DIVER PROFILE

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       Marvin Trippett       Jim Carez

Marvin R. Trippett

Jim Carez

Jim Carez is fifty-eight years old and lives with his wife Vicki and two sons Scott and Christopher in Parkersburg WV.

My first interest in scuba diving began in Jr. High school in the early 60s. The "Sea Hunt" TV program with Lloyd Bridges as "Mike Nelson" really inspired me. I read anything I could find about diving and did some snorkeling. After college and getting a teaching job in Whitesville WV south of Charleston I signed up for a YMCA Scuba class at the Charleston YMCA in 1974. My instructor was Okey Moore. I completed my checkout dives and became certified in August 1974. Okey recognized my interest and enthusiasm and encouraged me to become a pool helper in his next class at the Y.

Over the next couple of years I did lots of diving at Summersville Lake with dive buddies I met in my Open Water course. Okey Moore allowed me to continue helping him in his classes at the Charleston YMCA. Some friends and I traveled to the Florida Keys in August 1975 were I made my first ocean dives on beautiful coral reefs. With Okey’s help and encouragement I completed a very challenging and professional YMCA Instructor Institute in Cleveland OH in 1976. Soon thereafter I introduced my close friend Marvin Trippett to diving at Sutton Lake in WV. He soon completed his scuba certification at the Parkersburg YMCA with instructor Rich Lauer and went on to become a Y Scuba Instructor also. Okey Moore and I team taught the class in Charleston for a while. I soon took over for him and was doing most of the teaching. In 1977 I formed Scuba WV in Whitesville.

In 1978 I helped form the Mountaineer Y Divers Scuba Club in Charleston. I returned to the Florida Keys to dive for the second time in August 1978. I continued to teach scuba at the YMCA in Charleston and Marvin taught at the Y in Parkersburg. My first attempts at underwater photography was with a housed 8mm movie camera that worked pretty well. Several of us from the scuba club in Parkersburg traveled to Tobermory Canada to dive in August 1979. It was a really enjoyable trip with great fresh water wreck diving. The highlight of the trip was a dive on the legendary wreck of the "Arabia" on a rough windy day.

We moved our checkout dive weekends for our dive students from Summersville Lake in WV to Sportsman’s Lake near Springfield OH in 1980. The YMCA Great Lakes Region Scuba Commission appointed me Field Agent for WV in May. I took another dive group to the Florida Keys in July. This was my first effort at UW still photography with a housed 35 mm camera. I had been using an 8mm movie camera in a housing.

Our first dive trip to West Palm Beach Florida was in August 1981. We dived with Capt. Paul Lazeau of Diver’s World. We then proceeded on to the Keys for some more diving in Key West harbor and at Looe Key. I Did my first spring dive in Ponce de Leon Spring on the way back. The crystal clear spring water was very enticing.

After I had moved back to Parkersburg to take a teaching job Marvin and I formed Scuba WV Inc. in 1982. We opened the shop in the basement of my house on Dutch Ridge. Also in 1982 I was appointed YMCA Great Lakes Region Scuba Commissioner. This put me in charge of all YMCA scuba activities in Ohio, Michigan, and West Virginia. I held this position until 1987.

The first big Scuba WV Inc. dive trip was to the Bahamas on the liveaboard "Sea Fever" with Capt. Tom Guarino in July of 1982. This trip was quite an adventure and would require it’s own story. When we got back to Florida we dived for a day at Looe Key then Marvin Trippett and I went on to Key West for the YMCA Scuba Convention. While there Bob Smith Director of the Y Scuba Program invited me to make a dive on the wreck of the W.W.II cruiser "U.S.S. Wilkes-Barre" near Key West. This exciting deep dive which was organized by Capt. Billy Deans of Reef Raiders dive shop in Key West was one of the highlights of my early diving career.

Also in 1982 I was fortunate enough to take one of the early S.L.A.M. (Scuba Lifesaving and Accident Management) Instructor courses taught by Bob Smith who originally developed the course and wrote the first manual. The course was taught in Toledo OH and we actually had local ambulances, emergency squads and a helicopter respond to our simulated dive accident.

Marvin and I continued teaching scuba classes at the YMCAs in Charleston, Parkersburg, and also at Salem College in Salem WV.

Our second major dive trip was organized to "Rum Cay Dive Club" in the Bahamas in June of 1983. This was the first trip that Don Schrader did with us. Don became a Y Scuba Instructor in 1984 and soon joined us in the business. Rum Cay was a great trip. The visibility was over 150 feet and the diving was outstanding. I feel my best uw still photos were taken on this trip.

In 1983 the old Y in Charleston where we were teaching our scuba class was closed. We moved our Charleston classes to the South Charleston Rec Center where we continued to teach scuba until 1989.

From 1983 to the present we made frequent trips to the Florida Keys, West Palm Beach, the Florida Springs, and other exciting dive locations. With the help of Instructors Don Schrader and Roger Lewis Marvin and I continued teaching two or three scuba classes a year in Parkersburg, Charleston, Clarksburg, and later Cambridge OH. Following are some of the highlights of those enjoyable years.

Our Florida Keys trips have usually been with either Capt. Slate’s Atlantis Dive Center in Key Largo or Undersea’s Inc. at Big Pine Key. I especially remember the very enjoyable all day trips with Undersea’s to Looe Key where we would dive the spur and groove outer reef in the morning, then come inside the reef for lunch and snorkeling, then return to the outer reef in the afternoon for more diving. Once I remember crystal clear visibility where I could look up from the bottom and see five or six other dive boats in the distance floating on the surface each with divers coming and going. The visibility must have been 150 +.

West Palm Beach Florida has been an outstanding dive destination for me. Some of my most memorable dives have been at West Palm. Since my first trip there in 1981 I have greatly enjoyed diving with Capt. Paul Lezeau Sr. and his son Paul Jr. First on the "Diver’s World" boat and more recently on the "Gulf Stream Diver II".

I will never forget a dive at the "Neptune" statue when all the local sea and weather conditions combined to give us a crystal clear champaign dive. When I entered the water the bubbles from the divers below me were streaming up through crystal clear water like the bubbles in a champaign glass. The vis was at least 200 feet, the sun’s angle was just right, and we drifted along over the reef and marine life in what seemed to be unlimited visibility. It was an incredible dive.

Then more recently in 1993 on a dusk dive at West Palm Danny Graham and I found a very unusual looking fish under a ledge. It was a black fish about four inches long with flat face and a dorsal fin that went all the way around the pointed tail and under the fish. I knew I had never seen a fish like this in my years of diving. I captured the fish on video and showed it to several marine life experts at the DEMA show that year. Dee Scarr finally identified it as a black brotula or black widow fish. On this same trip Danny and I had a really neat experience drifting in the Gulf Stream after a dive before the boat could pick us up. The sea was dead flat calm. From about a 1/2 mile out we could see people walking on the beach without even raising our heads up. With our BCs inflated and the water very warm it was kind of like floating in a water bed without the plastic bladder. Very relaxing and memorable.

Our Florida Springs trips began in 1985. At first we stayed in the tree houses at Branford Dive Center then later on we stayed at Jim Hollis River Rendezvous at Mayo Florida. We dived in crystal clear fresh water springs like Ginnie, Peacock, Little River, Troy, Royal, Madison Blue, and others. I also enjoyed drifting down the Itcheetucknee River with snorkel gear. After Roger Lewis had a sobering experience at Orange Grove he and I decided we should get properly trained to dive in the caverns and caves in this area. In 1989 we completed our Cave Diving certification with Ron Menke.

In 1992 Jim Hollis arranged for us to dive in a spring that had been closed to the public for several years. Our dives in Yana - Snake were really exciting. The cave at Yana has two large dome rooms with white sand on the bottom. Each dome must have been 40 to 50 feet high. Between the Yana and Snake basins was a large underwater tunnel. Just as you reach the end of the natural light from the Yana side you could just make out the light ahead of you at the Snake end. So you can do a traverse from Yana to Snake and stay in the natural light zone. Really neat. Thanks Jim for arranging for us to make this dive!

Since our first trip to Bonaire and Capt. Don’s Habitat in 1986 Bonaire has been one of my favorite places to dive. It truly is a "Diver’s Paradise". Every dive at Bonaire is memorable, but one really stands out.

On our third trip to Bonaire in 1988 Capt. Don Stewart asked us if we would supply the divers to help him place a dive site mooring that had been paid for by a lady named Andrea Strauss. He said he would provide the Amstel and the boat, mooring and tanks if we would provide the manpower. Several of us agreed.

These moorings consisted of two 55 gallon drums full of concrete connected together side by side with steel rebar re-enforcing rods through the sides of the drums. They were very heavy. Capt. Don had devised a unique raft made of still more 55 gallon drums welded together end to end and designed to suspend the heavy mooring drums in it’s middle. Don had cut open holes in the bottom of the float pontoons and had put water spigots on the top of them.

The idea was to tow the heavy mooring drums on the raft to the place where the new mooring was to be placed. Then by carefully opening the water spigots on the top of the raft pontoons the air would come out and water would come in through the holes on the bottom of the drums thus causing the whole contraption to sink gently to the bottom with the mooring drums properly placed. We would then disconnect the raft from the mooring drums, close the spigots, put air back in the raft pontoons, refloat it, and tow it back to the marina for the next set of mooring barrels. It was really a quite ingenious method of placing the moorings if you don’t have ready access to a work barge and a crane which Capt. Don did not have.

We towed the raft and mooring drums to the chosen site North of the water plant in about 30 feet of water with one of the Habitat dive boats. Afterwards everyone said the plan would have worked, indeed should have worked.

Four divers went to each corner of the pontoons to control the spigots to release the air and sink the raft. I was to record the event with my video camera. Everything went according to plan at first. Unfortunately someone got impatient and opened their spigot too much. The air rushed out of one end of a pontoon faster than the other end. Then things began to happen very fast. The raft started to turn turtle. The divers scattered out of the way like a flushed covey of quail. Suddenly the mooring was dumped on the bottom upside down. Somehow it seemed funny then. We eventually used another empty drum to help us turn the mooring over so it would be properly situated. The site is now known as "Andrea I". All of us know it as "Respite" which is the name written in the concrete on the end of one of the drums. Check it out the next time you are there.

It was quite an adventure and a very memorable dive for all of us. I am very proud to have contributed to Capt. Don’s conservation efforts at Bonaire and I look forward to more dives at "Respite/Andrea I".

Our trip to Micronesia in the Western Pacific stands out as the highlight of my diving adventures to this point. My partner Marvin Trippett had talked about trying to organize a trip for some time. It finally came together and we lead a group to the Truk and Palau Aggressor liveaboard dive boats in June of 1995.

The Aggressors are great. There is no easier way to dive than from a well organized liveaboard. Even with my video housing the diving was very easy.

Truk Lagoon was a Japanese naval base and staging area during W.W.II. In 1944 a U.S. Navy carrier task force attacked the shipping and shore installations from the air for three days. The lagoon is now littered with shipwrecks. We dived on several of them as well as a coral reef in the lagoon. I was expecting poor visibility in the lagoon but instead it was very good.

Diving on the wrecks was really awesome. With just a little imagination you can feel the terror the Japanese sailors must have felt when these huge ships were struck by torpedoes and bombs and sunk to the bottom in just minutes. The holes caused by torpedoes in the bottoms of some of the wrecks are bigger than two school buses. Yet you can still find unbroken light bulbs in wire covered fixtures that were last touched by the fingers of a sailor who screwed it in the socket during WWII. Incredible!

We also did a shark dive near an island in the lagoon that I found very exciting. Fish caught the night before were put down as bait. Three small gray reef sharks and a four foot white tip shark came to the bait. I was able to get some really great close-up video of the sharks. One of them even bumped my video light. Definitely a world class memorable dive.

The Palau Aggressor was even nicer and newer than the Truk Aggressor. After the second day of diving the crew told us we had dived three of the top ten dive sites in the world. Dives that really stand out for me were the Blue Holes, Blue Corner, Manta Rock, and Peliliu Corner. Every dive was an adventure. It just doesn’t get any better than this.

Fortunately our group enjoyed Truk/Palau so much that we went back in the summer of 1997. In 1999 we journeyed to the Caribbean and spent an exciting week on the Bay Islands Aggressor then another great week on the Belize Aggressor for some of the best diving in the Caribbean. Bonaire continues to impress us each summer.

In June of 2001 we ventured to the Galapagos Islands for two weeks of diving on the Galapagos Aggressor II.  We had an awesome adventure in Galapagos.  I got to swim with 19 whale sharks and saw numerous hammerheads, Galapagos sharks and even a few silky sharks.  The land excursions we did were also very educational and enjoyable.  The crew of the Galapagos Aggressor II were outstanding, even by Aggressor standards.  We had a great trip and will probably go back. 

Our 2002 Bonaire trip saw 27 divers enjoy another wonderful dive vacation.  I found a "black brotula" just off the dock at Habitat.  Danny Graham videoed it and we were able to show it to several of our divers.  We also got to see a spotted moray eat a parrot fish.

In June 2003 we led another trip back to Truk Lagoon and Palau.  This was our third trip to these two wonderful diving areas.   We spent a week on the Palau Aggressor first then went to Truk for a week on the Truk Aggressor.  This trip was another great adventure that all who joined us enjoyed immensely.  The shark dive at Truk was especially exciting and memorable.

July 2003 found us with a group of 30 excited divers back at Capt. Don's Habitat on the island of Bonaire.  After traveling all over the world diving Bonaire still ranks as one of our favorites. 

July 3 - 10, 2004 found us returning once again to Capt Don's Habitat on Bonaire for another wonderful week of diving at our favorite dive destination.  40 excited divers joined us.

In August 2004 we led a group of 16 to the Bay Islands Aggressor and then on to the Belize Aggressor.  Great diving was enjoyed by all.  We did have some rough weather while on the Belize Aggressor.  The anchor wouldn't hold and we had to return to port for a while.  Everything worked out OK.   Just another exciting adventure.

In 2005 we led our largest group yet to Bonaire.  Forty six divers explored the beautiful coral reefs and marine life of Bonaire from Capt. Don's Habitat.

In late June we left for a week on the Cayman Aggressor.  Stingray City was an awesome dive that we all enjoyed along with other sites.  The water was clear, but I'm very concerned about the health of the coral in the Caymans.  A large percentage of it appeared to be dead.

Late July 2006 found us back at Capt. Don's Habitat for our 20th Anniversary trip to this wonderful dive destination.  Thirty five lucky divers joined us.  The Bonaire Tourism Board recognized our group with their first ever Gold Ambassador Award to a dive shop.  Several of our group were also recognized with Bronze, Silver, and Gold Ambassador Awards!  Another great trip.

July 7 - 14, 2007 was Scuba WV's 21st consecutive trip to Capt. Don's Habitat on Bonaire.  Our group of 36 enjoyed the beautiful coral reefs and marine life of Bonaire.  The reefs and marine life appear healthy and vibrant!  Another enjoyable trip.

The adventure continues . . . .

MAKE BUBBLES! Jim