience a panic attack.
In addition to having several dive shops, Maine is home to organizations such as Maine-iac Divers, Central Maine Muck Divers and The League of Underwater Superheroes.
The UMaine Scuba Club holds weekly meetings and is in the process of completing the required paperwork to be recognized by the General Student Senate.
Students who are interested can contact the club on its FirstClass folder. Although they generally don't dive in the winter, the club will remain active and plan for spring dives.
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