by Tyler Zetterstrom

I had the pleasure of getting back into the water after 3 weeks abstinence. Eric Fattah and I were doing a few line dives at Ansel Point. I had an experience that made me appear to Eric like I had succumbed to some serious CO2 narcosis. I would like to provide proof otherwise.

Following will be my short tale of what happened and hopefully somebody has come across something to lend to the credibility of my experience.

The Event.

The visibility this day was horrible with no more than 3 meters. So you could imagine that at depth things were fairly dark. Much like an evening spent under the stars far from city lights. The temperatures were wonderful outside and the water was a blazing 8c. Summer is almost here.

Well we had just got out there basically. I had done one warm up dive and was on my first depth dive. I was feeling great. I was warm, alert, flexible, confident, and full of breath. Down I went with a relaxed dive, expecting to go to 40m depending on how my equalization held up. Everything was going well and I had a gentle ride sinking effortlessly from 20m.

Passing 30m I took note of 10m to go and shortly after noticed the faint light of the 67m scuba light tied to the bottom. I concentrated on keeping watch of the line immediately in front of me as I tend to keep gazing straight down into the abyss. I went back into relaxation and focused on the line.

Suddenly there is a bright blue light in front of me. Mere milliseconds and my mind has taken over with a new plan to stop myself and determine the characteristics of this new encounter. I grab hold of the line above the light and wait for my body to become upright, so as not to disturb the environment much. First thing I notice is that the light is a fraction (1/5?) of the line. I believe in the peripheral of my vision I notice more blue light a half meter below, but I do not want to lose my focus on the first one.

My first thought is, "Oh must be phosphorescence that was floating along and running into the line activated it's light." I look closer and seem to make out that the light source has the shape of two balls. Reminds me of eye balls of bright blue. Then it occurs to me that phosphoresence usual turns off as quick as it appears. A few moments after this thought the light suddenly goes out. "Ah, there it is, it was phosphorescence", comes my quick conclusions.

BANG! Lights on. Switch thrown. Now I think they are eyeballs. But due to the contrast of bright and darkness I can not make out whether there is any body to the light, something possibly clinging to the line. This would have been a good time to have my little dive light.

At this point realizing my nature of fasination with the elements of life, and combining this with my current circumstances (namely hanging on a line at 35m in the dark cold water, and notorious for slow diving) I draw the conclusion that as much as I would love to hang out with this little oddity, that I had better return to the other world. With a sharp tug, I begin the meditative motions of my free immersion to the surface. I am plagued with regret in the first few pulls at what I am leaving behind, yet the rhythm and drift upwards gradually overcomes my senses and I feel the pleasure of being a flowing part of the water again.

At the surface I decide to breath for a second or two before attempting to relay my story to Eric, who manages to immediately extend his faith towards my experience, pronouncing, "Narcosis?"

Well, well. I just won't stand for this. I know what I saw and I am looking to attempt to find out what this was.

CONCLUSIONS:

Here are my thoughts so far, feel free to challenge them with explanations:

I have never seen phosphorescence at depths much more than ten feet. They seem to like the surface and quickly taper off from there.

I have never seen phosphorescence during the day time, however down there it was not much like day time. Could they occur at depth during the day time?

I usually have experienced that a single source of phosphorescence tends to light up once and last for a second or two.

It definately appeared like something blinked and that they were two round balls of blue light, 2-3 mm each side by side.

I still go to work everyday and nobody has notified me of any pecularities in my behavior/perception.

Tyler