Coral Reef Travel

After a relaxed exploration along the reef, your pressure gauge says you’ve used half of your available air, minus 700 psi for reserve. So you turn around to swim back to the boat. Immediately, you find yourself heading into a strong current. Now you have to fin hard to make headway, doubling your air consumption. Will you have enough to make it back to the boat?

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“Aw, come on. Don’t be a wuss!” To which we reply: “Better a wuss than a pretzel.”

Amazing, isn’t it? How divers can make a supposedly relaxing, recreational activity so darn competitive. Who surfaced with the most air? Who bagged the most game? Who went deepest? Sometimes the contests are harmless: “You mean you didn’t see the 12-foot moray?” Sometimes motivational: “You mean you haven’t been to Palau?” And sometimes downright dangerous: “You mean you only did two dives a day?”

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A tiny, quaint French-Canadian village laid out along a half-moon of rocky seacoast, Les Escoumins might seem at first merely a hideout for honeymooners and thieves. But this diminutive settlement on the banks of the tidal St. Lawrence River is one of the Northeast’s best-kept diving secrets.

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Like a giant can opener, the rock called Nova Scotia has split the hulls of even the stoutest ships daring to challenge its shallow, jagged coastline. A graveyard of 5,000 vessels clutters the scenic shores of this 350-mile-long Canadian peninsula: the highest density of shipwrecks per linear mile of any location in the world.

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You hearty adventurer types who leap at the chance to submerge yourself in water so cold it would freeze solid if not for the currents, read on. The rest of you, hop a plane for Hawaii.

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Ghostly plumose anemones shroud the peak of Tyler Rock, glowing in the diffuse emerald light. Descending through the narrow canyon that splits the crest of the reef, we drop quickly to a sandy ledge at 70 feet. Suddenly, a massive shark appears, swimming straight toward us. Twelve feet long and as big as a barrel, it moves with effortless grace, closing fast. In seconds it’s within touching distance, near enough that I can count the six distinctive gill slits and stare into coal-black eyes as the Volkswagen-sized shark cruises by, leaving us in its powerful wake.

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As we arrived in Bamfield on a cool October morning, the rain started to pour and a violent wind made it seem all the colder. Tired, dirty and wet from a four-hour cruise along Barkley Sound by packet freighter, we were still too excited about diving this wild coast to be discouraged by the weather.

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The Adams River is running red against the current. Upriver as far as I can see, the shallows seethe with the violent splashing of ragged fins, green toothy beaks, decaying corpses and wriggling scarlet bodies. This October, Nature is on schedule for sockeye salmon spawning. And in this seeming chaos, everything is as Nature intended it to be.

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A playground for the wealthy since the 1700s, Newport, R.I., is better known for its annual jazz festival, sailing competitions and rows of stately mansions than for its diving. However, if you’re invited to “go for subs” while in this New England resort hamlet, grab your dive gear, because it probably isn’t a lunch date.

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Willow Springs Park offers a unique opportunity for anyone who ever fantasized about being the plastic hard-hat diver at the bottom of a home aquarium. On two weekends each year – Memorial Day and Labor Day – this Richland, Pa., quarry hosts rallies by real hard-hat divers, the Northeast Working Equipment Group of the Historical Diving Society – U.S.A.

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