Mac had acquired a Boston Whaler and we used it to deliver supplies to the Pizzeria. Back then there was a large beach in front of the restaurant, and as long as the sea wasn’t surging the boat made deliveries easier. Mac’s Pizzeria was set in a prime location but it lacked an access road, a situation that was never easy when heavy goods had to be hauled. The whaler was also used for pleasure, it carried the family to the beach many a time……..
I had become an avid diver, and one day during the off-season Mac and I decided to dive for conch. Why pay divers for conch when we both had gear and could dive for it ourselves!? Mac and Diver Bob #2 devised a unique method for getting the huge snails to the surface; they attached the nets used for carrying masks and fins to BCs ( buoyancy compensators) and it was a clever idea. All we had to do was locate the conchs, load several at a time into the net bags, then inflate the BCs. The bags would then float to the surface and be pulled into the boat, making the work less onerous for the divers.
There was a large cluster of conchs in the harbor and we knew exactly where it was located. They were at a depth of about 60 feet, which would allow for an hour’s worth of work before the need to make decompression stops on our ascent. Mackie Simmons stayed in the Whaler, he would be spotting and collecting the net bags as they popped to the surface. Mac, Ann, Bob and I descended and started collecting the conchs. It was pretty easy work and the BCs worked like a charm, floating easily to the surface with the conchs once inflated.
Something I didn’t realize about such a dive is that your body reacts differently to the nitrogen when you perform manual labor, and I experienced Nitrogen Narcosis for the first time. Once I had sent all my net bags to the surface I started looking for old bottles, something I loved to do. As I scanned the sandy bottom I spotted a small octopus and grew excited; I had seen them before but always hidden in reefs, never exposed in such a manner, and I went down for a closer look.
All I can say is that I was “at one with nature” that day. The octopus didn’t scoot away, rather crept closer each time I put out my hand. I felt like I was dreaming, such a peaceful feeling crept over me as I interacted with the octopus. For the first time EVER I failed to keep an eye on my watch, a sure sign that I was intoxicated! Bob, aware that I always ascended from a dive well before my time was up, started to worry when he realized I hadn’t returned to the boat. He found me dreamily playing with the octopus on the ocean floor, totally oblivious to anything else. Bob probably saved my life that day.
We got our bags of conch ashore, and heaped them in front of the dive shop. Mac, with a hammer and chisel, began to show the rest of us how to extract the snail from the shell. Just a simple matter of whacking a hole in the point of the shell and severing whatever it is that holds the snail so tightly. Hmmm. Not so simple, it took us several hours and caused a lot of cursing. We never tried to supply ourselves with conch again, extracting those buggers was easier said than done!
Indeed. The one time I cleaned several conch I found that even harder than pounding the hole and cutting the muscle was getting the sticky slime off your hands after cutting out the two bits (the eyes and the ?). Even with beach sand and water it took a while, and then there was another conch to clean!