D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
November
2008
Dive, He Said
Teaching scuba diving in the desert, the partners at Las Cruces' Dive Quest Scuba are making a splash.
By Jeff Berg
I'm standing on Limantour Beach, on the Pacific Ocean, about an hour north of San Francisco. It is a beautiful early autumn day on the coast, the sun is bright, the wind is gentle, the air pristine. At this particular beach, the surf is not loud and crashing, but rather, quiet and lolling. The waves come and go and swirl around and behind me as they lap away at the beach, washing away all my footprints.
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Diver Kaitlin Sikes plays with a
sea lion at San Carlos, Mexico, on the Sea of Cortez. |
This is really an unusual beach; most times, Pacific Coast beaches will be dotted with debris — driftwood, kelp, shells, stones, what-have-you. But this one is clean, even free of litter. The other folks enjoying the beach — not many after two school classes head back to their buses to return home — are quiet. The whole scene makes one feel introspective.
As I glance out over the endless blue-green horizon, a statement that Richard "Punk" Potter, the co-owner of Las Cruces' Dive Quest Scuba, likes to make comes to mind, and now makes much more sense.
"You get to see 30 percent of the world," Potter says. "We get to see it all."
Potter, of course, is referring to 70 percent of the globe being water and underwater — the part that few people, beyond submariners, researchers and those who enjoy Potter's passion, scuba diving, ever get to see.
Even scuba divers probably don't get to see all that they would like, however, since the maximum recommended depth of a dive is 150 feet. The record for open-circuit diving is 1,010 feet, and Potter and his cohorts visiting at his store agree that even 400 feet is something only crazy people would do. But such depths still allow a view of a different world, far from what we mortal landlubbers ever get to enjoy.
Scuba diving in the desert does seem a bit odd, but Potter and his business partner, Siri Rustebakke, assure me that the sport is very popular in these parts — although not in the Rio Grande. Their shop, in fact, is one of a surprising 12 in New Mexico.
"It's addictive and far easier than you think," Rustebakke assures me. After conferring with the fellow divers who are hanging around the shop, she and Potter agree that the Las Cruces area, which would pretty much encompass Dive Quest's trade area, is home to 350 to 400 serious divers. Some six to eight dives annually, they concur, represents the ideal that would give one the right to claim to be a "serious" diver.
Rustebakke says the shop offers new classes each month, ranging from a beginner's overview to training for those who want to be instructors, as Potter is. There are numerous levels of diving in-between, all of course requiring testing and continued training.
The popular term "scuba" is actually an acronym for Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus, so named by the US Navy in 1939. But the history of underwater air-assisted diving goes clear back to at least 1535, when a diving bell was designed by Guglielmo de Loreno. Arthur Bacharach, on the Historic Diving Society Web site, notes, "Perhaps the earliest accurate report of a diving bell successfully used is that of Loreno's device, described in a work published in 1599 by de Marchi. Lorena's bell covered the top half of the diver's body, had a glass port for observation, and the operator could extend his hands from under the rim. It was used in an attempt to recover Caligula's pleasure galleys in Italy's Lake Nemi."
Even earlier accounts include one that in 332 BC, Alexander the Great and a companion went undersea in a diving bell to the depth of 25 meters. Alexander's report? "The world is damned and lost. The large and powerful fish devour the small fry."
What else is new?
Progress was slow but constant for the world of underwater explorers. New equipment was developed, much of it during wartime. (Apparently people always need to find new and novel ways to kill one another, including the first submarine attack in 1776, which failed.) But scuba diving itself is relatively new, and began during World War II. Scuba gear was first successfully tested in 1943, by the US Navy.
Richard Potter, a native of Truth or Consequences, began scuba diving not with the military but with the police. He recalls, "I learned to dive in T or C when I was with law enforcement from 1975-92. When the call went out for divers, I answered it, even though I am not a strong swimmer. I knew that it would be a good thing to learn how to do."
With the encouragement of several other officers who told Potter that they would teach him how to dive, and that he would be someone who could help them a lot when the time came, Potter jumped in. He says, "I went on 83 missions from 1975-92 in T or C, but I didn't go on all of the calls."
Potter has done more than 2,500 dives in open water since that time. "Lakes, rivers, the Caribbean, the California coast," he ticks off. "The best dives have been in the Grand Caymans."
Potter's dive-shop partner, Siri Rustebakke, caught the scuba bug from him. Born in St. Paul, Minn., she came to Las Cruces at age 17 to go to NMSU. While still in college, in 1993, she got diving lessons from "Punk" Potter, who had already been an instructor for a long time.
"In my first round of college, I was studying wildlife science, and diving added another facet to that," Rustebakke recalls. "It was fun and exciting and I got to meet a lot of cool people."
Soon she was hooked, diverting her from a planned career as a paralegal. In 1999, Rustebakke and Potter started Dive Quest Scuba. "We started without an SBA loan, using cash and credit cards," she says proudly.
She notes that NMSU also has a diving class, and that Dive Quest's classes cover everything from Discover Scuba to Open Water Diver. "That will lead you to getting a certificate that will allow you to dive anywhere in the world." In all, there are six different levels of certification in diving.
"Whoever wants the opportunity gets the opportunity," Rustebakke goes on. "We had a Discover Scuba Space Camp this summer at NMSU; 55 kids in two weeks came to it, which offered them the chance to feel weightlessness and learn some space station 'skills.' Afterward four of them came into the store to ask about scuba diving."
But there is still that big question: Where does one go to dive in New Mexico? Elephant Butte, near Truth or Consequences, is an obvious choice, but even though Potter is a native of that town, he says the water in the reservoir tends to be too murky for sport divers.
Locally, divers must travel a ways to stay active in their sport. Blue Hole, an 80-foot-deep natural bell-shaped pool near Santa Rosa in northeast New Mexico, is one popular place for divers. But Potter and his crew tend to head to Texas, to Balmorhea State Park, just off I-10, about 2.5 hours east of El Paso.
"It's just as far to go to Santa Rosa, and we like Balmorhea better," he explains.
The divers practice and train at the park's San Solomon Springs, which is fed by a number of springs. The springs enjoys remarkably clear water, sometimes offering views up to 80 feet. It is as deep as 25 feet and maintains a year-round temperature of 72-76 degrees.
When they can, however, Potter and Rustebakke and friends like to head even farther away — to San Carlos on the Sea of Cortez. "It's an easy 600-mile drive, only 11 hours," Potter says with a shrug. "We just made our 79th trip there, and this fall, 14 of us are going there for our fourth trip this year."
The rewards for the drive are many and varied, he adds: "There are 240 species of fish at San Carlos, and we have seen moray eels, octopus, baby barracuda, whales, dolphins, lobsters and sea turtles. Last time we saw two seahorses. There are 240 types of flora and fauna not found anywhere else."
Potter and Rustebakke note that most of the people who take scuba lessons are not thrill seekers, but all are seeking adventure. They mention that on a recent trip to San Carlos, one of the participants was a lady of 78. "We've also recently worked with a group of Mennonites and helped them satisfy their curiosity," he adds.
"It's not rocket science," Potter says. "A lot of information can come from books and instructions that help to teach you how to dive safely."
Potter introduces Dennis Talley, who is also an instructor. Talley says that he "stumbled into" diving 20 years ago, but didn't get serious about it until five years ago. A former helicopter pilot, Talley loves the social aspect of the sport and says that everyone who dives needs to count on having a lot of fun.
"It can be life-changing for a person or for a family," he says.
Talley has also done some wreck diving, which requires specialized training. "I've been through shipwrecks off of California, and also near La Paz (Mexico). We once did a 'full penetration' of a German U-boat off the coast of North Carolina."
Talley turns from light hearted to serious when he says of wreck diving, "It is a reminder of our mortality. It can be a real eerie feeling — very intense emotionally to do it. You find things that the people on the ships might have been using just before the ship sank. It feels like you are sharing their space."
The conversation swings back to Potter and Rustebakke's shop. A tidy and organized place, it is filled with all things scuba. A number of underwater photos are also posted: Dive Quest is sponsoring an underwater photo contest, with an appropriate prize being dinner for two at Landry's seafood restaurant in El Paso.
Talley, smiling again, notes, "We sell fun."
But there are of course hazards involved with scuba diving. One of the most common is decompression sickness, sometimes called "the bends." Recreational diving shouldn't require a "decompression stop," but it's nonetheless something divers need to be aware of; this safety stop for deeper dives involves a three-minute pause when you've risen to 15 to 20 feet from the surface.
As one scuba manual explains, decompression sickness (DCS) "is best known as an injury that affects underwater divers who breathe gas which is at a higher pressure than surface pressure. The pressure of the surrounding water increases as the diver descends and reduces as the diver ascends. The risk of DCS increases by diving long or deep without slowly ascending and making the decompression stops needed to eliminate the inert gases normally, although the specific risk factors are not well understood. Some divers seem more susceptible than others under identical conditions."
"Nitrogen bubbles tend to gather in tendon endings. They follow the path of least resistance. Skin bends can look like a rash or bruising," says Potter with a mild grimace.
The pain caused by DCS can range from mild to excruciating, and is only "cured" by recompression.
Then there are more offbeat side effects to diving, such as exposure to sea-lion poop. With a laugh, Talley admits, "We're 'turd herders.'"
Oh?
Potter explains, "We go to the El Paso Zoo and clean out the sea-lion exhibit."
Seems that the zoo is home to four California sea lions, and, well, someone has to do it, so the divers have made the clean-up a regular activity. People love to watch them at work, even this kind of work, and when they talk to onlookers, they become "instant friends," Talley reports.
That seems to go with the (underwater) territory — making friends wherever you dive.
Talley nods and says, "When you share bubbles, you're friends."
Dive Quest Scuba is located at 1021 E. Amador, Suite B, in Las Cruces. For more information and a class schedule, check the Dive Quest Web site at www.zianet.com/divequestnm/usguys.html or call 525-DIVE (3483).
Senior writer Jeff Berg is a landlubber based in Las Cruces.