Shipwrecked

Statistically speaking, scuba diving is less dangerous than having a baby or driving to work. It is only slightly more lethal than table tennis. Your odds of perishing underwater are roughly 200,000-to-1. Your chances of being murdered on the way to Whole Foods, on the other hand, are 18,000-to-1. As always, the lesson is to quit your job and eat all the gluten-drenched trans fats you want. Also, don't have kids.

These comforting statistics were remarkably easy to forget the first time I penetrated a shipwreck. Breathing underwater is about the most unnatural thing a human being can do, short of laying eggs. It is a very deliberate slap in the face of reason, which may explain why so many people enjoy it. Like me, for example. However, breathing underwater while willingly swimming into a pitch-black aquatic labyrinth/tomb is more like punching reason in the nose and stealing its purse, then using its credit cards to buy $700 worth of indoor marshmallow roasters. Sure, you could do that (it wouldn't even be that hard, really), but why?

Well, you could probably see a lot of interesting marine life down there. After all, a shipwreck is basically a giant artificial reef, and reefs are teeming with Nemos and Flounders and all the other cuddly anthropomorphic sweethearts of the sea, right?

Just keep swimming, mother*****.

Sure they are! They're right next to the lovable stonefish, the most venomous little bastard in the Pacific and a creature widely considered to cause the worst pain known to man. And to your left we can see the unmistakable fin rays of the lionfish - you can pet them if you don't mind the subsequent paralysis, heart failure, and death. Also, if you like to be spooked by camouflaged prehistoric hellbeasts, there's a scorpionfish! And a crocodile fish!

Like when you found the cat sleeping in your cereal bowl, if your cat's whiskers could kill you.

Why are the pretty ones always venomous?

No touching!

At this point, it seems that wreck diving is mainly an opportunity for divers to either: A) get lost in a vast underwater maze, panic, and drown, or B) get stung by a venomous sea creature, suffer excruciating pain, and then drown. So why would anyone in his/her right mind decide to go wreck diving?

For me, the answer was found in a book called Shadow Divers. It focused on two American wreck divers and their quest to identify a mystery U-boat which sank off the coast of New Jersey. Although Shadow Divers is nonfiction it reads like a novel, full of boozed-up skippers and underwater piracy and, of course, Nazis.  It also presents a frank depiction of the dangers of wreck diving. The U-Who, as the mystery sub was called, claimed the lives of many top-notch divers. Worst were the deaths of Chris and Chrissy Rouse, a father-son team who succumbed to decompression sickness ('the bends') after making an emergency ascent to the surface from nearly 70m/230ft, their blood literally bubbling in their veins.

Still, when I finished the book I could not wait to dive a wreck. For a lifelong history nerd the appeal was obvious. I'd spent much of my childhood reading about the savage naval battles of the Pacific during World War II. Here was a chance to combine my love of the past with my love of the sea. And maybe take some cool pictures along the way.

~

Coron is a small island in the Philippines, slightly north of Palawan. There is absolutely nothing to do in the town proper, nor in the surrounding area, which is mountainous and densely forested. If you don't speak scuba, Coron may be the single most boring town in the Philippines.

However, Coron boasts some of the best wreck-diving in the world. The neighboring seas are littered with Japanese ships sunk by an American airstrike during World War II. Some of the wrecks are quite shallow, less than 18m/60ft beneath the surface. Others are much deeper - on one dive we reached a depth of 37m/121ft, near the limit for recreational diving. There are oil tankers, seaplane tenders, troop transports, and gunboats. The water is a balmy 30°C/86°F, and marine life is abundant. In short it is a novice wreck diver's paradise.

I dived with a group called Rocksteady. They are, to the best of my knowledge, the only Rastafarian-themed / German-owned diveshop on the island. I decided to complete a Wreck Diver Specialty course, which is basically an overpriced confirmation from the global pyramid scheme known as PADI (Professional Association of Diving Instructors or, as it is colloquially known, Put Another Dollar In) that its holder is not completely incompetent underwater. I chose Rocksteady because its staff were courteous, professional, and safety-oriented, and also because their boats were painted like giant bongs.

The Coast Guard must be constantly pulling these guys over.

The first time I dived on a wreck, all I could think about was Rose, that chick from Titanic. Not that one, this one. As I swam through the dark, twisted passages of the wreck I heard her shaky old lady voice narrating an imaginary history of the ship. I laughed when she described how they used the squatters at sea. Man, she's old.

Submerged commode.

Other sights were far more sobering. At one point, I passed through a large, shadowy room behind my Filipino dive instructor. He turned to look at me, and seemed to scratch his cheek. I struggled to remember what this meant in complicated scuba sign language. I checked my gauges, dive computer, hoses...everything, but he still kept scratching his cheek. Finally he wiggled his dive torch at a barnacle-encrusted shelf, and I realized what he was trying to show me. It was a human jawbone.

No humans in this cargo hold, luckily.

I took no pictures of the remains, out of equal parts respect and superstition. It was my first personal experience with a harsh, undeniable truth: the ocean is a wonderland, but it is also a graveyard.   The danger and the beauty can't be separated.

That's why we always go back.