Scuba Club dives in to see underwater world

By Kathleen Grohman

The closest most Santa Clara students will ever get to a manta ray is going to see one at the aquarium, but members of the Santa Clara Scuba Club experience manta rays and other marine life firsthand, with no glass.

Scuba Club president, junior Ross French, saw a 14-foot manta ray while diving in a volcano crater off the coast of Maui. He said it was one of the coolest things he has ever seen.

"We just happened to stumble on one of the big ones," French said. "Manta rays can get to the size where you can drive a Volkswagen into their mouth."

French is eager to share his passion for being underwater with others in the Santa Clara community.

"It is the closest you can get to flying without a plane. Underwater, you are weightless to go wherever you want."

Scuba, which stands for self-contained underwater breathing apparatus, requires a mask, snorkel, fins, gloves, boots, regulator, tank, wet suit and buoyancy control device. Because all of the scuba equipment floats, divers must carry about 20 pounds of lead weights to keep them underwater. If a diver has to bail to the surface, the diver simply inflates the buoyancy control device, but if a diver has run out of air, he or she must drop the weights and kick to the surface.

French, whose father got him into diving when he was 12, said that while it may sound complicated, diving is actually pretty easy and safe. "Accidents very rarely happen unless you just plain aren't paying attention. I've never had to bail before. I've actually never known anyone who's ever had to bail before," he said.

In fact, he said the hardest part about scuba diving is some of the requirements for certification, like learning how to take a mask off underwater and still be able to breathe. "Sometimes if you're swimming behind someone, their fin will kick you in the face and knock your mask off, so you have to keep breathing without a mask. Which is kind of hard to do because then your nose is totally exposed, and if you inhale through your nose, you bring in water," he said.

A lot of students who are not scuba certified join the club. The club is sponsored by the dive shop Aquatic Discovery, which offers discounted dive and certification classes to members of Scuba Club.

Dive master Raj Manier, the certification instructor, is a Santa Clara alumnus who owns the shop and helped start the Scuba Club when he was a student. Certification takes two weeks, and the total cost for the class, buying basic gear and rentals for day trips comes to about $300 to $400. But once a diver is certified, it only costs about $35 to rent gear to dive for a day.

French said that Scuba Club brings something different to Santa Clara and is a great way to get a break from the college grind.

This is French's first year as president of the club, and he has big plans for its future. Right now, there are 15 to 20 people that consistently come to meetings and trips, but with another certification class in the winter quarter, French expects this to grow.

So far this year the club has done six or seven trips, mostly to Monterey and Santa Cruz. Breakwater in Monterey is one of the club's favorite places to go.

"It's mellow water, easy in, easy out, showers at the top, and it's not usually crowded," said French.

One of French's favorite club trips was to a site filled with metridium sea anemones off Breakwater. It's a navigation site, so it's not visible from the surface, and divers use a compass to get there.

"These rocks were covered with these metridium anemones. They are neon white, and they are just everywhere, so it is really trippy to go down there because it is like this white grass floating in the water," he said.

The Scuba Club takes a longer trip over spring break. This year they are going to Belize.

"We're doing a bunch of diving, going to the Belize zoo, cave tubing and we're renting some condos out there, so it will be pretty awesome," French said.

The club's next project is trying to charter a boat to the Channel Islands where the divers would sleep on the boat and have all the gear there for them. French said most of the Channel Islands are marine preserved, so there will be a lot to see underwater.

The Scuba Club Web site is scuscuba.org.

"Anyone who's interested in diving -- all they have to do is shoot me a message and I'll hook them up with whatever they need," French said.

Contact Kathleen Grohman at (408) 551-1918 or kgrohman@scu.edu.