Danger from Fifty Feet Below

By Dini Duclos

After living more than twenty years in the dreary Pacific Northwest climate, my friend Carol and I headed to the Caymans. This trip proved to be different than any other, as it marked the start of a new phase of my life underwater. With pristine water, beautiful fish, and intricate coral at my fingertips, I officially caught the scuba diving bug. As I reveled in the glorious undersea world and one dive turned into several hundred, I had no idea that my relatively calm life would soon be tossed upside down while on a trip to Kona, Hawaii.

The excursion began so innocently. I spotted an unusual rock during a dive in Kona, stuck it in my pocket, and forgot about it until we returned home. Suddenly, strange events began to occur as I handled my special rock and shared it with others. Perplexed, I began researching the rocknot knowing that very soon, Carol and I would be running for our lives, pursued by higher-ups at a large pharmaceutical company who wanted what we had and were willing to do everything in their power to acquire it.

This fast-paced, deep-sea adventure shares the story of an intriguing find from Hawaiian waters and how it changed my life forever.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Dec 18, 2013
• ISBN: 9781480804050

Dini Duclos

Dini Duclos is a master scuba diver, the highest non-professional PADI skill level. Her writing is inspired by her years of diving and experiencing the secret beauty of the underwater world. She dives in Hawaii often and has fallen in love with Kona on the Big Island. Now retired, Dini lives in Federal Way, Washington, where she serves on the city council.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

F OR SOME REASON, I FLASHED back to growing up in a rural town outside of Boston. We lived a short distance from Providence, Rhode Island. My brother and I are second-generation Italians; tech nically, since my father was an infant when he arrived, my brother and I are really first-generation Italians.

My grandparents emigrated from the mountain areas of Italy and settled in an Irish/Italian neighborhood of first-generation immigrants. Generally, the families owned large tracks of land, about ten acres or more, and the grandparents lived in separate houses or with their children and grandchildren. We were lucky that my grandfather converted his barn into a home for us. When people asked if I was raised in a barn, I could say yes and smile.

The names that some parents give children have always puzzled me. I can see naming a son after the father, or even a daughter after a significant woman, but not in our family. My brother got lucky and got the English version of our grandfather’s Italian name. Most likely, this happened because he was the first-born male—and my grandfather gave my parents some money to do it. I, however, was not so lucky and was named after my father. My shingle was difficult to carry, so it was shortened to Gini. As soon as I could, I legally changed it.

I think my interest in diving started when I was in elementary school; there was a television show called Sea Hunt. Jeff Bridges starred as Mike Nelson, the hero of the show. The show totally revolved around diving. I became fascinated with it and never missed an episode until it went off the air. After that, I got involved with school, college, and work. My career moved me to Connecticut, and years later, to the Chicago area. In Chicago, my interest in scuba perked up again, although it would be several years before I would actually become certified to dive.

One day, a colleague and I were commiserating about the miserable weather. We had just suffered another major snowstorm, which meant the snow in my yard was as high as the first story of my house. Driving to and from work took more time than actually being at work.

On top of the lousy weather, I was in the process of a divorce and property settlement. As I was whining about the weather, Carol said she was reading a magazine about Grand Cayman Island in the Caribbean. I read more of the magazine and became more interested. We talked about it for a couple of weeks, and we decided it would be nice to go together on a vacation there. That started a great friendship that has lasted for years.

Grand Cayman Island is a part of the British Commonwealth and operates on the pound sterling. It is the largest of three islands; the other two are Little Cayman and Cayman Brac. When Carol and I went, only Grand Cayman was really developed. The island is about twenty-two miles long, and its widest point is eight miles long, making it easy to see the entire island several times in a week’s stay. The highest point on the island is sixty feet on the North Side’s Mastic Trail. Bodden Town was founded in the 1700s and was the original capital. The other districts are East End, George Town, North Side, and West Bay.

We booked a flight to Miami and transferred to Cayman Airways with its beautiful Sir Turtle emblem. When we arrived on the island, we were overwhelmed by the beautiful plant life, especially the wild orchards, palm trees of all descriptions, and huge Mahogany trees. There is also a local version of a banana called a plantain, which Carol always referred to as the little rotten bananas. They were darker than the yellow ones Americans are used to. I preferred the American banana, but the mangos became a staple of mine.

As we were eating mangoes after a busy day of snorkeling, a large iguana came right onto our condo’s ground-level porch. He and I formed a sort of a pact; I would eat the fruit, and he would eat the peels. It worked out great for both of us.

After settling in and getting used to driving on the left side of the road, we took snorkeling trips all around the island. I drove very well. I kept repeating, Drive on the side where your left arm is; no tickets that way. Speeding was another issue.

I loved the Bobbies, the island’s version of the police. They were very nice and helpful to visitors since the island’s economy depended on divers and tourism. Their uniforms were short-sleeved blue shirts, Bermuda-length shorts, white mid-calf stockings, and tams.

I often walked behind them and mimicked their swagger; I generally wore white socks and felt I could do it. Naturally, my antics embarrassed the heck out of Carol. She was positive I was going to get myself arrested. However, despite my antics, the Bobbies were always helpful and polite. This was the case unless you were caught with any kind of illegal drugs. This was a hotspot for Cayman police; from what we heard, you did not want to be arrested and imprisoned for drug possession. When they said no tolerance, they really meant it. Since we didn’t use any of those kinds of drugs, we weren’t bothered one bit.

Snorkeling could be done from any beach since they were not allowed to be privately owned. The first time I had encountered a giant turtle, I was fascinated. It was beautiful and—when in the water—as graceful as a ballet dancer. On the shore, it was a little different; it seemed like a gangly teenager trying to get it all coordinated.

Grand Cayman also had a turtle farm, which I just had to visit after seeing the gentle giant in the water. The farm was established in 1968 as Mariculture by a group of investors from the United States and Cayman. The intention was to supply the market with a source of turtle products so that the wild population of the green sea turtle was not depleted worldwide.

After several years, a group from Germany bought them out and decided to run it as a nonprofit organization. They funneled any proceeds back into sea turtle conservation and turtle protection projects. Unfortunately, the company was not as profitable as expected due to export regulations. The Cayman government purchased the farm in 1983 and changed it to the Cayman Turtle Farm.

The day we spent there was hugely educational. There were turtle of all sizes, which were organized in swimming pens according to their size. As we progressed, we got to see the babies’ development from infancy to adulthood and the senior stage. The smallest were the size you would buy for a home fish aquarium. The seniors weighed up to 420 pounds, and some lived to be over a hundred years old. There was a picture and story of one turtle that weighed in at 871 pounds and was five feet long. That was something I would not care to run into under or on top of the ocean.

From that day forward, I was in love with sea turtles. No matter where I am diving, I never tire of seeing them. On many dives, Carol will watch me doing my imitation of a turtle swimming. I always have outstanding dives when turtles show up on my first dive day, and they have become my good luck charms. I have talked about them—and shown so many pictures of them—that friends and colleagues have adopted sea turtles on my behalf for my birthdays and other occasions.

CHAPTER 2

A FTER TEN YEARS IN THE Chicago area, a crossroads emerged before me. I had worked at a religious-affiliated nonprofit organization during that time and had been promoted to director of foster care. I realized that I had reached as high an executive position as I was going to reach in that area.

As was my usual way of doing things, I didn’t just take things and make them better; I was always expanding into related areas. In that position, I opened up a child guidance clinic and established a strong specialized foster care program to serve the needs of sexually abused children who were starting to abuse younger children. Those of us in the program referred to it as the Little Perp Program. The State Department of Children and Family Services used our program for placing these young children.

At the time, our program and one in Florida were the only two in the country set up specifically for these troubled children. Our goals were to help stop the children from abusing other children and to break the abuse cycle. After starting the program and getting it running, I realized that I wanted to run a nonprofit agency.

I started mailing resumes to foster and adoption agencies across the country. After six months, I received a call from the board president of an agency in Seattle. They were looking for an executive director and wondered if I was still interested. I said yes and set up a time to fly out for an interview. After a weekend there, I was offered the job. I arranged to fly out three more times to meet various people and get up to speed. Meanwhile, I was handing off my duties at my current employment.

Carol and I had become close friends, and the prospect of moving to the West intrigued us both. Carol had grown up in the Chicago area, went to college in southern Illinois and Ohio, and returned to work just outside of Chicago. In most friendships, one shares a few mutual interests. Carol and I shared more in the areas where we differed. We complemented each other well. I would think up broad ideas and concepts, and Carol would flesh out the details. We were a powerful team, especially in the workplace. Beyond that, sharing an interest in dogs and diving cemented our strong bond.

On a lark, Carol accompanied me on one of my get up to speed on issues before I start trips. I had previously taunted her by showing her pictures of the beautiful waterfront and its boats and waterfowl. I said, This is where I am going to live—the Emerald City. Clean air, clean water, fresh seafood, diving, mountains, and the great outdoors only a short drive away. Some days, I pushed her a bit further. There’s no wind turning your bones to ice, no dirty gray snow and ice all spring, and no more summers breathing dirty air and sweating through your suit the minute you walk out the door.

She mostly rolled her eyes and waved her hand at me, probably hoping I would go away.

Yep. It’s a big move, I’d say. But sometimes you have to run your life instead of letting your life run you. At least that’s what I’ve heard. It was a dirty trick, but what are friends for? I could tell I was beginning to wear her down.

I did a little victory dance when she asked to join me on my second trip back because she had gotten a job interview, unbeknownst to me, with a nonprofit agency. Once there, we went about our interviews and meetings by day and explored the area by night. They were so impressed by Carol’s interview that they asked her to stay a few more days to meet with additional people while I headed back to Chicago.

Early in the week, she called to say she had been offered the position and needed to start ASAP. We shipped our belongings, packed the car, made a space for the dog, and left just as a snowstorm was about to hit. Since we had looked at weather conditions in the Seattle area, we gladly gave our snow shovels and snow blower to good friends and said good-bye to the Windy (Snowy) City.

During our first several years in the Seattle area, we used to laugh when people were cold and the roads were a little slippery due to the rain or some sprinkles of snow. To us, it was nothing; forty degrees was a balmy winter compared to Chicago’s minus twenty degrees. To us, it was tropical. After more than twenty years in the Northwest, Carol and I get just as cold as everyone else and complain about the rain and gloomy climate. But neither of us would leave—no matter how much money was offered.

That first year, we headed back to the Caymans. We arrived at the same condo, unpacked, and took a quick beach walk before going off to buy food and other supplies. However, this trip proved to be different. It marked the budding of a new phase of my life underwater.

On one of our last dives before heading back to the Seattle area, we were snorkeling at Eden Rock. It was quite a swim out to the coral reefs from this point, but I had heard it was beautiful and a great dive site. We took our snorkels and a life jacket (due to the distance from shore).

When we arrived at the reef, there were no boats around. We had the area to ourselves—or so we thought. As I was I looking down at the most beautiful coral and reefs I had ever seen, I saw people about sixty feet below. They were just gliding through the undersea life and beautiful landscape—up close and personal. That’s when it hit me that I had to learn to scuba dive.

Upon returning to Seattle, I became absorbed with work and forgot about diving for a while. It kept coming back to me in quieter moments, and I told Carol I wanted to get certified as a scuba diver. I wanted to see what those people were seeing at the Eden Rock site. Carol had been certified as a diver a while ago, and so she decided to join me in the training and testing.

Thus, off we went to become certified scuba divers. All went well with the coursework and written examination. Our instructor was a retired Marine; little did we know that pool training didn’t really have to be a form of boot camp. We only learned that later when comparing notes with other divers about their trainings.

When the time came to don wetsuits and go into the Puget Sound in the middle of March, things changed. First and foremost, the lobster-claw gloves we had to wear while under water and doing our required task of fixing leaking masks and mouthpieces in the dark cold water was next to impossible. After the first dive, I was nearly frozen to death. I said, No more for me.

Carol complained for the next two days that her face was numb from the exposure to the frigid water. This wasn’t like the warm, bright Caribbean waters. After hearing our laments, the instructor gave a referral to complete the open water components of our dive certification with a certified instructor in the Caymans.

A few months later, with our paperwork in hand, we headed to Grand Cayman, finished our open water tests, and became fully certified divers. However, earning your beginning dive certification and having a few dives under your belt doesn’t mean you really know what you are doing. New divers, in particular, shouldn’t go off alone.

Snorkeling had taught me a lot about doodling around in shallow water and ocean sea life. Our beginning training in scuba diving added a great deal to that. There was still a tremendous amount of information to learn and remember, and we had many skills to master.

At the time, dive computers were not commonplace, and we had to use the navy dive tables to determine how long we could stay underwater and at what depth. Just what you want to do when attempting something as fun as diving—math! While diving, you usually are not going to stay at the same level all the time, and five feet in depth can change without your knowing it.

Most of us started the dive at the farthest depth and started coming up to shallower water as the dive progressed. For newbies, it was almost hard to enjoy the dive since we were thinking about how much air we had in our tanks, how long we had been underwater, and how deep we had been.

If we went on boats, a dive master would lead the dive and give us detailed descriptions of what to look for, what not to do, and how much air we needed in our tanks to come back to the boat. We always followed their advice, but others didn’t. On one dive with new people on the boat, we all were cautioned about the reefs and corals.

In the Cayman waters, there are Barrel Sponges. The barrel-shaped living creatures are open in the middle like huge pots. These beautiful corals come in many hues of reds, greens, and browns. Some are so large that it is estimated it took them hundreds of years to grow. We were all given instructions to look and take pictures—but not to touch or try to get inside one.

About fifty feet into the dive, there was a huge barrel-shaped coral. Some of us stopped to look and pose in front of it for pictures or just to see how tall it was in comparison to us. Then we headed off with our dive master to see other corals, reefs, and a variety of fish from sergeant majors (Carol and I always stopped and saluted these little fish with white and black stripes) to groupers and butterfly fish.

As a new diver, I had not really learned how to maintain my equilibrium or how to swim smoothly without using my arms. We had hired a photographer to film our dives for posterity.

Later on the dive, there was a shipwreck at about fifty feet. Carol and I got on the deck by the bow and did a little