Page 64 - South Mississippi Living - March, 2019

SPORTS & OUTDOORS adrift
Self-Inflicted Mistakes Cause Diving Disasters
DEEP Sea
story by Frank Wilem photos courtesy of Bill Jackson, Tom Schubert, David Gross, Skip Roberts
TROUBLE
and Frank Wilem EVER SPENT THE NIGHT FLOATING IN THE OCEAN FAR OFFSHORE? TRUST ME, YOU DON’T WANT TO.
Frank Wilem and Terry Towels after a dive during their graduate school days in Miami.
Bill Jackson and Frank Wilem with amberjack.
Bow Brown with his speared ascamp.
W
e’ve all seen movies in which people are cast adrift miles offshore and contemplated the horror. Having actually done it, I can tell you it’s more terrifying than you
can possibly imagine. Diving off the coast of Mississippi offers fertile waters for spearfishing with little pressure compared to southern Florida. The problem is the
visibility is often poor and we lack a coral reef system. Still, I have dove these waters as well as those in south Florida where I got more than I bargained for.
While attending grad school at the University
of Miami, my buddies and I became experienced divers. We dove our favorite site on the edge of the Gulf Stream near Fowey Rocks so frequently that we became cocky. Eventually, this led to a series of little mistakes which, taken together, had big consequences.
Normally, while one pair of divers was down, a second pair remained on the boat. But on that fateful afternoon, we could only raise three and elected to go anyway — mistake one. After wasting time trying to get a fourth diver, we got underway much later than usual — mistake number two. Even though we found the seas heavier than expected, we were not about to quit —mistake number three.
We reached the bottom to find we were anchored up current from the area we planned to dive. But since
it was late, we broke our hard rule to dive upstream from the boat and proceeded without repositioning the boat — huge mistake number four.
When it came time to head back to the boat, I was low on air after spearing a large fish. We found ourselves fighting a raging current and soon ran out of air, forcing us to surface too far from the boat to make it back. Far off shore, with heavy seas in shark- infested waters and night approaching, we were in deep trouble!
We drifted for hours with the lights of Miami on
the far horizon. Our only hope appeared to be the chance of being found the next day — if we made it until dawn. We had lost hope when a Coast Guard helicopter appeared on the horizon and began searching for us. They gradually moved close enough
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