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Brighton Green - The Search

The club found me a buddy. they found him a buddy too; me.

He is J. He was looking out at Newhaven harbour when I pulled up. With barely an "are you?" and an "I'm waiting for..." we set about preparing for the dive.

All my dive buddy needed was a tank of air. I needed everything. This time round the rack lottery found me an XL red suit with oversized gloves but nice booties. I'd be shipping about a bucket of water later on.

The morning rainstorm had tired itself out. On the pontoon in the Marina we were drizzled on then left alone. Time to go under. The roomful of air carried under my suit kept me bouncy; luckily J had brought a spare weight, which I retrieved with full frog-man ungainliness.

I led the way down with a slight rightwards cant - the weight block in my BCD pocket was to blame. Our dive plan was "up the wall, down the hole, back along the same wall, then along the pontoon and hunt for B's mask".

The plan worked. We saw silt, flecks and phlegmy specks and floating fronds of fairy tendrils. My face felt this, too. Down the hole J took a few pics - "girlfriend's camera, but it's my case" - and I snapped him standing in the concrete shaft ("Look Ma, I made it!").

The car-key hung on to a clip at my left armpit; I could feel it even through the 7mm gloves. The infra-red transmitter key was back in the car, spared a watery end of fizzing salt and corrosion.

ANyway - the mask remains unfound. Down where we think it sank there are slats of wood, sheets of plastic and unknowable flapping things - building materials, I reckon. I poked through the melting icecream of the silt, opening grey volcanoes under the yellow top. Little things darted. A blenny wriggled under a stone block.

While looking under the submerged scaffolding I clocked my mask against a pole. It stayed on and I wasn't hurt, but for all the underwater care I was showing it could have been a rusticle and my face could have been rent. Bad boy.

J pointed at the underside of the crossed steel poles; dangling in the shadows were tubes like old condoms glued to the rust. They hung; they protruded; they sorta swayed. OK there was undulation, too. Later J said they were sea squirts - oddly apt for their prophylactic appearance - but on the spot he showed me the poke maneuver. Poke the squirt and it pulls itself shut. Just like the tube-worms on the telly.

I can hear David Attenborough murmuring names and phrases; but back then, down there it was a perfectly normal exchange between crass visitor and annoyed aquatic thingy. I did it once and that was enough. Action - reaction. Yes of course it would protect itself.

This tendency of ours to poke about is very strong, and at the same time annoying. Later the marina wall showed itself hung thickly with these squirts. You could back up to it and imagine a bed of bubble-wrap, or a grisly wall-paper made of animated foreskins.

Twenty six minutes after the first thumbs-down and OK signs we were up in the air. Ten minutes after that we were undressing like burglars in a concrete car-park, away from the prying balconies and windows of Brighton Marina luxury apartments.

Dry clothes, boot packed, back to Newhaven. Log books filled in during email and mobile exchanges, and muffins and tea at the greasy spoon ("Sorry, we just stopped cooking"). They had to board us in before we took the hint to leave.

"Thanks for the dive".
"Anytime you want to go, let me know"
"There are crabs and lobsters down by the Arm"

Cool.

PS two lads on bikes (normally despised as baseball-cap scrotes) stopped and asked us, like boys do: "Do you find any diamonds down there?". "I bet you find loads of rings and that!" "Down under Brighton pier there's supposed to be loads of stuff".

I try for the "who needs treasure when diving is the true gem" angle, but you can see it doesn't quite penetrate. I also try to get them going to the pool for a ten-quid "see if you like it" session. I'm a pimp in rubber flapping my fins, waiting for two teenage boys to get on with their day so I can jump into the oil-slick-capped green murk. "Besides," I finish off, "you'll never find anything as small as a ring in all that silt".


We're both newish divers. We both came to it late.

J said, later, "Give me a puddle and I'll be happy".

Brighton Green

In an effort to prove myself as a diver, and to catch up with lost dives, I went to Brighton in February. B and I rented the bits and pieces; he was missing only a weight belt, whereas I needed everything. Before we left the dive shop a tall man pointed out I needed fins. I picked up a pair and off we went.

On the pontoon, in the marina, we stripped down and kitted up. Neoprene clung to goosed-up skin and soon we were stiff, rubbery mannequins.

During our buddy check I noticed two family groups watching us. We tasted our air, looked at pressure gauges and showed releases. Ready. Fins on. Ready. The families were silent, but distracting.

I dived in first with a giant stride. As biting as the air had been before the dry wetsuit went on, the water was a first in sudden cold. The words "It's fucking cold" followed my "diver OK" arm gesture. B laughed and jumped in. He agreed; it was cold. If my face had a thermometer reading it would have said six degrees celsius. That's one degree higher than the inside of fridge.

Of course once we dropped under everything was OK. Silt walls blocked us. we got lost, but in the marina's enclosure getting lost means you hit a wall a few fin-strokes earlier than planned. It's a playground for kiddy divers, divers with water wings.

We dropped down a six-metre concrete shaft sunk into the dusty icecream goo of the marina floor. ears OK. mask flooding slightly. no problem.

In the end I grabbed B's hand. through 14 mm of neoprene i felt his grip. He was dragging behind/I was surging ahead, and that's no way for a buddy team to operate. this is one lesson I must learn and practice: buddy awareness. It's too easy to nose out and kick off, and when three metres is the boundary of vision a couple of fin-kicks could lose you your buddy.

It happened; we got separated, but I waited and B morphed out of the wall of yellow suspended particles.

The other part of the buddy system is choosing your buddy. but sometimes your buddy chooses you, and only a fool would spurn the chance of buddying up with an earnest, honest, reliable diver.

After thirty minutes we swam into a shaded pocket of water. Only three metres down by the needle on the SPG; but the lack of sunlight had created a paralysing slow spot. We had to get out. I rapped on B's tank, made the shivery "I'm cold" arm-rub and he OK'd me. Luckily we were near the pontoon ladder.

Up top the air bit into all exposed parts, which were now wet with icy Channel water. In my mind's body map my legs ended in too warm, numb stumps themselves planted into blocks of wood. Those blocks, not part of me, unfeeling, were my frozen feet. It was an hour later that the tingles started and my feet came back.

Oh, and while peeling away his neoprene suit, B knocked his mask off into the water. He was standing on the edge of the pontoon. I heard and saw nothing, but B was spinning around and when he stopped said "My mask. it's fallen in. I think i'll go and get it." i was out of neoprene; my feet were dead and my muscles flagging under the assault of the cold. We were out of our jackets, both tired and freezing. Now B was going to jump in with no buoyancy control, no air, and no buddy.

I said "No" in a frozen mutter. I was too cold. I didn't want him going in alone with no kit and a useless lump of meat for a buddy.

We told the dive club to look out for a mask in the silt under the pontoon. Nobody ever found it, or if they did we weren't told.

That was our first dive of 2004. The next one was in a heated swimming pool.