Behind the Scenes: "City in the Sea"/"Star Gardens"
(continued) Secretly, I was always quite proud of being a tough California diver. So, I did not really want to admit to myself, deep down, I might be a wimp. I can handle the usual currents, kelp, and poor visibility. But, I hate cold water.
In California you get used to working in currents. In fact, if there isn't a current you notice it and something does not feel quite right. Current is a whole different animal in British Columbia. Our boat captain would take us to a dive site and tell us we had about an hour of "slack" tide in which to dive. I listened to him, but in the back of my head I chuckled and thought, we would be fine. "In about 45 minutes you will begin to feel it" he said.
Midway into our first dive it was as if someone, somewhere turned on a really big faucet. And within ten minutes there was a "can't possibly swim against, rip the mask right off your face, pull entire kelp beds flat against the bottom" current. You had to keep a mental death grip on the location of the boat and a plan of how to get back there. If you got caught "downstream" of the current and had to get rescued by the boat the razing you would receive from the guys would be unmerciful and never-ending. I made a mental note to listen more closely to our skipper.
by Mark Conlin, cinematographer
CONTINUED...
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