covediver
Contributor
While checking the local used book shop I cameacross Lance Rennka’s memoir of learning to dive as a teenager at the advent of California sport diving. Back in ’02…When There Were Wooden Tanks and Steel Men, Tales from the Dark Ages of Scuba Diving(1996, Anacapa Press, ISBN 0-9649738-9-8) tells the story of the youth from landlocked Taft buying scuba gear with his father in the late 1950s and then making the trip to California’s central coast to learn to dive. Mr. Rennka relates on how he was inspired, in part, by Sea Hunt, a show that ran for a few seasons starting in the mid-1950s when the author was in high school, and in part because this new and adventurous activity was a rite of passage. “In the late fifties it was difficult for an aging male child to find away to make the transition to manhood….Scuba diving in the 1950s set me apart….” To many, this time represents the golden age of scuba, as the increasing popularity of vintage dive equipment attests. I am not immune from this nostalgia as theAqualung Mistral knockoff in my dive cabinet attests.
Still, I have always been amazed at the number of divers, most much younger than Mr. Rennka, who claim to have been inspired bySea Hunt, but then if everyone who claims to have been at Woodstock were actually in attendance, the farm would have been the size of Manhattan, but then if you remember it you really were not there. I do not recall seeing the original airing of any of the series; I do recall seeing it in syndication on local UHF channels in the 1960s. Even in the 1960s and early 1970s, diving had a certain cachet amongst teen males. I recall in high school, scuba was offered as an elective to senior class males and those so admitted stood out on campus, complete with a dedicated two-page spread in the yearbook.
The book describes the process of discovering diving, where innovation was the result of trial and error and confirmed by surviving the dive intact. “Our equipment was crude,” the author writes, “some homemade. The things my family and I learned throughthe ‘Scuba School of Hard Knocks’ are now common knowledge in and included in most basic text books. Where did that knowledge come from and what did the ‘Pioneers’ go through to map out a route so everyone wants to can breathe underwater? That’s what this book is about….” Some of his lessons are timeless. The description of his efforts to exit steep, soft sand and gravel beaches is as applicable today at places like Monastery Beach as they were when the author experienced them, just as they were when I first encountered these beaches in the 1980s.
Much of the book focuses on the unabashed taking of game, shellfish and finfish, especially abalone. Then as now, scuba diving was a very expensive undertaking. The input to the cost-benefit ratio of the outcome of the activity for the author’s family was measured in what the equipment and trip cost versus the value of the game harvested. Reading his description of the taking of game reminds me of the concept of shifting baselines. Game in those days was abundant and that is the baseline for Mr. Rennka. The situation was less so when I started diving in the early 80s. But, even the Reagan-era relative abundance of game that is my baseline, especially in the days of before the withering foot decimation of the abalone population, may be unrecognizable today. Yet, things can be restored. As a teenaged diver, my nephew saw black seabass during certification beach dives a few years ago; a phenomena it took me more than two decades of diving to experience. That was his baseline and he is under the impression that every dive shouldbe like that.
Mr. Rennka reminisces about the public’s reaction toseeing a scuba diver a novelty in California’s central coast in the 1950s. As with shifting baselines, I can’t help but wonder about the reaction a similarly placed diver would receive today. I think it would range from absolute indifference to a now commonplace activity to downright hostility at the taking of game. Witness the recent reaction in Puget Sound to the teenage diver who by all accounts legally took an octopus only to be confronted on the beach by activists who took photos, posted them to social media in what only can be described as a campaign of intimidation that went viral (covered by media as a far away as Great Britain), only to make the teen an instant persona non grata among the diving community until he publicly recanted and repented his sins. The Puritans of Massachusetts could take lessons from these people. Technology is the means by which the Scarlet Letter is now conferred.
Still, there is change in diving but there is also continuity. Mr. Rennka’s humorous, tongue-in-cheek serious and at times poignant tale is one of a father and man-child undertaking an activity together as they inexorably moved toward separation that is the natural progression of life. The coming of age theme is common in literature. And there is the inevitable story telling that results when two or more divers assemble. As Mr. Rennka relates, “I had to get past the initial trial—‘the bronzing of my balls’—so I could clank when I walked. The fact that I had scars, trophies, and delicious food to show for my effort just added to my bragging-rites-at-the-bar (uh, school cafeteria). The clank when you moved was a sure give-away. To make sure you were noticed if you weren’t walking, you could wear a diver’s watch, a diver’s knife strapped to your calf, your depth gage, or a hero jacket. Even today, wherever a large group of diver gets together, the clanking is almost deafening.”
Diver’s watches are now common even as the wearing of watches is becoming anachronistic as the Millennials rely on digital devices for timekeeping. The closest many 200 m watches get to water is the sink during hand washing. Dive knives are downsizing. Depth gages have been replaced by wrist computers. (So much for my collection of dive watches and Blackie Collins Wenoka dive knives). Hero jackets with the merit badge aspect of dive certifications are now ubiquitous and the subject of derision among “real divers”. But, tales get told where two or three are gathered. I was recently in a dive shack when I asked a couple of tech divers how the dive went. The clanking was indeed loud, although not quite deafening, as they related their exploits in deep, cold water diving. Only unlike Mr. Rennka’s era, this group of divers included men and women. Also, it seems like brick and mortar dive shop along the central California coast is becoming as rare as they were in the late 50’s. As such, I look upon Back in ’02 as a personal chronicle attesting to the continuity and change in the scuba.
Still, I have always been amazed at the number of divers, most much younger than Mr. Rennka, who claim to have been inspired bySea Hunt, but then if everyone who claims to have been at Woodstock were actually in attendance, the farm would have been the size of Manhattan, but then if you remember it you really were not there. I do not recall seeing the original airing of any of the series; I do recall seeing it in syndication on local UHF channels in the 1960s. Even in the 1960s and early 1970s, diving had a certain cachet amongst teen males. I recall in high school, scuba was offered as an elective to senior class males and those so admitted stood out on campus, complete with a dedicated two-page spread in the yearbook.
The book describes the process of discovering diving, where innovation was the result of trial and error and confirmed by surviving the dive intact. “Our equipment was crude,” the author writes, “some homemade. The things my family and I learned throughthe ‘Scuba School of Hard Knocks’ are now common knowledge in and included in most basic text books. Where did that knowledge come from and what did the ‘Pioneers’ go through to map out a route so everyone wants to can breathe underwater? That’s what this book is about….” Some of his lessons are timeless. The description of his efforts to exit steep, soft sand and gravel beaches is as applicable today at places like Monastery Beach as they were when the author experienced them, just as they were when I first encountered these beaches in the 1980s.
Much of the book focuses on the unabashed taking of game, shellfish and finfish, especially abalone. Then as now, scuba diving was a very expensive undertaking. The input to the cost-benefit ratio of the outcome of the activity for the author’s family was measured in what the equipment and trip cost versus the value of the game harvested. Reading his description of the taking of game reminds me of the concept of shifting baselines. Game in those days was abundant and that is the baseline for Mr. Rennka. The situation was less so when I started diving in the early 80s. But, even the Reagan-era relative abundance of game that is my baseline, especially in the days of before the withering foot decimation of the abalone population, may be unrecognizable today. Yet, things can be restored. As a teenaged diver, my nephew saw black seabass during certification beach dives a few years ago; a phenomena it took me more than two decades of diving to experience. That was his baseline and he is under the impression that every dive shouldbe like that.
Mr. Rennka reminisces about the public’s reaction toseeing a scuba diver a novelty in California’s central coast in the 1950s. As with shifting baselines, I can’t help but wonder about the reaction a similarly placed diver would receive today. I think it would range from absolute indifference to a now commonplace activity to downright hostility at the taking of game. Witness the recent reaction in Puget Sound to the teenage diver who by all accounts legally took an octopus only to be confronted on the beach by activists who took photos, posted them to social media in what only can be described as a campaign of intimidation that went viral (covered by media as a far away as Great Britain), only to make the teen an instant persona non grata among the diving community until he publicly recanted and repented his sins. The Puritans of Massachusetts could take lessons from these people. Technology is the means by which the Scarlet Letter is now conferred.
Still, there is change in diving but there is also continuity. Mr. Rennka’s humorous, tongue-in-cheek serious and at times poignant tale is one of a father and man-child undertaking an activity together as they inexorably moved toward separation that is the natural progression of life. The coming of age theme is common in literature. And there is the inevitable story telling that results when two or more divers assemble. As Mr. Rennka relates, “I had to get past the initial trial—‘the bronzing of my balls’—so I could clank when I walked. The fact that I had scars, trophies, and delicious food to show for my effort just added to my bragging-rites-at-the-bar (uh, school cafeteria). The clank when you moved was a sure give-away. To make sure you were noticed if you weren’t walking, you could wear a diver’s watch, a diver’s knife strapped to your calf, your depth gage, or a hero jacket. Even today, wherever a large group of diver gets together, the clanking is almost deafening.”
Diver’s watches are now common even as the wearing of watches is becoming anachronistic as the Millennials rely on digital devices for timekeeping. The closest many 200 m watches get to water is the sink during hand washing. Dive knives are downsizing. Depth gages have been replaced by wrist computers. (So much for my collection of dive watches and Blackie Collins Wenoka dive knives). Hero jackets with the merit badge aspect of dive certifications are now ubiquitous and the subject of derision among “real divers”. But, tales get told where two or three are gathered. I was recently in a dive shack when I asked a couple of tech divers how the dive went. The clanking was indeed loud, although not quite deafening, as they related their exploits in deep, cold water diving. Only unlike Mr. Rennka’s era, this group of divers included men and women. Also, it seems like brick and mortar dive shop along the central California coast is becoming as rare as they were in the late 50’s. As such, I look upon Back in ’02 as a personal chronicle attesting to the continuity and change in the scuba.
