Lion's Den - Thursday

It’s time for another dive trip Blog installment. This time to the Graveyard of the Atlantic off of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina.

This week, the NEWD Divers of Wyoming are heading to hunt Lionfish with the crew of Discovery Diving, out of Beaufort, NC. What started out as a guys weekend trip to kill lionfish, has turned into an all out spear fishing extravaganza. Each summer, the folks at Discovery Diving sign up charters and take intrepid spear fishermen out to the bones of famous wrecks like the U-35t2 and the USCGC Spar.

This trip is a slight departure form out usual dive outings, in that we are staying in the U.S. Accustomed to third world destinations, I had to constantly remind myself all week to not take every possible thing I might need for a week long trip to the outback. If I forget my toothbrush, I’ll just run down the street to K-mart and pick up a new one. Food will be recognizable and street signs will all be in English. (The Bonairian government is still shaking their head re: my driving exploits. Who ever heard of a freaking GOAT crossing anyway?)

The weeks leading up to the trip went fairly fast. Flying to NC just didn’t seem like a real trip until I realized that we were down to days rather than months or weeks. It’s been a long 4 months since we returned from Bonaire and it’s amazing shore dives. There will be quite a few differences this time around. For the next week I’ll be a paying customer, rather than a working dive master. That means someone else gets to worry about getting everyone on planes, missing luggage, hotel reservations and the dozens of other concerns that a trip leader needs to stay on top of. Me? I plan to sit back, relax and just enjoy the next week.

The other big difference between this trip and pervious ones, deals with the type of diving and the scenery. This is not a “Sit on the sugar sand beaches of a tropical island and sip rum based drinks while your tanned boat crew hauls your gear to the dive boat“ trip. This is the graveyard of the Atlantic, baby! Rough seas, rain and swells, blue water and low visibility are all on the menu. Not for the faint of heart, this is real diving. Average depths pushing the recreational limits, there won’t be miles of shallow, soft coral reefs to peruse. We’ll take a rough boat ride out to a wreck site, tie in to a mooring line and drop down 140 feet to the twisted hull of a WWWII causality. This type of diving separates the dive bum from the weekend floaters.

Luckily, one of our club members owns and flies a small private plane, so while the bulk of our group is just beginning a long 6 hour trip to Denver in order to catch a early morning flight to NC, I’m sitting in the co-pilot seat of a Cessna 210 cruising along at 12 thousand feet half way to DesMonies, where we will stop for the night and have a good meal and a cold adult beverage. While the others will deal with commercial ticket counters and TSA employees, trying to explain for the fourth time that the 40 pounds of dive gear crammed into a carryon isn’t anything that will explode, turn into a weapon or otherwise bring down a 727, we roll up to the plane, sipping Starbucks and toss our bags in the back 5 minutes before we taxied out and headed into a beautiful warm evening. I have half a dozen knives, spears and pressurized tanks about my person and no one cares! Awww, bliss.

So, Lionfish. A short tutorial. Indigenous to Micronesia and places warm and tropical, the lion fish problem in the US started because some idiot got tired of his private breeding pair and dumped them from his 100 gallon aquarium into the Atlantic. Now, a few years later, they are running rampant all along the coast and moving steadily south into the Caribbean. Each year they penetrate farther south and are upsetting the reef ecosystem as they go. Releasing thousands of eggs at a time, they proliferate. Having no natural enemies in these waters, and being totally unknown to the local species, they eat, seep and breed in astounding numbers. Every diver from New Jersey to Venezuela engage in a determined slaughter-on-sight attempt at decimation… pretty much to no avail.

If that wasn’t enough, these outwardly beautiful fish sport dozens of long sharp spines that radiate from their lacey fins. Loaded with a powerful neurotoxin, the sting of the lion fish is incredibly painful, if not deadly to humans. A boat captain who had been stung on a hunt, equated it to a white hot knife that sits in your flesh for two to three days before slowly fading. Suffice it to say, it’s a good idea to be careful.

We are beginning our approach into DesMoins. We’ll hitch a ride to the motel, eat a good meal, and get a good night’s rest.

Tomorrow, an easy flight to Beaufort. We’ll explore the town and scope out the best hot spots for after dive relaxation and wait for the others to show up. We have a class at the dive shop at 7 on how to safely harvest the fish and then we'll get our itineraries.

Oh, did I mention that while the rest of our group have to fly into Raleigh and drive two hours to get to Beaufort, Doug and I will land about two block from the dive shop? They will be jet lagged and car sore. We will be rested and on our third beer.

It’s good to be the pres…….