The Dive Club

One of the great discoveries about Marco, Goodland, and the Isles of Capri is the vast diversification of the people who live on the islands. Because of the recent development, newcomers are from everywhere and bring who they are and what they know to their new homes in paradise. When the big move to the islands is complete, some friends and relatives are always missing, and making new friends from exotic places can be the best experience ever - especially when danger, fear, and survival bring everyone together like never before.

In the beginning, the dive trips were always fun. In April and May, the cold fronts stop whipping the wind-driven waves into a maelstrom, and the sand and sediment fall to the seafloor. As a result, the water in the gulf becomes the color of emeralds and is just as bewitching.

No one can really remember how the dive club began. It started when a dive master began recruiting scuba trips to the middle and lower Florida Keys. After the group became too big for an SUV, a rental van became another item in the mix, along with the dive boat charter. The dive club was complete when the rental van was full. Driving together and having lunch as a group was almost as fun as the actual scuba dives, except for the day when everything went wrong at once.

The dive club was from everywhere. There were two Americans, one Haitian, two Germans, one Englishman, one Puerto Rican, and one diver from Türkiye. After finding common ground with the English language and an exciting hobby, the group, after many dives, was happy and strong together.

The trouble started when the diving became boring. The group had already done all the easy dives and some of them twice. When the topic surfaced about the next shallow and lackluster dive, everyone began to moan. After the unanimous grumbles, the dive master held up a hand for quiet and began to reveal a previously unknown dive site.

“The new dive is a shipwreck that has broken up on the seafloor and is now easy to access. Apparently, the wreck was scattered by Hurricane Ian and is now more of a debris field than a whole ship. The wreck is also deep at around 110 feet. We will have a shorter time on the bottom but a much more exciting dive. From what I have read online, the green moray eels hiding on the wreck will be the main wildlife event.”

The ride out to the No Name Wreck was uneventful. The water was flat and clear as an aquarium, and when the dive boat dropped anchor, and the club began to gear up, the captain announced that he, too, would be diving on the disturbed wreck site. The mate would remain onboard. He was to maintain an anchor to watch and assist divers returning to the surface.

When the dive club entered the water and began to follow the anchor line down to the wreck, the degraded remains of a steel ship began to materialize when the sunlight began to diminish. The ship was indeed torn open in many places, but many dark sections were waiting where the feeble rays of the sun were unable to reach. Strangely enough, there were very few fish swimming around the steel hull rising out of the sand.

Once the anchor line was secure on the wreck, the divers began to explore. When the bottom time was almost halfway to the safety mark, everyone began to hear the tapping of metal on metal. This was the captain tapping on his dive tank with a diving knife, and everyone began to gather at the signal. The captain was crouching in a debris-crowded section of the wreck, but enough sunlight was streaming through to observe several openings amongst barnacles and the steel wreckage.

With everyone in the club now gathered and watching, the captain produced a fish from a mesh bag at his side. After a few seconds of waving the bait in front of several of the dark openings, a violent rush of silt exploded from several of the dark holes at once. Also rushing out of many of the little caverns were the gapping open mouths, fangs, and heads and bodies of large green moray eels.

Every diver was shocked and back paddling amongst a torrent of rising bubbles. The green eels of approximately six feet apparently thought it was feeding time and they were right. There were no less than eight of the creatures emerging at once and the fish the captain was holding vanished a cloud of blood and tissue. Also vanishing in the dim light was some of the captain’s ear, as a wild eel could not distinguish natural food from the man who was tempting the aggressive predators in their own domain.

Another eel went straight for an American and began latching on to the buoyancy compensator vest with a tenacious determination to rip it apart. Another eel was frantically pursuing the kicking swimming fin of the Turkish diver, while another was intent on finding some kind of food source from one of the Germans. Every diver was under attack, even if the wound was a chilling memory that would never fade. 

The entire event from waving the bait to disappearing ear lobe and shredding diving gear, was over in a very few terrifying seconds. The divers at once began the ascent to the surface, but everyone was carrying a few superficial scrapes, scratches, and glancing bites. Rising alongside compressed air bubbles was the international group, but the many lessons learned on tempting wildlife and fate were an experience in sharing that none of the new fast friends would ever forget.