Hello again to everyone! I know that each and everyone of you have been keeping up with everyone’s journal entries while we have been down here, so you know a little about what we are doing. Chuck has already told you about getting ready for dives and getting out to the dive sites. I was going to talk about the actual diving, but had an “encounter” that I am going to write about first. Don’t worry; I will get to the joys of diving in next week’s journal entry.
I am going to have to tell you the whole story, so I hope everyone has a snack and beverage handy, because this might take a while.
Chuck asked me where I would like to dive Monday morning at our daily meeting and we decided on Hermit Island. Hermit has a nice wall that has many of the sponges I work with on it. We chose Laggard Island as a back-up in case it was not looking good at Hermit.
Chuck and I were the divers and we had Hla Win (see Chuck’s journal entry on Hla) and Tim Kramer (one of the station personnel) as dive tenders. We left station at about 9:15 in the morning. It was slow getting away from station because a lot of brash ice had moved in over the night and was in Hero Inlet and Arthur Harbor (two bodies of water directly adjacent to station). Once we got through the ice, we made our way out to Hermit Island.
There are two ways to get to Hermit from station. We call them the “inside route” and the “outside route.” The “inside route” is longer but more protected from the swells because it cuts inside several islands to get out to Hermit. The “outside route” is shorter but can be rough because it goes outside of the islands and there is no protection from the swells. On a day like it was, we decided to go the “inside route.”
We then got to Hermit and found our dive site… but also found occasional swells that were taller than I was standing in the boat. So, Hermit was not going to be our dive site. We then moved over to Laggard Island, which is just to the southeast of Hermit and about as far from station as we are allowed to go within the 2 mile boating limit.
Laggard appeared relatively calm and we even saw a couple of penguins in the water. This dive site has been known to be one that animals are often seen on. We have seen humpback whales, fur seals, and several types of penguins here.
Chuck and I then got suited up and told Tim where we would like to be dropped off in the water. Tim was going to keep the boat above our bubbles that we make as we exhale air on our dive.
Chuck and I dropped into the water and signaled that we were okay and then started our descent. Chuck and I were now only able to communicate by hand signals to each other, because we can’t talk to each other underwater.
This dive was going to concentrate on getting some of the deeper water (as far as we can go) sponges. We dropped down to 130 feet and signaled we were okay again and started looking for sponges and other organisms that we might find interesting chemical defenses in.
Well, I had not even pulled out my dive knife when I noticed Chuck’s light shining in my face. I looked over at him and saw him looking at me and a leopard seal over his shoulder looking at him. He gave me the signal that there was a leopard seal and we started our ascent. Our standard procedure when we encounter leopard seals is to not dive at that particular site if we see the seal before the dive, or to get out of the water as quick as possible if the seal is seen on a dive. The problem is that when the seal shows up at 130 feet below the surface, we can’t get out of the water immediately and be safe about it. We need to make a controlled slow ascent. This seal showed up 3 minutes into our dive at 130 feet!
Chuck and I both put away our dive lights since they were not going to be much help (I did not want to test the leopard seal response to a bright light in the face). I looked to my left and the seal was now over there. It then went up for air and Chuck and I made our way up. Since leopard seals are mammals, they still need to breathe air and we can usually wait for them to go up for air and ascend until they come back down and then we stay in one place until they go up for air again.
The seal then came back down to us and we were now at a depth of about 100 feet. The seal was now getting even closer to us and Chuck and I were staying close together as well trying to make ourselves appear like one object, one big object. Chuck is over 6 feet tall and I am just under 6 feet tall and combined we weigh less than 400 pounds. This seal was at least 8 feet long and probably weighed about 600 pounds, so we still felt quite insignificant compared to this creature.
The seal then left us and we rose up to 70 feet or so before the seal came back down. This time, he (I am not sure if it was male or female, but I will refer to it as a male for the sake of this entry) came even closer to both of us. He was now just a few feet away from me and looking at me very closely. He would do some acrobatic moves and then swim off and then come back over and swim right above us.
The seal then left and Chuck and I got up to about 40 feet of depth before a seal showed back up. He then began a behavior that I have never seen on any of my dives with leopard seals. He began “lunging” at Chuck and me. I had no protection from this animal but had my diving console in my left hand and when he got a little close I would back my body away and hold the console up. He would lunge at me and I would move my head back as quick as possible and pull the console back…and he would swim over me. My mask then started to flood because somewhere in my motions in the algae I was constantly in, I had broken the seal to it and water was leaking in. I did not like this and did the necessary measures to clear the mask before doing anything else. When I looked up again, the seal was right in front of me and too close for comfort. I decided to move back down, and the seal followed. It backed us down about 5 feet until we got to a ledge on the rocks that we could hide behind.
Chuck then grabbed me on the arm and held up two fingers. When I have been diving with Chuck, we use numbers of fingers to tell the length of time we want to stay at a depth or the number of analog clicks left on our dive computer consoles (representing tissue-nitrogen load). This time, as I found out after the dive, it meant that we were now in the presence of two leopard seals.
I did not understand him and continued to think that this one leopard seal. Regardless, the presence of two seals puts a wrench in our plans to move up when they are getting air. But now I know why it seemed to be gone for such a short interval every time. This is because they were essentially taking turns going to get air, presumably to make sure we never got “lonely.”
Now, I will let you know that the two tenders in the boat had also seen the seals and were performing the recall signals we ask them to do on such occasions. Hla had a tank in the water and was tapping on it with a hammer while Tim was revving the engine as well. I felt bad for them because they had no idea what was happening under water and we had no way of signaling them. All they could see were leopard seals coming up to surface right where our bubbles were.
Now, back into the water! Chuck and I were at about 45 feet and were with two leopard seals. We got a break in the action and were able to get up to about 25 feet. I was hanging onto the seaweed trying to make sure that I did not drift away from the rocks at all.
I am not sure if it happened here or a little before, but Chuck said that one of the seals then opened its mouth over my head. Not in an, “I’m going to bite down” way, but in a way that he was able to show his toothy grin a little more. It might have been the same one, but one of them blew a ring of bubbles above my head as well (according to Chuck, since I was not looking at that time).
I then looked over at Chuck and he had to dodge one of the seal lunges that seemed to come particularly close to his head. This is when I was ready to go up. We had now been at our position at 25 feet for about 6 minutes and were more than okay to go to the surface straight away (which, as always, was true the whole dive but if we’d had the option we would not have made a safety stop).
Chuck looked at me and I gave him the “thumbs up” signal which means I want to go up and he looked around and saw that we were still with the seals. We had plenty of air to stay down for probably another 20 minutes at least, but neither of us was really in the mood to stay under any longer.
When we left the safety of the rocks, we knew we might be in trouble. This was the time where we would be the most vulnerable. When we swim away from the rocks, the seals can attack us from any direction. Up we went, and as soon as we came away from the rocks…the seals backed away and seemed to have lost interest.
We made it up to the surface, and signaled the tenders to get the boat over to us as quickly as they possibly could. When they got to us, I was already halfway out of my BC. I then pulled the emergency release on my weights, hooked them off to the clips hanging from the boat, and did the same with my BC. I then told Tim to get out of my way because I was coming in. I kicked and kicked and then next thing I know, I was on the floor of the boat having completely launched myself over the side of it. Chuck then rolled in next to me.
Overall, it was a 31 minute dive with leopard seals present for 28 of those minutes. Chuck also told me that a third leopard seal had shown up in the last few minutes.
So, we had three leopard seals on this one dive when all the literature I have seen has said that these are solitary animals. Yeah…sure!
But, we made it through the dive just fine and know it is part of diving in Antarctica. I don’t want it to happen again, but if it does, I think I am ready for it.
Next week, I will tell you about some of our more “regular” dives down here where we make collections.