Trading Masks

March 1, 2021

Universities in the age of coronavirus are not environments that exude happiness. Gone are the days of bar-hopping, tailgating, live music, and house parties. But that is just the beginning: gone too are the days of club meetings, office hours, and lunch with friends. Stickers tell you where to sit, which doors to use, and remind you that you are not to remove your mask for any reason while in a classroom. To go to the gym, one must plot out four days in advance the 90-minute window that will suit them best. A review of my Mac’s history reveals an average of over 5 hours per weekday on Zoom.

To say this seismic shift has been grueling is to put it lightly. For myself and my mental health, it has been cataclysmic. Though complaining about attending an elite university while millions suffer from illness and untold more suffer from the economic and social fallout that has resulted may appear to some as tone-deaf, I do believe that my struggles, while comparatively minor, are becoming more ubiquitous as COVID presses on. So many college students find themselves miserable as the lines between dormitory and detention center are blurred. For some, the release has been video games, for others baking, and for others still TikTok. As someone who is too cheap to shell out for a new console and too phone fatigued for another form of social media, I needed a new answer. For me and my best friend, it was freediving.

Boston College isn’t a hotspot for recreational divers. I know of about a dozen students with SCUBA certs, and almost all of them are from areas where wetsuits are optional most of the year. You’d be hard-pressed to find more than a few students who would be willing to dive in the North Atlantic during the fall, and even fewer with the foresight to have come prepared with gear. That said, New England’s rocky shores present a haven for divers. Lush marine vegetation, a wealth of fish and invertebrates, gorgeous geographic features, and pristine visibility are hallmarks of the New England dive experience.

All of these wonders were news to myself and my friend Sam when we set out to get our SCUBA certifications two years ago. Preparing for semesters abroad that would take us to the Great Barrier Reef and Galapagos Islands, respectively, we decided it was time to learn to dive. We enrolled in courses at East Coast Divers, a dive shop some ten minutes away from BC. The staff was, in many ways, a reflection of ourselves: eclectic, goofy, and inquisitive. We discussed the ins and outs of diving ad nauseum. Incorporating lingo from our classes into our vernacular gave way to giving pitches to any student that would listen on why they should shell out hundreds of dollars and freeze their asses off in a pool every Sunday night for a month. Enamored with the world that was unfolding itself to me, I knew that I had found a passion that would stick with me through my college years and beyond.

Our first dives of the semester took place during our first weekend on campus. Barred from attending football games and the accompanying parties, Sunday mornings were untethered from their ubiquitous, cumbersome hangovers. Not wanting to spend any more money than what was required to reach the dive site, we decided not to rent tanks and make these freedives. Sam and I both had discussed this well beforehand and were training ourselves to maximize our freediving skills. Neither of us, however, had any formal training in the discipline. Though I was more experienced as a diver and in the ocean, Sam was actively training for an IronMan race and could most certainly hold more air in his lungs than I. Our drive north was pleasant as we discussed our excitement at the possibility of encountering the nudibranchs, monkfish, flounder, and sea stars we came to expect from our certification dives. What we discovered was an ecosystem that had become even more vibrant than the one we had encountered almost 18 months prior. 

Most obvious and pleasant was the warmth of the ocean, which had increased by some 30 degrees Fahrenheit in between our visits. But with this warmth came a host of new organisms. Crabs poured out of every nook and cranny in the rocks that gave the city its name. Releasing the air from my lungs allowed me to descend from on high to come face to face with these creatures. Grabbing onto boulders and tilting my head to expose new views into crags revealed a multispecies array of crustaceans bringing food from the stones to their mouths. Venturing to the benthos required crashing through a thermocline that dropped the temperature drastically (we estimated somewhere between 7-10 degrees). Such a change was not unexpected but is most assuredly a shock to the system. The arms of the cold seemed to embrace me in a bear hug and squeeze the air from my body, and I needed to surface quickly after my initial descent. After adequate preparations, I returned to the seafloor to find a lively ecosystem. Running your hand through the fields of bladderwrack stirs up clouds of larval creatures that erupt in a swirling haze in front of your eyes. Mollusks, sea stars, and fish of many clades and hues reveal themselves to anyone willing to take to the plunge and stay submerged.

Returning to the surface and drifting into open waters, schools of striped bass circled us. Fish up to 36 inches long darted around me, their scales glistening as light refracted through the surface of the water and onto the fish. Their movements, sporadic yet controlled, were aggrandized by their glimmer. As if jerked by string, they pirouetted in front of my eyes; their bodies turning to optimize their escape route should I get too close. When I got within arms reach, one decided that the time had encroached too far and darted off. Before I could look to see what direction he had ventured, the others followed suit. Snorkeling into the rocky coves where the water levels reach only waist-high reveals schools of thousands of thousands of fry. Observing these fish for but a minute reveals that this is where these larger fish learn the intricacies of darting through the sea. They move as a collective in waves, changing direction with each turn of my head. Their actions are reminiscent of those waves that govern every instant of their lives until the time at which they are strong enough to act upon their urges to swim against the current. These fish serve as the backbone of the ecosystem, feeding on organisms smaller than I can detect and allowing for nutrients to move up the trophic levels. From the skies to the seas, every organism native to Cape Ann is connected to these little fish. From that day on, I was too.

Our next few dives would take place primarily on Tuesdays, as Sam and I had afternoons off and could borrow our roommate’s car without fear of inconveniencing anyone. Tuesday afternoons also brought with them the luxury of having the sites all to ourselves. We’d explore different spots along the coast; each time tying our anchoring our dive buoy and following its line down into the unknown. Each adventure brought with it a sense of discovery as summer gave way to fall. There was one dive, though, that emerged as the semester’s finest.

We arrived at Loblolly Cove, a dive site we had first visited the week prior, early one Saturday morning to discover remarkably clear skies and a lobstering boat and a lone fisherman as our only rivals for turf. As had become customary because of my thicker wetsuit, I ventured out first to report on conditions and make the call on whether to venture out further or continue to plunge deeper and further at this site. My first glance beneath the surface left me utterly dumbfounded. Visibility was nearly twice what we had come to expect. The ecosystem seemed to be busier than usual: creatures bobbed and weaved out of the algae and seaweed. And most importantly, European green crabs were everywhere.

European green crabs are, as the name suggests, an invasive species native to the waters near England that are seemingly everywhere from the Carolinas to Nova Scotia. Hitching a ride on ships across the Atlantic, the species has been in New England for over 200 years. Adapted to cold rocky waters they often outcompete native crab species for resources and are a tremendous detriment to the ecosystems they have infiltrated. For those reasons, Sam and I had no reservations about scooping up dozens to make into bisque. 

We plunged into the depths and frolicked through the meadows of algae. Fish abounded on all sides.  We followed the crescent shape of the cove and scooped up all of the green crabs we could.  When the cove reached its outward terminus we ventured into the depths, plunging some 30 feet to the seafloor to find a network of gorgeous rock formations and sea stars.  Perhaps fooled into feeling warmer than I should have been by waters as pristinely clear as in the tropics, I stayed in for a while after Sam had made his way to the shore. I descended down a rock while, taking stock of the different species that lived there.  Arranged almost in geographic strata were the different species of rock dwellers, with like kinds staying together.  Our return to campus that day was celebrated with cider and bisque. I strain to think of a better day I’ve had at BC.

Then the dives stopped. We received our first snowstorm before Halloween and as the snow piled up so too did responsibilities. Making the trek up to Rockport became impossible as life got in the way and, before we knew it, we were sent home for Thanksgiving and not to return until the end of January. Those weeks without dives were unrelentingly difficult for me. Days marched on, each one duller and shorter than the last. A malaise washed over me: I was detached from the work I was doing in school and found motivating myself to further my career goals next to impossible.  Without access to the outdoors for the first time in my life, I was utterly miserable. My creativity, normally expressed through the written word and through music, totally died as I stopped journaling and didn’t touch my guitar. My career search halted, I began to eat poorly, and a general lassitude clouded me every day.  For the first time in my life, I felt completely lost.

Returning home to New Jersey meant that I was physically closer to the ocean and allowed me to surf, but precluded me from the intimate relationships with the marine creatures that I had grown so attached to. Loneliness crept in as my social network shrunk so as to keep my family safe from COVID. I spent my evenings at the beach, occasionally surfing and other times merely watching the sunset on Sandy Hook Bay. Slowly, I felt as if the ocean was lifting my spirit. I strolled across the sands and encountered seals and shorebirds. It was during these intimate hours with the sea where I began to realize that it was not just the dives that made my semester of near nonexistent social interaction tolerable but the ocean herself. Interacting with the ocean allowed my coursework to come to life and gave my days purpose. I saw what it was I so desperately wanted to protect and the joy it brought me as I was disconnected from all that was familiar.  These are the gifts the sea has bestowed upon me. To try and protect its bounty and splendor is the least I can offer in return.

As winter’s icy grip on New England slowly thaws and blustery frozen gusts recede to pleasant vernal breezes, a sense of optimism abounds within me. Each day, as the ocean absorbs a bit more sunlight than it did the day before, brings me closer to our return to her chilling embrace as intermediated through neoprene. Though my issues won’t go away, they’ll all but certainly seem much more insignificant when presented with the grandeur of the sea. Moreover, I will once again have the inspiration I need to feed my creativity and passions. Welling in me now are ideas about how to make people aware of the challenges that we must face head-on if we are to protect the ocean, and my hope is that they manifest themself on this very page.

I once heard it said that “We dive not to escape life, but so that life does not escape us.” Over the past year, much of what makes life worth living was taken from so many people, myself included. When I return to the sea, I will rest assured that I am living life to the fullest.