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This is the dive trip in which I decided I needed to experience diving closer home, and thus why diving around Florida made it on to my summer bucket list.

The goal for the day’s diving was to complete the dives for SSI’s Wreck Diver and Deep Diver certifications. The plan was to take a boat out to the Sheridan and USCG Blackthorn in the Gulf of Mexico; unfortunately the February weather had different plans. Sea fog made it impossible to see anything. When the captain of the boat tried to head out, we were surrounded by fog and everyone aboard agreed it felt like the opening to a Jaws movie and agreed it would be safest to call the dives.

Our group wanted our certification and began to wrack our brains for another location not on the gulf to dive. Hudson Grotto was almost immediately thrown on the table. I had heard of it, but nothing good. A coworker had described it as “the creepiest dive” he had ever done, and voiced my hesitation. The two divers who had dove there before assured me that while the site was a bit unusual, my dive experience and science background would get me through it.

The Dive

Max depth: 109 ft                  H2O temperature: 66F                    Dive Time: 37 min              Breathing: Nitrox 32

Not me on this dive…Sorry no camera. But me in similar cold water gear. Though my gloves are no were near this impressive.

Entering the water in my brand new 2.5mm wetsuit, with my dad’s 3 mm wetsuit over top of that, and my new hood, I was certain I was under-weighted. But as we swam out to the buoy marking the descent line to the platforms, I quickly become certain I was actually over-weighted…and that my hood might possibly be trying to kill me. I calmly reminded myself that the hood would loosen once I was totally submerged and that I would be happy to have the extra weight when it came time to complete the required skill for Deep Diver certification, and down we went.

The first thing my mind registered was how tannic (brown from organic materials breaking down) the water was. The second thought was stay calm, the hood will loosen and your coworker was probably just exaggerating the conditions at the bottom. We continued deeper losing light somewhere between 40 and 60 ft; I am still trying to figure out how I do not know the exact depth since I would look at my gauge look up to the surface praying to see the sun. Along with that came a thermocline, in which the temperature makes a noticeable change over a small difference in depth. Then we landed on the 100 ft platform.

Here was were we would complete our first required skill, writing our name. to show how breathing compressed air at depth affects our mental acuity (though the simple math problem on my advance open water illustrated this better). Easy as pie, though the nitrox probably helped diminish some of the effects (less nitrogen in the canned air).

Around this same depth, the darkness became a milky, almost ghostly, darkness. This was one of the features we had been told about, the halocline. Here the freshwater met saltwater. Down a few more feet and our freshwater dive had become a saltwater dive. A few feet lower and we had found the hydrogen sulfide layer. It may have been my mind but I could smell and taste it.

The plan had been for us to execute laying and retrieving lines on one of the VW wrecks as part of our wreck cert but since lines were already laid we just followed those. With the smoky effect of the halocline and hydrogen sulfide layer hanging around us it was difficult to process where the bottom was and so to make matters worse, we stirred up the bottom and further reduced what little visibility our torches had bought us. I was relieved when it was time to start our ascent.

The final skill was to deploy our safety marker during our safety stop. I was over-weighted and would have the 20 ft platform to support me, I could do this!

Except when I made it to the platform I quickly felt the familiar upward pull of being under-weighted. I looped my fingers through lattice-work of the platform and held on as I tried to untangle the line of one of my new reels. I had noticed it entrapping my hand at depth but had recognized I was too stressed to deal with it in the dark, but it seemed just as impossible at 20 ft as it had at 100 ft. Thankfully the instructor stepped in and got it untangled. Then I had to fiddle with my new safety marker; the small valve did not want to cooperate with my cozy new gloves. So off came of my gloves, I took a big puff off of my regulator, weaseled it into the hand holding me to the platform, and exhaled into my marker (and my primary thought was how much water was getting into said marker when I depressed the valve). On my way down to my hand that held the air, I noticed my glove inching its way off the platform. I shoved my regulator into my mouth and started gesturing, with my one hand gripping my barely inflated marker and the other holding on for dear life to the platform, at the instructor. He can me an encouraging nod and pantomimed me completing the skill. We went back and forth doing the same until I frantically released the platform and grabbed for my glove…at the same time another diver in our group realized what I was trying failing to communicate and picked up my glove for me. Two more puffs of air into the marker, each more panicked than the last, and I received the signal that my marker was good to be released. It rocketed to the surface as I tried to embrace the failure that was everything I had done on this dive; except maybe writing my name.

Possibly the most stressful 37 minutes of my life and hands down the most stressful dive of my life; and that includes a night dive where my buddy and I got horribly lost.

Out of the Water

The group returned to the water for a second dive; I made the swim out and on the go to descend I chickened out. I was too cold, too stressed, and had nothing positive from the previous dive. I probably would have enjoyed this dive since they stayed at a depth where light was available the whole dive. They checked out the sunken statuettes, flat screens, and other junk littering the limestone walls. I am a bit jealous that I missed out on rubbing Buddha’s belly.

If I wrote a review then and there it would have read “This place is TERRIBLE. Do not dive here EVER…Unless you enjoy being scared, then have fun.” Now that I have had four months to dull the frustration and anxiety of that dive, I realized I had contributed to how unenjoyable the dive was. I was over tasked; juggling two flashlights (one of which was no bigger in length or width than my pinky finger), plus two reels when I had never worked with reels before, a new hood that may have been too constrictive on my throat, and freaking about both the dive conditions and the skills to come. A part of me would like to go back to give it a fighting chance in my dive log, but another part of me is still emotionally sore from the experience. The scientist in me is forced to admit it is an interesting dive if only for the variety of conditions experienced in a single dive.

Our dive instructor’s briefing sums up the experience, “It is soul sucking darkness down there. Know that the darkness WILL try to eat your light”. But I did walk away Wreck and Deep Diver certified.

Note: This post reflects my personal opinions. I was in no way compensated for this review by Hudson Grotto or SCUBA West.

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