This is a hard trip to sum up. The diving itself was crap—rough conditions, poor visibility, and the  hardest I’ve done—but it was a fantastic trip. And we all learned a lot.

Phil, Barbie, Jeff, and I headed to Key Largo Oct. 5-9, 2017, a month post-Hurricane Irma, to finish up our divemaster training under the tutelage of Jay Brewer. Over the previous six weeks we’d bonded over many hours in the classroom and the pool, through Flatirons Scuba in Broomfield, Colorado, and we headed to Florida to finish up our last skills in the open water: primarily leading dives, mapping, and search and rescue. Irma didn’t prevent us from following our plans. Though many dive centers were still recovering and not yet operating, the Rainbow Reef Dive Center was running strong, and they were feeling very fortunate for that.

Jay was the last to arrive in the Miami airport, and we greeted him in scuba nerd style. We then picked up our big white van (the only vehicle the rental agency had that could accommodate our gear), which came complete with stained upholstery and a stale odor. And we were Key Largo-bound, only Miami rush hour stood between us and Key Largo. For a long time.

We rolled into Key Largo a little dazed and a lot hungry. We stopped at Evelyn’s, a Mexican/American diner, and our crew commenced its policy to eat conch fritters and key lime pie every time they graced the menu.

Diving Day 1

Irma didn’t get in our way, but what did affect our dives was a no-name tropical depression. It prevented boats from venturing out for a handful of days leading up to our trip, but it calmed down enough that we were able to go out as scheduled. It didn’t, however, calm down enough to make that first day very pleasant. The sizable (46-foot) boat lurched in the 16-17 knot winds and 6-8 foot swells. On the four dives we did that day, visibility was as low as 10 feet and rarely better than 15. Our first dive, a deep dive of the Duane wreck, was the toughest entry some of us have experienced to date.

The Duane: No free ascents or descents on this dive. We needed to pull ourselves from the stern of our boat along a line to the bow, where we were able to catch the mooring line, hand-under-hand down to the sunken vessel. But that makes it sound easy. Barbie went through 500 psi before even descending, and I’m sure I went through plenty myself, I didn’t think to check. Both Barbie and I almost lost our masks and snorkels as swells pushed against us. Though we had grumbled plenty about the requirement to wear snorkels during trainings, we all used them that day. And despite warnings of fishhooks in the mooring lines, I gripped the ropes full-handed for the first 30 feet or so, until the current wasn’t yanking as hard and threatening to lob me away. 

Fortunately, at depth you can evade the current, and you can also usually escape seasickness. We did both, and we explored the 327-foot long U.S. Coast Guard Cutter, intentionally sunk in 1987 to create an artificial reef. Its hull rests in water 125 feet deep, with its tower reaching almost to 60 feet below the surface. Large, deep wrecks are always a little spooky, and this one didn’t disappoint. It was fabulous to be in water that felt still, and we spotted a few creatures—a nurse shark slinking below, an enormous green moray eel, and as we slowly ascended around the side of the ship to a small upper deck, a greenback turtle banked around a tower, slowly soaring past us. I was not lucky enough to see any of the resident bull sharks. As we ascended, I spotted two minuscule shrimp clinging to the line—destined, I feared, to be squashed by a hand sometime soon.

Despite feeling green before that first dive, I managed to keep the contents of my stomach inside. I didn’t manage that on the surface interval.

For our second morning dive, we had the “distinction” as divemaster candidates (DMCs) to pull up the rear for a fun-dive group on a deep “drift” dive on Molasses Reef (which had indiscernible current). We were pretty close to each other as we began our descent, but we had no idea the visibility would be as poor as it was—so poor, in fact, that before we even completed our descent, we lost Phil, who happened to be holding the rear dive flag. We had an assignment we couldn’t abandon, and we all knew Phil would head to the surface and back to the boat if we didn’t quickly reconvene. I was a little worried about Phil, but I was a lot worried about Barbie, whom I knew would be at the least very anxious to get the dive over with and lay her eyes on Phil. (Indeed, during the course of the dive she bit through the mouthpiece of her regulator.) Feeling responsible to bring up the rear of the dive group might have been stressful regardless, but given the conditions, it felt like an impossible task—much of the time even staying within sight of our crew was a challenge. But in the end (miraculously, I thought) the entire group all surfaced together. We happily reunited with Phil at the boat, and we headed in for a quick lunch break. I optimistically ate a salad and Barbie replaced the mouthpiece on her regulator.

I didn’t yak until our surface interval, but I was feeling pretty green as we embarked on our first afternoon dive: a mapping expedition on French Reef. Barbie and I partnered up. I was navigator, rarely taking my eyes off my compass, and Barbie kept track of kick cycles and drawing the terrain. We were in charge of half of the map for our group, and we set off on a U-pattern in good humor and ready to do our best, if honestly not with the highest hopes for an accurate map.

After a couple of turns, we started to look at the map together to pinpoint where we were at each turn, and I think that would have been helpful for us to do that from the start. Conditions and confusion gave us a hard start (we were originally to measure the kick cycles of a rope that our group couldn’t find), and—a little too late—realized we started with different ideas about where we were headed. A highlight, aside from much to laugh about later, was a tiny creature—2-3 millimeters in size—that clung to the tip of my finger while we hung onto a line for a safety stop.

In the end, we had a good swim back to the boat (and by “good,” I mean long), and a slate that didn’t have a very accurate map, but that did have a lot of writing—which was all Jay cared about. He didn’t have high expectations for the map given the conditions. What he was looking for was communication. (Stay tuned: Barbie and I are determined to nail mapping on another trip.)

By our last dive of the day, my seasickness didn’t subside much underwater, and we weren’t deep enough to fully evade a surge. Our task as a full team: find Jay in a search and rescue exercise. I’ll spare the reader the suspense: we never did. In our defense, at this point Barbie was as green as I was, and visibility was under 15 feet. The highlights of our findings as we attempted an expanding square search pattern were a spotted eel and a midnight parrotfish. The lowlight: a smack of small jellyfish that had congregated around the boat to make our exit that much more challenging (exiting was a bear every time, as the ladder swung with the swells, and the Rainbow Reef folks had us take fins off before we got to the ladder, which made control harder as we tried to connect with it). I had a couple minor stings, but Barbie was stung badly on her neck and hand (thank goodness for her full wetsuit, or it certainly would have been far worse).

Tips on Seasickness: Stay hydrated, particularly prior to getting on the boat. Watch the horizon, and try to stay cool. Avoid alcohol, dairy, and spicy and fried foods. It’s always much better below the surface of the water than on the surface in the boat, but it’s worth knowing that it’s okay to yak into your regulator—you can keep the reg in and keep on breathing. But don’t combat seasickness by avoiding diving—it gets better.

Throughout that day, I did have to remind myself repeatedly that I loved diving, and that I wanted to continue diving after this trip. That day would have turned away many an open-water student. But here’s the kicker: we were having a fabulous time. It was all so absurd, and, together, we’d come out stronger after plenty of other stressors during the course of our divemaster training. I’ll admit, though, that I was quite happy to have my feet on solid ground for a night to dissolve my lingering queasiness. 

We had a good meal at Skippers Dockside, a very short walk from our Courtyard Marriott. On the walk out to Skippers, we came across the famous 1912 steamboat The African Queen from the 1951 movie of the same name, with Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn. The Queen originally transported hunters, mercenaries, and cargo in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and now she’s on the National Register of Historic Places in Key Largo and available for joyrides.

Day 2

The next morning we dove the Spiegel Grove, a former navy landing ship. At 510 feet long, it held up to eight helicopters while it was in service. The ship’s top deck sits at about 60 feet below the surface, and its hull reaches down to 135 feet. It takes many dives to fully explore, and it has eight mooring lines. The story of the sinking of the Spiegel Grove is interesting: In 2002, after many delays and $1 million of prep, the ship sunk more quickly than planned and landed upside down, with its bow out of water. A few weeks and $250,000 later, air was pumped into its port side to displace 2,000 tons of water, rolling it onto its starboard side. Soon after that, the site was opened to diving, and more than a thousand divers explored it within the first week. But three years later, Hurricane Dennis came through and helped to finally fix the ship into its intended position—right-side up.

Our last official training dive was the Benwood wreck. Benwood is a 360-foot Norwegian merchant freighter that collided one morning with a tanker, the Robert C. Tuttle, in 1942. They were both running “lights out” to avoid German U-boats. The boat is laid open—there is nothing to penetrate or swim through—and it’s shallow (my average depth was 24 feet) so you can casually make your way up and down the length of the wreckage with plenty of air to explore the vessel close-up.

Back at the Rainbow Reef dock, Jay publicly declared us divemasters, and our hazing (as well as Jay’s tanning) had just begun. But we took the afternoon off, and we drove our smelly white van down through the Keys. We stopped off at Robbie’s in Islamorada to feed the famous tarpons that congregate for baitfish-laden tourists. Phil had to fend off pelicans.    

We continued down Route 1 on the Overseas Highway. As we neared Pine Deer, where the eye of Hurricane Irma had passed through a month prior, the debris that had been gradually increasing along the sides of the road reached a crescendo. There was lots of natural debris, like limbs of trees, but huge numbers of appliances, mattresses, on and on. The roofs over gas station pumps lay on their sides, crumpled. Boats were in places they shouldn’t have been. The thick tangles of mangroves were so full of debris it was hard to imagine how they could be cleaned. We were struck by the damage, and we were glad to be spending our money in the Keys at a time when they needed it. Back in Key Largo, we walked over to Sharkey’s, a waterfront pub, for another good dinner. We could also celebrate: we were divemasters!

Day 3

Our third day of diving took us back to the Spiegel Grove, where we enjoyed watching a barracuda as it hung out in a tower, and we posed with an American flag. We saw some grouper, some big jacks, angelfish, and fireworms. Then for our second dive we were back at the Benwood, where Phil got some quite decent photos, particularly considering the still-poor visibility. A spotted eel, lots of trumpet fish, a spotted trunkfish, a puffer fish, and, my favorite–a scorpion fish. At the end of the dive Barbie and I practiced deploying our DSMBs (delayed surface marker buoys), and we surfaced a few minutes later than we were directed to (not a good choice if we’d wanted to minimize our hazing as new divemasters).

It was not the best trip for photo-taking, but Phil managed to pull some magic out of a couple dives. You can get lost in his underwater gallery on our Sassy Scuba site. 

In the afternoon, Jay worked on his tan, and the rest of us went to see Jesus. In the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary at a site called Key Largo Dry Rocks, a 4,000-pound, 8.6-foot tall bronze statue, Christ of the Abyss, stands on a pedestal in 25 feet of water, gazing upward and arms outstretched. The statue has rested here since 1965; he was donated to the Underwater Society of America by Italian scuba entrepreneur Egidi Cressi.

The statue graced us with the best visibility of our 10 dives. We had a great time gliding around and over large fingers of coral that reached as high as five to six feet below the surface. Among our sightings were two huge cowfish, a hogfish, and some tiny spotlight parrotfish. But even the most ordinary of fish were beautiful on that dive, as not only was the visibility decent, but we were shallow, and rays of sunlight were shining onto the coral and fish. I remember one fish, in particular. It was a generic yellow-and-white variety, it was level with my face, a couple feet away, and it was lit up, with only beautiful deep blue water behind it. So simple, and breathtaking.

As we approached the surface near the boat, we were again surrounded by dozens of moon jellyfish, and I was so focused on pointing them out to the snorkelers (for some it was their first snorkelling experience), that I didn’t notice the one that planted itself around my knee and thigh. Jeff pushed another one with his fin to knock it away, and it was pulverized. Once I boarded the boat and sprayed vinegar on my leg, the burning was tolerable, and while the pain mostly dissipated within an hour, the marks on my leg lasted a few weeks.

The moon jellyfish (a beautiful creature with a beautiful scientific name: aurelia aurita) is transparent, and these had a pinkish hue. They can grow up to about 16 inches in diameter, and they have four bright horseshoe-shaped gonads. Jellyfish are carnivorous, and they are prey to birds, fish, sea turtles, and, in parts of southeast Asia, humans. A few more cool facts about the moon jelly, thanks to the Lamar University Biology Department: They are 95% water. In 1991, more than 2,000 moon jellyfish traveled on the space shuttle Columbia as part of a study of weightlessness on development of jellyfish. And, of course, jellyfish are not fish. They’re of the phylum cnidarians; fish belong to the phylum chordate.

Tips on Jellyfish Stings: The crown of the jellyfish doesn’t sting, it’s all the tentacles down below that get you. Some common remedies have recently been debunked. Here’s what researchers advise: Rinse with vinegar, as its acetic acid inactivates the nematocysts so they can’t fire. Then remove any remaining tentacles with tweezers, and apply heat. Do not use freshwater to rinse off the burn; the change in pH between saltwater and freshwater can trigger more stinging.

A 2017 Popular Science article, “You’re Treating Jellyfish Stings All Wrong,” reports on the recent findings published in the journal Toxins. It’s an interesting read. A couple of important notes about common (mis)treatments: Scraping away tentacles applies more pressure, thus triggering the nematocysts to release more venom (which is particularly dangerous with more toxic jellies); ice exacerbates the stinging; and peeing on the affected area may do more harm than good. So don’t use these “remedies.” https://www.popsci.com/how-to-treat-jellyfish-sting#page-2 

Our last dive took us to the Banana Patch, a very shallow dive, where we did find some cool creatures: three flamingo tongues on one little branch of seaweed, a fish only 1 cm in length that was possibly a juvenile angel, and a lobster. Barbie and I practiced a few skills, like mask removal. On this and a previous ride, the boat took a short detour to pull storm debris—a tire and a sign—out of the water. On the ride back to Key Largo, we were entertained by ballyhoos leaping out of the water.

Barbie and Phil were staying on a couple more days, but the rest of us said goodbye to the Rainbow Reef Dive Center. Rainbow Reef is a well-oiled operation. Their boats are large, and during our three-day experience, they ranged from about half-full to chock-full–one day I counted about 30 people, pretty crammed. They generally limited dives, even those that were quite shallow, to about 45 minutes. But they are competent and organized (and they have a fun prize wheel to spin, aprés diving, at their retail center on the highway–prizes include free diving!).

We cleaned up for a higher-end dinner at Sol by the Sea, and we wrapped up our last night together with delicious ice cream from Key Largo Chocolates, a hard-to-miss pink-and-green building on the main highway.

Key Largo was the best crappiest diving I’ve done. I saw Jesus, I got stung by jellyfish, and I laid eyes on the aftermath of a hurricane. Despite four of us searching for Jay, he had to rescue himself. I ate key lime pie multiple times in four days. We came up with some new scuba hand signals–who knew there was such a thing as a rainbow unicorn eel? (Okay, there’s not, but I bet you’d properly interpret our hand signal for it.) And I got to spend time with some pretty special people. It doesn’t get much better than that.