Chapter IV. Florida People

By comparison, there were only a few new people who became involved on this go-around. Most people I spent time with I had been introduced to on previous visits. For instance, Carlie and Leslie invited Dave and I to join them on a fun dive on the SS Spiegel, a more than 500’ long Marine Landing Craft that was sunk to create an artificial reef and a destination for divers. I met people like Captain Pete and Captain Slate before in social situations, like taverns or the Christmas boat parade.

The new people were mostly the Southern Keys interviews and Oliver. There were a few others along the way as well, including people who became involved in the side project. But I thought I would take a few paragraphs to give some “shout out’s,” as well as offer a few more thoughts on some familiar characters in this story to date.

There were a few things I wanted to ask Captain Slate, but our limited time together kept me from going off on tangents… I was pretty sure I had seen him doing his “Creature Feature” on some early 80s TV shows like “That’s Incredible” or “Ripley’s Believe it or Not” and those ilk. I remember thinking how amazing it must be to interact with fish like he did. It was those little portals into undersea life from television shows that developed my interest in “one day” SCUBA diving. As a child, I never thought I would actually be doing it, but I loved watching underwater documentaries and thumbed through National Georgraphic whenever an issue showed a little more of that fascinating world.

And now I am doing it.

So I might have to thank Captain Slate for setting me on this path years ago, when I was a young boy watching a small black and white television with wide eyes and a fanciful imagination.

I mentioned to a diving friend of mine that I was interviewing Captain Slate. His reaction was rather negative, but not for the reasons you might expect, such as politics or a personal relationship. See, Captain Slate feeds baitfish to rather impressive barracuda – from his hands and mouth – for the amusemement of his customers. My friend lost his pinky to a barracuda in the Caribbean a few years ago. The ‘cuda had been getting fed by the local park rangers to amuse people, and must have mistaken his digit for a meal. So I can understand his distaste, but these are risks we take every day we dive. It’s a wild environment, and shit happens in the jungle, even if the jungle is under water. Captain Slate just likes taking it a step further. It’s a shame I didn’t have the time to dive with him this go-around.

There were also several people who were involved in the side project that evolved from the mustard incident at Dry Rocks. First and foremost, Captain Pete. What went from a “can you do this for me” relationship of a client and service personnel became a “how can I help you” relationship of fast friends.

Pete’s one of those fellas that has a few really good stories to tell, and a bunch of even better stories that are probably troubling and will never be revealed unless you can out-drink him. And trust me, you can’t, so those tales remain forever locked away. But Pete is a good egg with the kind of generous heart and do-it-yourself enthusiasm that pervades his startup business as a mustard maven.

I first met him at a bar, and possibly a brunch, in one of my previous visits. We were reintroduced at Keys Diver when I first came in to say hi to Rob, the owner and supporter. We stood around in the parking lot of his shop as I extracted the 100-plus pound case from the trunk and opened it to show off the huge housing. Pete was curious about it right off, as was another divemaster who worked with Rob and also played with some underwater video. Right from the first explanation, Pete was charged with making sure I was taken care of in Rob’s absence. He had to take care of a boat he had up North. He is Canadian, after all.

During much of this trip, my buddy Dave was away and I was in charge of his house. Pete became the de facto entertainment point person in Dave’s absence. Oliver and I started hanging with him almost every night at Sharkey’s, the local dive that serves old-fashioned supergreasy comfort food until late with live music a few nights a week. If you like barbecue with extra grease, you will love their special bar burger.

Quite a few evenings were spent with Oliver and Pete going head to head at one of the poll tables. The two are closely matched, and both are obvious sharks when you get to know them, so they had a great time playing into the wee hours. Oliver and I were invited over to Pete’s pad one night where he fried up some fresh mahi mahi a neighbor gave him, and we entertained Pete at Dave’s place several times.

As the friendship with Pete developed into the side project, a few other folks wound up getting involved. Most importantly, Jess – or the “mustard girl.” Quite funny and a really good sport, Jess helped fill a really important role in this project. And I think she had a lot of fun doing it as well. I didn’t get a chance to thank her enough for jumping in with both feet, and hope she knows how grateful I am.

A big thanks to her boyfriend Mike as well. As an anonymous person remarked, “you see her and you instantly feel yourself attracted to her, cursing out whoever her boyfriend is and expecting a jerk. But then you meet Mike and the guy is just so damn likable you go from jealousy to ‘they deserve each other’.” The sources of this quote will remain a mystery.

There were also a few other people we tried to enlist for this side project, but who weren’t able to participate. Namely Tiffany and Brianna. There might be more opportunities in the future to help out as a mustard girl. Hopefully we’ll all connect for the next spot.

I also want to thank a different anonymous person. He’s another local mariner, and even acknowledging when we spoke that he could get in trouble at work if people knew what he was telling me. And the story he told me was frightening and compelling. His job was to know the reefs and how they looked intimately. And by seeing the same ones so often, he could chart as individual areas of hard corals, hundred of years old and meters wide per head, as they died off. His cadence and speaking voice were the most haunting of anyone I spoke with. Here was a man who has watched the very attraction that earns him his living slip away with each warmer summer.

His prognosis was grim. He doesn’t see the corals surviving another 20 years, and expects marketing in the Keys to push wreck diving over reef diving in the near future. He stubbed out a cigarette as he pondered the burden of an expanding population fighting for fewer natural marine resources as hard coral reefs, affected by elevated sea surface temperatures, bleach and die out in epidemic fashion. His hung-dog eyes showed the frustration as he told me how the events unfolded, and the whole time I wished I could get him on camera.

I’d comment more on Oliver, but he’s got his own damn chapter. Don’t want to give the goofball an ego trip. Let me just say he should check his air gauge more often, especially at the beginning of deep dives.

Carlie and Leslie are another couple I really enjoy spending time with. Carlie has an inquisitive nature and a nose for problem-solving, so we get along fantastically. Invariably, if Carlie was coming over for ten minutes to look at something, he wouldn’t leave until Leslie called him to drag him away an hour later, and in that time we would have found 8 different ways to improve three different gear setups. We definitely share a common passion for gadgets, diving, underwater video, and gadgets for diving and underwater video.

Leslie is a saint for putting up with our shennanigans. She is adorable and sharp as a tack, and has been a willing helper on a few occassions – as well as doing some modeling for the camera. Underwater, she has a knack for spotting wildlife well before the rest of us can see it. Her sharp eyes led my camera to a few neat subjects.

Carlie also further innovated on some ideas I had brought down last time. He took the idea of using a horizontal fin for a stabilizer on a camera with a narrow grip between handles, like had been done for the borrowed camera and housing that I was using before, and created a platform that his entire video rig is build around. It also gave him a convenient way of keeping his attachments and pieces well organized underwater.

I am hoping to dive with them again later this year, deep in the Pacific. More details on that coming up…

Dave Valaika, from the Pennsylvania dive center called Indian Valley SCUBA (check out the link in the sidebars) is a recurring character in this tale as well. One thing about Dave, which I have never mentioned before, is that I enjoy watching him dive. He moves with such a sense of liberation as he moves and twists through passages around the structures.

Many better divers work on a minimalist form to keep their breathing slow and maximize bottom time that they move like stealthy darts through the water column. Dave is the opposite. He seems to take joy in the freedom of movement possible through the weightlessness of diving in a way that reminds me of my own silly group of divemaster trainees in Thailand that used dive with that same abandon.

More than once, I have discovered him by accident on a wreck. Usually he is coming up from below me and I become shrouded in his bubbles for a moemnt. Which is why I have taken to calling him “Bubbles.” Only a top-notch male diver could pull off a nickname like that with style. If you ever met Dave, you know what I mean when I say it fits him.

And I can’t forget… oh, crap, I did forget. But maybe David Hartman can remind me the good doctor’s name. One of the pioneers of recreational nitrox diving , this doctor sits out in front of his hyperbaric chamber training facility with a cooler of beer on weekend afternoon and evenings. He also had some great stories about the reefs before the changes in the 1980s. I have spent a few weekends sipping a miller light or similar, listening to him spin mildly inebriated yarns of historic research in diving medicine. He is a Key Largo citizen through and through, reflecting the character of the laid back yet well educated professional with a strong self of self-determination.

And if that gorgeous waitress with the most dangerous eyes named Natasha ever reads this blog, drop me a line.