Black Coral Diving in the Early ‘70s

Working at depths of 250 feet on compressed air

is precarious.

Time on bottom is limited to scant minutes.

Nitrogen Narcosis befuddles the mind, inhibits clear

thinking and the

deadly bends disease is a constant threat if one

stays too long or ascends too rapidly.

* * *

Many years ago while working as a commercial diver in California stories about the Black Coral divers came to my attention. One of the abalone divers that I was working with at the time, Chuck Brugman had lived some time in Hawaii and dove black coral. The tales that he related were about the incapacitating results of the bends, embolisms, and dives that had gone wrong. The worst stories of all were of young divers that disappeared and never returned to the boat.

Most of the Black Coral divers had no formal training as to the physiology of diving and the medical problems that might arise. Harvesting the coral required them to descend to 200 feet on compressed air and without the knowledge of decompressing they suffered crippling injuries. Chuck moved his family back to the mainland to find other underwater work that was less dangerous than the deep diving required to get black coral.

Nearly twenty years later I arrived in Maui and was offered the opportunity to dive with some of the coral divers of that time. By then they were more aware of the problems involved with deep diving and were carefully decompressing but were still pushing the limits on every dive. They saw that I was photographing underwater subjects and invited me to go along on several dives. My trepidation was overcome by the enthusiasm of photographing their hunt and I said yes.

Black Coral Tree – about 5 ft high - 250 ft deep

Ray Sousa prepping for the dive. His Hawaiian style back pack carries duel air cylinders. Although he will only be on bottom 10 to 12 minutes that time will be spent racing across the bottom to find and cut a tree, or hopefully two, attach it to a float bag which he will inflate by taking his demand regulator out of his month while holding his breath and inserting it in the float bag-opening, then turning on the purge valve with a full-blast to start the bag inflation. Cutting down trees requires heavy breathing, care must be taken that he doesn’t start gasping because demand regulators do not provide air quick enough to do much gasping. On his weighted belt he carries a hatchet and a short handled sledge. Hard to see but its there as is his decompression meter.

When the diver has selected the tree he wants he kneels and places the hatchet against the base of the tree where it is to be chopped off. Then with the hand sledge he strikes the hatchet, usually several times because the base is thick and swinging a sledge underwater with force requires a tremendous effort; An effort that sometimes causes the sound of a ringing bell within one’s head when the blow is struck. Quickly gathering up his tools he and the coral tree ride the float bag back to the surface. Items that you will not see in the photo are buoyancy control devices-no alternate air source-or inflators - no emergency regulator- these accessories were still unknown in the 70's. Even with the added weight of the tools that he carries the ride up with the float bag ensures a quick effortless ascent.

Sousa ready to go.

Usually two divers would start the descent together although they would work independently each ascending separately as soon as they had finish gathering their coral. On all the dives I made with them I teamed with Ray. Without GPS we used the ancient system of finding the dive spot by sighting line-ups commonly used by lobster fisherman as well as divers and other fisher folk that want to go back to their favorite fishing hole. I was well versed in the method but it functions best when working close to shore and we were some three miles off Maui in the middle of the ‘Au’au Channel. There was some mildly heated discussion as to whether it was this tree or that tree that supposed to be lined up with the broken fence line and what tall pole to put in line with which gully. I asked Ray how deep the dive was going to be and he replied, “Well, maybe only 180 feet if we hit the top of the pinnacle but if we miss it we’ll have to go to the floor and that will be 250 feet.” That was about what I expected. My only concern was about leakage of the camera which was only guaranteed to 150 feet. One of the basic rules of diving with compressed air is to not ascend faster that your bubbles or descend faster than you would ascend. Possibly that rule was not known or else was ignored on all the dives that I made with them. The added weight of the tools ensured a quick effortless descent. Ray quickly disappeared into the blue depths. While following his bubbles I kicked my way down comfortably, saving my ears and sinuses for another day. We never saw the pinnacle but the tail of bubbles led me to Ray who was scurrying rapidly across the bottom to select the tree he wanted. The long pole is a spear carried in case of shark problems.

While he hustled across the floor I started shooting and saw that the strobe was only working sporadically but I kept working it anyway. As soon as I was on the bottom I noticed I had the biggest head of Nitrogen Narcosis that I had ever had the opportunity to experience. It became even more apparent when I noticed that some of the buttons on the camera were laughing at me. I laughed back and kept working, shooting objects in my surroundings, a tree here and a tree there waiting for Ray to make up his mind as to which tree he was going to knock off. Intermittently while inhaling I would hear a clear, pure, resounding sound of a church-like bell. I never knew if it was in my head or a noise from the regulator.

Deep Blue and quiet.

Bart O'Conner one of the other divers glides by.

Looking back at Ray I saw that he had knocked off his first tree of the dive.

And then he gathered some loose pieces.

After removing a second tree he paused for a victory pose. We had been down about 8 minutes and our time was running out. I was so zonked that I was fixated on the school of little black fish under his left arm and wondering why they don’t go to the shallows.

The first tree is launched on a float bag.

Another float bag is inflated and the second tree and heavy tools are hooked on and we soon climb on the elevator going up.

Ascending

At a depth of 75 feet we dropped off of the float bag. It was rising quicker as the air in it expanded. We kicked our way slowly up and reconnected with the float bag at 25 feet where we attached to a tail line. I checked my decompression meter and saw that the black needle was deep in the red. We decompressed at 25 feet for some time before moving up to 20 feet. When the black needle was not so deep in the red we ascended to 10 feet of depth and repeated the process. Before the needle was totally out of the red Ray kicked to the surface and got out of the water. I waited another five or 10 minutes and once it was in the white I climbed back aboard the boat. I don’t remember how long we decompressed it’s been some years.