Historic
a fad came along––home video cameras suddenly lit up the market. Jaymar, a company in San Diego, agreed to put a battery-operated 3” (7.5cm) colour monitor into a housing with a VHS camera and a small tape deck that recorded 20-minute cassettes. It arrived a day before I left for Pearl…and soon proved worth its weight in gold. We had an entirely self-contained underwater video capability, unheard of at the time. The results were stunning for a world that had never seen the Arizona underwater. Our diving experiences on the
Arizona were otherworldly and unforgettable. The water was warm and alive with popping and clicking of shrimp and other critters. Currents were negligible. The ship did, however, have a bite to it, like running one’s fingers over a cheese grater. We covered ourselves with
protective clothing––I used an old ¼” (6mm) wetsuit top with sleeve zippers torn out, work gloves, Blue Jeans and wet suit boots. Visibility averaged 5-7 feet (1.5-2m) but particulates were coarse and settled quicker than the fine silt in lakes or caves. Lights had variable effect; their placement was critical for photography, less so for video. The ship had, and has, a
strong odour that gets inside your facemask and becomes a sensory memory of the dive along with the rough feel. It smells like bunker fuel, harsh and intrusive. Invariably, fuel gets in your hair and you take the odour to bed with you. Navy divers shared their home remedy—baby oil mixed with shampoo. It displaces the oil enough to get most of it off. There is a slick at the surface, but in 1983, oil leaked from only one hatch. We were able to collect and
Left: An NPS
diver inspects the only remaining
guns on the USS Arizona - the massive 14”
barrels of the #1 gun turret which now rest in 22ft (6.7m) of water
measure the volume which was something less than a ½ gallon (2l) a day. This was much less than we expected given the size of the slick and the symbolic impact it has on visitors, for whom it represents tears or blood. In recent years the oil has found numerous other exit points.
The starboard
side profile of the USS Arizona
Surveying Chaos Arizona is huge. Most wrecks that archaeologists work on are wooden, older and much smaller. Due to the shallow water (never over 40 feet or 12m) the dives are long. Everyone gets lost at first, but our team now knows it like their living room, quickly and surely moving from place to place––making notes on their slates while absently keying to reference points they aren’t even conscious
44
Magazine
illustration: NPS / Jerry Livingston and Larry Nordby
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