Eric Ramirez had been looking forward to the dive. He’d enjoyed all the training dives in Maine and the shallow dives in Cayman they had gotten in to check out the gear before entering the habitat. As he dropped down the ladder and out from under the weight stack he saw the wall for the first time. Even from 30 feet away the sponges and corals were quite clear. He turned around. White was right behind him and gave him an OK. Ramirez responded with an OK of his own and glanced up at the hab. It looked much bigger outside than it felt inside. Above the hab was the umbilical that led up to the surface barge. The barge was clear against the surface. The visibility here was over 200 feet. Ramirez watched as the small positioning thrusters on the barge kept it exactly in place.
White tapped him on the leg and indicated he needed to swim to the group which was now at the wall. Ramirez gave a few good fin kicks and drifted off from the hab towards the wall. With each kick the wall got closer and the detail got better. He pulled his dive light out from a pocket and shone it at the corals. The powerful LED light put back the reds that even at this depth were now missing from the sunlight . The barrel sponges were quite red where the light lit them up. Quite different from their dull brown color when the light wasn’t on them. His light caught the eyes of a caribbean lobster hiding under an elephant-ear coral. The lobster backed up a bit more leaving only the tips of its antennae visible. Ramirez smiled to himself. This was what diving was all about. The smile creased his face and let some water into his mask. He put two fingers on the top of the mask, lifted his head slightly and blew out through his nose. Once the mask was clear of water he continued towards the wall.
When he was a few feet from the wall he turned right to follow the group which was now about 20 feet in front of him. It was wonderful here. So much to look at. Such a pity they didn’t have time to explore more. “I must come back here on vacation and do some more diving,” he thought. As he finned to catch up with the group he drifted out a little way from the wall. He wanted to be sure his fins didn’t kick any of the coral formations. They took so long to grow and were quite delicate.
In the control room on the Pheia, Ford, Carver and Martin were watching the bio displays. Nobody had expected the bio pills to work far outside the hab because of signal attenuation by the water but someone had thought to add an antenna that could be lowered below the moon pool before the dive, just to see if they could track the divers. And as they looked at the displays, it was evident that it could track them at quite some distance from the Pheia.
Carver noticed that some of the heart rates were a bit elevated. Nothing to be concerned about and probably due more to excitement than anything.
“Hmm, those heart rates are a bit high for the level of effort. Looks like Ramirez and Young are either a bit excited or just plain old nervous.” Dr Ford looked at Carver. “Ramirez had a good time during training at home. I thought he was a bit overly paranoid about checking his equipment but he did well on all the dives. Mind you that was at 40 ft.
Eric Ramirez looked at his dive computer again. It was showing 85 ft. He’d done a couple of wall dives earlier in the week with their support team to 100 ft and enjoyed it a lot. But that was in a swimsuit with a normal scuba tank full of air. Now he was in a full dive suit with a complicated gas mix system and a load of chemicals in his blood. He didn’t trust Dr Ford or her research. She didn’t dive. She just injected other people and watched how they did in the chamber. Ramirez noticed he was at the back of the group again with Matt. Matt gave him an OK signal and Ramirez responded with one of his own. He finned a bit harder to catch up with the rest of the group. He’d mostly been looking at the corals which grow out from the wall. There were few fish down here and he was very surprised when the group ahead all pointed at the wall. Someone was banging his tank with a dive knife and had his other hand on his head in the shark sign. Ramirez looked at the wall and sure enough a 6 ft reef shark was swimming along right next the wall. It had already passed the front group and was making its way towards Ramirez and White. Ramirez started to breathe faster. The shark was as big as he was and slightly below him on the wall. He waved his arms to rotate himself away from the wall and kicked hard. Over the comm system he heard White. “Hey, where are you going? Keep still. It’s going to swim right by.” Ramirez didn’t respond and kicked harder to get more distance from the shark which had slowed down right between Ramirez and the wall. Ramirez reached for his BC inflator. “This isn’t right. I don’t like it.” He pushed down hard on the inflator button and immediately started to rise. He had risen about 3 ft when he felt something grip his ankle. “Dump some air.” It was White’s voice. He had grabbed him. Ramirez pushed harder on the inflator button and the pair rose together. White pulled himself up Ramirez’s leg and grabbed the back of his BC. He reached around and yanked on the dump cord and a huge cloud of bubbles poured from the top of the BC halting their ascent. “Calm down. You’re fine.” White said but Ramirez was still holding the inflator button down. “Let go of the inflator.”. White grabbed Ramirez’s hand and pulled it down until Eric let go of the BC’s inflator valve.
In the Pheia, the crew had been listening to the conversation. Carver pushed the talk button on the desk mic. “Eric, you need to calm down. Mr. White, can you bring him back please?”
“Roger,” White responded and started to turn Ramirez back towards the Pheia. As they turned around Ramirez saw the last flick of the shark’s tail as it disappeared around a distant coral head. “It’s gone now,” White said but Ramirez didn’t respond.
“What’s going on?” It was Mike Duncan’s voice.
“Ramirez got a little spooked by your shark. I’m taking him back to the hab.” White gave Duncan an OK and finned a bit harder pulling Ramirez with him.
Ford looked at the Bio display. “His heart rate’s through the roof.”
“I guess he doesn’t like sharks.” Martin said. He’d come into the ops room a few minutes after Ramirez had seen the shark. “Odd for a biologist. You’d think he’d know better. He’s not really lunch sized for a reef shark.”
Carver looked at Martin. “You might cut the kid a little slack. An interest in biology is no match for thousands of years of evolution. Lots of people are afraid of sharks.”
“I’m not.” Martin replied and looked out of the portal to see if the divers were close yet.
White pulled Ramirez under the Pheia’s moon pool. As he broached the water surface he saw Perez reach down and grab the back of Ramirez’s BC and haul him up onto the landing. “Welcome back. Good dive?” Perez had not been listening to the comm so he had no idea what was going on.
Ramirez yanked off his mask. His face looked white — even accounting for the cold water he was very white. “You OK?” Perez asked.
“I don’t like sharks.” Ramirez responded.
Behind him floating in the water, White pointed a finger at his head and made circular movements. He mouthed ‘Nuts” to Perez who grinned.
White looked down into the water then back up at Perez. “Everyone else is back. Let’s get out of the way.”
Perez and White helped Ramirez out of his gear and gave him a towel. “Here. Dry off and we’ll get you out of here.” Ramirez looked hard at Perez. “I’m not going back down there. I want to go home now”.
Dr Carver sat with Ramirez in the bunk room. It was about as private a place as was possible on the Pheia. “You’re sure you want to go back to the surface?” He asked Ramirez.
“Yes. I wanted to do this dive but now I just want to go home. They don’t really need me anyway. Dr. Moss doesn’t like my work and Duncan thinks I’m an idiot.”