TeeJF
Well-known member
- Joined
- Feb 25, 2011
- Messages
- 2,883
- Reaction score
- 3,095
Well... simply being there on this particular wreck wasn't a consideration feelings wise because it was a deliberate sinking for tourism and it has so little history. But being inside for example the Imperial Japanese Navy Ship Akitsushima is very different. I remember swimming along a corridor in Akitsu and noticing that the deck of the corridor was ruptured upwards. That of course made me think. Given that the wreck lies on her starboard side the "floor" was actually now the wall and the significance of the rupture wasn't immediately obvious. Then the penny dropped - I was looking at the result of an explosion beneath the deck and the blast had ripped the steel plate upwards like paper. Clearly the bomb had penetrated the hull from the side, run in under this part of the corridor and exploded there because there was no entry hole close by - I spotted that, and many others whilst swimming along the port side of the hull later. My thoughts turned to the hell that must have erupted in that corridor and the effect it would have had on anyone there. Then I began to consider the fact that I was literally swimming through history and I found that I could visualise incredibly clearly what had happened.
Sometimes though the loss of life in a wreck can make one feel quite edgy or sad - in Truk Lagoon the local Micronesian dive guides have gathered up sailor's bones and put them on to an operating table and here my feelings verged on revulsion that they could stoop so low as to create a tourist "attraction" from dead sailor's bones.
I also remember much the same sorts of situational visualisation running through my head whilst swimming inside one of the Scapa Flow's German WW1 scuttled warship wrecks - I could almost see the waters surging up the corridors as the mighty ship slipped slowly beneath the water.
That's the kinds of thoughts I experience on wrecks with any history.
As to the orientation thing... that gets a bit weird sometimes. You have to think out of the box a bit to navigate your way through a wreck and using ladders or catwalks to pull oneself down, up, sideways even, is very common so after a short while it just becomes second nature and not anything unusual.
The right orientation...
...and the wrong orientation!
It makes it fun basically but it can also get incredibly confusing too!
And being weightless is simply sublime. It's not something you take for granted when using a rebreather because you ignore it at your peril then but when diving on scuba the whole buoyancy thing can be fun. I love dropping like a stone and then "putting the breaks on" with my buoyancy compensation device whilst trying not to impact with the seabed. Then other times you can simply hover over something completely motionless - then the clearer the water the better because you get a definite impression of flying. We swam along the flight deck of the USS Saratoga (BELOW) and experienced "take off" as we swam off the end, only to find sharks directly below us... woop woop!
Absolutely accurate buoyancy control was a major consideration inside the Irako because any contact with the deck resulted in an instant "Brown out" - basically all light dissapeared ina second or two to be replaced with what I can only imagine would be the sensation of swimming in Oxtail soup. Very dangerous and very unpleasant. Buoyancy though is a major part of what you learn as a diver - becoming positively buoyant is one of the quickest ways to end your diving career and probably your life - so we all pay close attention to being absolutely neutral at all times apart from during descent where we aim to be just slightly negative until we are close to target depth.
