Beware of Greenwashing!
What is greenwashing and what can you do to protect yourself?

Companies have started realizing that doing good for the planet is good for business. Unfortunately, they’ve also figured out that making consumers think they’re doing good can be just as beneficial. This deception is known as “greenwashing.” The term refers to a marketing technique whereby a company falsely claims to have taken environmentally friendly actions.

According to a 2007 report by TerraChoice Environmental Marketing, a large majority of environmental marketing claims are inaccurate, inappropriate, or unsubstantiated. Some good news can be had in the fact that the Federal Trade Commission is currently looking to tighten its voluntary environmental marketing guidelines. However, keep in mind that these will still be voluntary, not enforced.

The most blatant greenwashers are often large corporations that have had a controversial environmental past, such as chemical, oil and car companies. For example, an energy corporation might tout the fact that it’s investing millions of dollars in sustainable sources of energy while concurrently dumping toxins into public waterways.

A more easily identifiable form of greenwashing can be found at your grocery store. Numerous companies have started using the word “natural” on their household cleaning and personal care products to entice consumers who are looking for an eco-friendly alternative. “Natural” may sound healthy and planet-friendly but it means very little since there is no third-party certification required to make that claim.

Here are some ways you can identify greenwashing:

1. Examine the claim. Is the product certified by a legitimate third party organization? Are they claiming that the entire product is green or just some of the ingredients/materials?

2. Ask for proof. Is the company willing to provide a copy of the environmental standard or testing protocol? Is the process open, public and transparent? Does it address the product’s lifecycle and larger environmental effects?

3. Check for consistency. If this is an international organization, are they selling the same products in other countries? If they advertised themselves as ‘green’, are they still doing what they claim to be doing six months or a year after the ad came out?

4. Follow the money. What organizations is the company supporting? Who are they donating their money to?

To learn more about greenwashing and companies that are and are not doing it, check you these sites:

• Corp Watch

• The EnviroMedia Greenwashing Index

• Greener Choices

• Do The Right Thing

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A beautiful calm morning gave way to a very rough afternoon but that wasn’t enough to deter our divers. Today is my last day on expedition and my job is to be on board the boat to watch out for Tooni and Paul who are diving the caves and also do my final interview. A pretty light day, which is often times the most frustrating because I have very little to do. Thank goodness the ocean swell was calm enough that we could get close to the cliffs and get in the caves. They did a total of 4 dives in the caves and it sounds like it was a total success. I couldn’t dive because I fly out tomorrow morning to Sydney and then to San Francisco and then to Boston, where I am going to be for two days, to give a speech to the New England Aquarium and then on to Atlanta for another two days of meetings before finally going home. It has been a great trip and we are all really sorry to see it winding down. Tasmania is a beautiful country and everyone we met has been fantastic. Our boat, the Odelisque, Captain Peter, first mate David and everyone else are superb people and I am sorry to go.

We got back to port and I was informed by the producer Penny, one of my favorite people of the entire series, that she arranged a visit for me to the Tasmanian Devil conservation park where they have Tasi Devils in captivity. She organized them to stay open late so that I could see them before I go. I was quite excited about the chance to see one of the most iconic animals in popular imagination; not to mention that I am a huge Looney Toons fan and grew up with Tas spinning in circles and eating everything in his path. We loaded the van and raced out of the harbor to the park just in time to see them being fed. While they are a lot smaller than I expected and…disappointed (sigh)…they don’t spin in circles. However, they are ferocious little beasts and make a heck of a lot of noise.

The keeper who was feeding them confirmed that they are scavengers that stop at nothing to get food and can bite right through bones. Their bite pressure is 2,800 pounds per square inch, that is slightly less than crocodiles at 3,000 psi, and a lot more than humans who can bite with a paltry 200 pounds per square inch!!! They can do this because their jaw muscle extends all the way down their spine to their tail so it is like their entire body chomping down. This enables them to eat anything and bite right through the thickest, hardest bones, fur, teeth…you name it. They are even known to have devoured the remains of hikers who have already died of other causes in the woods, eating everything and leaving only a few bits of cloth and boot to tell the tale. (Note, they are scavengers and don’t do the initial killing).

An incredible day to be sure and a fitting end to an amazing adventure. While not like the other hot places that we have been filming, Tasmania is just as exotic and gives visitors the feeling of being at the end of the earth. Indeed, it is easy to see how bygone sailors, convinced the world was flat, must have gazed out upon the horizon and imagined the world ending in a spectacular edge beyond which there existed nothing and over which would spill any unwary mariner foolish enough to venture too close. Next trip is to the Arctic and then we wrap. Hard to believe it has been a year already. See you in June.

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I’m back at Eagleneck today and it was a beautiful day. Totally calm and almost zero wind, it was the nicest day yet. Not much to report today as it was a light one. Last night was so long that everyone was pretty tired. The drive back from St. Helens was a long one and Simon, Ruth, Nick, Daniel and I got a little lost and ended up on a slightly roundabout course back home. It ended up well though as we passed through Cambeltown, a small town in central Tasmania, and found a great Italian restaurant. All is well that ends well…with a full stomach we finally got home around 11, unpacked and got to bed.

This morning was a rather late start; we met at 9:30 and headed out from Pirate’s Bay to film the deployment of the glider, a small oceanographic robot that can be sent autonomously into the ocean to record various data over a month long period, which is part of a research project by Australia’s national scientific organization CSIRO. Technology has come so far in the last few years and it is now possible to record oceanographic data such as current direction, depth and speed, ocean temperature, light, salinity, dissolved oxygen and more without sending a full research vessel into the field like before. Our job today was to provide the platform for the scientists to test the unit in the field before a full deployment and after some initial challenges it worked beautifully. This kind of thing is more my co-presenter Paul’s passion and he and the other co-presenter Tooni were covering this story. I spent most of the afternoon helping out and writing, though I confess I sneaked a small nap in too.

Tomorrow is my last day and Paul and Tooni are going to be attempting to dive the caves they were unable to do last week because of weather. I will be topside again and doing my best to keep things as safe and smooth as possible.

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After a lovely evening, coupled with a few glasses of port, everyone slept quite well. It was another early start ahead of us, but we were pretty excited about the day ahead. While the dive crew stayed behind prepping the dive gear for the afternoon’s dives; my co-presenter Tooni, myself, Nick, the topside cameraman, Simon, our incredible soundman, and Daniel and Penny, the assistant producer and episode producer, respectively met early outside the hotel and piled in one van to head off to a research lab. We were off to explore some pretty exciting science that is being conducted in northern Tasmania.

One of the big problems facing the Tasmanian coastal eco-system health is sea urchins. Brought by the warmer currents slowly shifting further and further south, large black sea urchins are taking over and without a healthy ecosystem and enough predators such as lobster to eat them they are wreaking havoc. Sea urchins are voracious eaters and they will clear a large area of vegetation rather quickly. Because they don’t have many predators, due to their armor of long sharp spines, there is little to stand in their way.

In Tasmania, one of the only things that can eat the urchins are large mature lobsters that can hover over the urchin without getting speared and reach around to flip it over to get access to the vulnerable underbelly. Unfortunately, the lobster fishery in Australia is very lucrative, and while it is heavily managed, huge amounts of lobster are removed every year. Thus, without enough lobster to counter the surge of sea urchins, the little spiny eating machines clear entire areas of plant life and leave barren rocky substrate in their wake. Indeed, these areas are known as ‘urchin barrens’ and when we dove on one I was shocked that an area that had previously been rich with kelp and seaweed and thus a healthy diverse eco-system had become a wasteland. It looked as though an entire forest had been clear-cut, leaving nothing in its wake except slow moving spiny tanks, lording over the devastation.

We worked with scientists packing up 300 lobsters into bins and transporting them to special designated areas, to release them as part of a monitoring effort over the next few months to determine if the lobsters will actually counter the urchin onslaught. The scientists paid local fisherman to supply them with large lobsters and then kept them in tanks until they had about 500 animals. The scientists tagged each lobster with a PIT tag, similar to what they put in dogs and cats, as well as injected harmless silicone gel into their tails for identification. Today was the big release and we accompanied the scientists down onto the urchin barren and started releasing 6-10 pound lobsters, hundreds of them, back into the ocean. This was conservation biology at its best and Tooni and I were both proud to be part of it. Nothing like that had ever been done before and there is a lot of optimism about the success of the project.

Over the next few months scientists will be setting traps along the coast to test the dispersal of the lobsters and then test their fecal matter to see if they are eating urchins. This was the culmination of a lot of work and while it is tremendously exciting I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was too little too late. The kelp forests are so important to the health of these coastal eco-systems as well as the commercial fisheries that are a huge part of the local economy. Yet, there seems to be a disturbing amount of apathy regarding their disappearance and in a world where so much money is devoted to war and tax breaks for billion dollar companies, I can’t help but be angry at the terrible uphill struggle and lack of resources that these kinds of projects and the incredibly dedicated scientists that fight for them suffer from. That aside, this project is a sign of hope and we are all excited to hear about what happens down the road.

The second lobster dive was in a healthy area and it was my last dive of the trip. The next few days will be spent topside, filming content for the Oceans website, supporting the other team members in their work and catching up on interviews and more. After we got out of the water Tooni gave me a big hug and we both commented on how much fun we have had diving together this trip. From the weedy sea dragon to lobsters to kelp forests, we have really gotten used to experiencing some incredible things. She is such an incredible diver, it makes the job easy and the more we thought about it the more we realized how far the team had come since the first trips.

In the first expedition things were really difficult but now they are almost second nature. On the dives, there are so many things that we have to keep in mind. We have to regulate the air in our dry suit, flush our masks of CO2, keep our eye on our buddy, the camera, and the subject, check our air, make sure we stay in position despite surge or current, maintain buoyancy, avoid knocking into coral or animals, all while having a conversation with our co-presenter and remembering all the information we have to deliver on camera and doing it eloquently. It is quite a feat and we are only now getting good at it. My next dives will be in the Arctic for the final episode. Amazing how fast time has gone by, it is going to be a great program and we are all very lucky to have been a part of it.

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This morning was dominated by random showers and bustling winds. The dolorite cliffs looked especially foreboding and tragic with the rainfall, which was a cold, humid kind of rain that only happens in this type of climate. A damp kind of wet that clings to you even after the sun has wrestled its way through the clouds.

The morning filming didn’t last too long, Tooni and Paul were supposed to dive in sea caves along the coast but the ocean swell was too high and it was thus far too dangerous to dive. After a short recon dive, Paul came back exhausted and confirmed that the water was too rough. So we headed back to Pirate’s Bay amid schools of hundreds of dolphin. It was early when we got back to the hotel but we still had a long way to go.

This afternoon we drove up towards northern Tasmania to a place called St. Helens. It was a long drive and as I sat there staring out the window at the rain washed roads with huge rainbows framing the mountains and mist blanketing the grassy fields with sheep drifting in and out of view I felt overwhelmed. There are times like that, when I find myself lost in wonder at how beautiful the world can be and how lucky I am to see it this way. Not to get sentimental but it is so easy to get wrapped up in all the minutiae of life and never take in the bigger picture. The rain fell intermittently even though the sky was blue, with only a few stubborn clouds clinging on. I know it’s a common cliché to ‘stop and smell the roses’ but I suppose it is so enduring because while those roses are all around us, appreciation of them is often fleeting.

After an hour or so I drifted off to sleep only to be awoken an hour later by a pit stop for everyone to get out and stretch. By the time we got to St. Helens it was about 8 and we were all famished. After a quick dinner we spent a couple of hours sitting by the fire sipping a few glasses of port and planning for tomorrow. The hotel is quite a stopover for retirees and so we were serenaded for most of the night by a lounge singer with a synthesizer, singing old Wayne Newton and Frank Sinatra songs. Some of the crew got up and joined in and everyone had a good laugh. We work hard on these shoots but every once in a while we get a chance to kick back and relax. By 11 most of the crew had faded away and it was only a handful of us diehards left. Yes, that’s right folks if you last to 11 on these shoots you are considered a diehard…how times change. Anyway, tomorrow is early and we will be wrangling some pretty incredible monsters so we finally packed it in and headed off to catch some sleep.

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Yes, that’s right folks, I had the morning off today. After more than a week of non-stop action, I was informed that I wasn’t needed for the morning shoot. While I never like to slack off (of course the occasional goofing off is entirely different as the hilarious columnist Dave Barry once wrote “you can only be young once, but you can always be immature”), the rest was much needed. So this morning I was more than willing to take a few hours for myself to get some rest, make a nice cooked breakfast and just have some me time. While they told me it was because I wasn’t in any of the segments and that I was all caught up on topside filming, I wonder if it didn’t have a little bit to do with the shopping bags that had permanently taken root under my eyes. Now, once again, I feel like a human, though some people might still question that, I guess everything is relative ;)

On top of that, I get to cook a barbecue tonight for all of us on the boat. Sophie, our amazing production coordinator, was able to go shopping this morning and get all the ingredients needed for a proper Yankee style barbecue, but you’ll have to wait to see what I made.

Side note: only yours truly could devote two whole paragraphs to sleeping and food and I’m still not done. You see, I love good food (must be the French in me) and I hate to eat good food alone, therefore I had to learn to cook. With excellent training from my mother growing up, four years in Scotland forced me to try and perfect my culinary skills and so far I have heard few complaints.

But enough of that, Tooni and I both had the morning off, she has been suffering from a cold and has been forging ahead with no complaints. Yesterday, her ears wouldn’t clear and so I had to do half the dive by myself. A shame really, because she is so good underwater, she always has great observations and is an excellent diver. After a full night’s rest we were hoping she had recovered enough to dive; with a little luck she was able to finally clear her ears. Good thing too, because it turned out to be a great dive, a little cloudy, but still worth it.

Even though the kelp is in pretty terrible shape here, it is still amazing to dive in. As the thick stalks rise to the surface, shafts of light come dancing down into the water and dart between the huge, surging green leaves. So the dive went off without a hitch and everyone was pleased to have another segment complete. I was eager to get out of the water because we have a BBQ onboard and it was time to get her fired up and ready.

I made my favorite, teriyaki, earlier in the day and had 7 beautiful Tasmanian steaks marinating in it for the last 10 hours. For the vegetarians I had some veggie burgers and as a side for everyone I had prepared garlic-baked potatoes. A recipe taught to me by my good friend Steve McCulloch. I cut a slit in the potato and stuffed in garlic, butter and salt and pepper. Then I wrapped the potatoes in foil and barbecued them along with the meat until they were soft. The meat was delicious and the potatoes were piled high with sour cream and chives. It was a big hit and everyone chowed down. We filmed the BBQ, so it will be a part of the episode. More importantly, it felt good to be hovering over a BBQ off the coast of Tasmania with cold beer in hand and good friends all around.

Tonight I will sleep well.

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I woke up early this morning, some wild dream had dominated my sleep last night and while I don’t remember the details, it has been a trend since I got here. Vivid dreams all night, much more than usual and it’s not just me, everyone has been having crazy dreams every night. No worries, I was excited about the day ahead and quickly showered and got my gear ready. Tooni and I were to dive in some of the last remaining patches of kelp forests in Tasmania.

It has been over a year since the last time I went diving in giant kelp and that was off the coast of northern California. I love diving in kelp, it is one of the most majestic experiences to be had underwater. Kelp is the largest marine plant in the world and can grow up to a foot and a half a day! Sprouting forth from thick stalks attached to boulders on the ocean floor, kelp can rise 30…40…50 feet to the surface in huge swaying stalks of green and red seaweed. At its best, giant kelp grows thick and resembles a forest that provides refuge for a wide array of creatures, thus representing some of the most biodiverse ecosystems in the world.

Huge swaths of giant kelp used to cover the coast of eastern Tasmania and southern Australia but in the last 50 years, and most drastically in the last 10, there has been a devastating decline in the kelp forests. Scientists believe that this is largely because of climate change and the warm water currents that are flowing further and futher south each year. Kelp requires clean, clear, cold water and water temperatures are rising too high for them to survive. Now only a few patches of kelp remain and they are not very impressive.

I have been diving in kelp forests off the coast of California, but this one was a real letdown. It is one of the most incredible diving experiences to dive through a kelp forest. It gives you a sense of flying more so than almost any other type of dive.

We nailed two kelp dives and then spent the rest of the afternoon getting our gear together, doing routine maintenance and a few more topside discussions. Then it was back to base and dinner. It was a long day but a good one. I just indulged in a beer with some of the crew and I’m ready for some sleep. Tomorrow is a pretty light day. The weather is not cooperating and we are not going to be able to leave the bay. I was told that I wasn’t needed until late morning which means that I will have a chance to…yup…you guessed it, sleep in! Not that I am excited or anything…;)

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The weather is moving in on us and everyone is getting nervous. The good news is that last night our underwater housing went down. We had to film the weedy seadragon with the small HDV camera, not the full high def, and everyone was freaking out. This is a high def program and while a few segments can be filmed with the HDV that is not true high def and without a working underwater camera housing, our entire shoot was in doubt. However, this morning after working all day yesterday, Ian and Peter West had completely stripped the camera and re-built it and it appears to be fixed. So crisis averted, everyone was relieved that we could continue the shoot. If they couldn’t fix it, we would have had to send for another one, which could have taken days at an incredible cost.

The luck of the Oceans team strikes again and so we headed out to sail along the rugged coast to film the ship from a helicopter. Aerials are a standard sequence in every shoot and they are essential to establishing the ship on location. As we sailed along the coast, in the shadow of giant dolorite (a type of rock) cliffs jutting violently out of the ocean, we were overwhelmed with the feeling of being at the end of the earth.

The helicopter left us by midday and we carried on filming topside sequences of the four of us working around the boat, prepping gear and planning for the next few days. As I mentioned earlier, the weather is beginning to act up and we are busy preparing various contingency plans depending on what happens. By mid afternoon we headed back to shore and Lucy, Tooni, Teresa (dive safety) and I took 30 minutes to hike along the shore back to the trucks via a trail along the coast. We were moored up offshore of the Tasman National Park and thought it a terrible shame not to see even a little bit of what the terrain looks like. It felt wonderful to be able to hike through the forest. The trees were even more beautiful close up than they were from afar and as they towered up above us there was a real sense of primordial greatness enveloping you in a green blanket. Tasmania is famous for its natural beauty and majestic forests and it didn’t disappoint.

We didn’t have much time though, as Lucy and I had to get back to Eaglehawk Bay where we had filmed the Maori octopus, to film one last segment. The water is so shallow we wanted to see if we could film them from the surface but as we boarded the small boat to take us into the bay, clouds had obscured the setting sun and all but ruined any chances of seeing them. We only lasted an hour before giving up, it was just too dark and besides, I had a very important date to get back for.

Of course, that date was a pile of groceries and I was very excited. It is no secret I love to cook and so with the help of the intrepid Sophie, our incredible production coordinator, I had planned a small dinner party for Tooni, Paul, Lucy and myself. Believe it or not, in the 10 months or so we have been filming this expedition the four of us have never had a chance to sit down and spend some time together away from the cameras and the insanity of a film shoot. On the menu was one of my favorite things to cook. Simple but tasty comfort food: homemade mushroom pesto with penne and asparagus.

NOTE: See pesto recipe below then sauté a cup of mixed mushrooms (shitake, cremini, chanterelle and dried porcini) in olive oil and a little minced garlic and blend into the pesto before stirring into cooked penne and asparagus.

It was great to get the four of us together and drink some wine, share some stories and have a good laugh reminiscing about all the adventures we have shared together.
By 10:30 we were all full and tired and called it a night. With a full stomach and another solid beautiful day behind me I have no doubt that sleep will be upon me momentarily.

Pesto Recipe

Ingredients:
(also try parsley and maybe rosemary, or add a little Pecorino Romano to the Parmesan, about two parts parmesan to one part Pecorino, to spice it up once you get used to making the normal one. You can also add some mushrooms to the mix like chanterelle, dried porcini and shitake for a mushroom pesto, then mix it with asparagus tips and stir into a simple pasta like fettuccine or penne)

Get really fresh good parmesan and some good first cold pressed Greek olive oil.

Remember that Pesto is really easy, and great with small potatoes, or diluted as a dressing, or on chicken for a sandwich or in a salad.
It is all about taste, play around with it to be nuttier or cheesier or more basil…y.

2oz basil (one fistful)
1oz pine nuts, toasted (the actual amount doesn’t really matter as long as they are about equal parts pine nuts to cheese)
1oz parmesan cheese, freshly grated
1 to two cloves garlic (depending on your taste), peeled and crushed
olive oil until it is the consistency that suits you.
Juice from half a lemon (depending on your taste)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Preparation:
1. Blend the parmesan until it is completely ground up.
2. Toast the pine nuts in the oven under a broiler until they begin to smell nutty and then take them out. It is very easy to burn them so be careful.
3. Whiz together and with the motor still running, pour the oil in until the pesto thickens.
4. Add the basil while the motor is still running and keep adding it until the pesto turns a nice deep green color.
5. Add the minced garlic and lemon juice and a teaspoon of salt and pepper.

Storage:
Store in a clean jar in the fridge covered with a thin layer of olive oil to prevent it drying out

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Port Arthur was the target this morning, we went diving off Port Arthur the day before but we hadn’t explored it from the surface. It was cold and we were tired but the penitentiary was incredibly beautiful and the story was fascinating. We were able to explore the various buildings and workplaces and it brought the whole place alive. One could almost see the ghosts of the thousand or so convicts toiling away in the shipyards and workshops. You could almost hear the sounds of a generation of people shipped 12,000 miles around the world to a totally foreign place to serve their sentence in hard labor. The suffering that must have occurred is unimaginable and it is an interesting juxtaposition from the manicured lawns and perfect walk paths that now crisscross the site.

Topside complete, we quickly made our way back to the ship to prep for our dive in search of one of the most exotic and almost mythical creatures in the ocean…the Weedy Sea Dragon. We sailed along some of the most rugged coastline in the world and were all pretty excited about the chance to see these incredible creatures. Native to this part of the world, the weedy sea dragon is a rare creature and one that is disappearing. Their main habitat is kelp forests, which are quickly shrinking, thanks to warm water currents that are making their way further south due to climate change. In just the past 10 years the kelp has virtually disappeared from the eastern coast of Tasmania. Kelp forests are some of the most biodiverse ecosystems in the ocean, home to an incredible array of creatures. We were going to explore one kelp forest to search for the most incredible of all creatures.

I met up with Tooni and the rest of the crew and we headed out on the Odelisque, our expedition boat, for about a half hour along the coast. There is no question that we were all tired. Tooni and Paul had just returned from a long, three-day satellite trip to the western coast of Tasmania and Lucy and I had been spending our nights in cold dark water searching for the Maori octopus. However, the prospect of seeing a weedy seadragon was enough to keep us all going.

The water off the coast of Tasmania is rough and violent and tossed the ship around like a cork until we found solace in a calm bay that is home to some of the last small patches of kelp.

Tooni and I suited up and jumped in the water, a little nervous and worried at our prospects of finding these well camouflaged creatures. A local biologist had just been in the water before us to try and pinpoint a few for us to film and she had spent over an hour without finding a single one. If her trained eyes couldn’t see any, then I was doubtful that either of us would have a shot. 10…20…30…40 minutes went by and nothing. Tooni and I were both getting quite discouraged, when all of a sudden, I looked up and there it was, right in front of me, a creature so bizarre, so colorful and beautiful that I could hardly believe my eyes.

I had found a Weedy Sea Dragon and I could barely contain my excitement, as I yelled into the mask and gestured wildly for Tooni to come over. It was almost mythical in shape and color, we both marveled at its beauty as it slowly, rhythmically swam through the kelp swaying back and forth in unison with the kelp. Most likely it was a female, she tolerated us for the rest of the dive and when we surfaced everyone was in high spirits. We needed a solid success and we finally had one. No question about it, the dive was a hit and we surfaced to some very excited faces. Through our communications equipment the crew on the surface could hear our enthusiasm and everyone was thrilled. It was a big win and we needed it.

We quickly made our way back to shore and celebrated with a toast of wine and good food before retiring. Another big day today but if it is anything like this one, it will be great.

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Today was quite a day. Running out of air is not a good thing when you are 30 feet underwater and, as one can imagine, can lead to a major disaster and even death. Not just because of the obvious possibility of suffocating but because of the urge to ascend to the surface too quickly and the deadly air embolism that such a rapid ascent can cause. As my lungs burned I had to keep control and methodically swim to the surface. Once there, I tore my mask off and gasped in the fresh air. Of course, when I got out of bed this morning such an emergency was far from my mind.

We always knew it was shaping up to be a long one, but I must say, it turned out to be a real slog. Don’t get me wrong, Tasmania is an incredible place and we are all thrilled to be here but we are all very very tired. The plan was to get to Port Arthur, the site of a convict penitentiary, and do several dives during the day and then head back to the Maori octopus site and do one last dive with them. So we started early and headed off to the Port. A pretty incredible place it is a powerful reminder that the oceans play a critical role in the development of our society, our culture, our past, our present and even our future. When Great Britain started sending convicts to Tasmania in the 19th century, it was only partly because of the distance from home. It also had a large part to do with the fact that southern Tasmania is bordered by some of the roughest seas in the world. A great deterrent to any convicts attempting to escape. Over a short period of time Tasmania received about 75,000 convicts who were forced into labor camps to build ships, mine coal, or harvest timber as part of their sentence. Port Arthur was one of the largest such convict camps and dozens of ships and tons of various goods were built there over the decades between the 1830’s and 1850’s.

Our goal was to explore some of the wrecks off the coast of the port and try to catch a glimpse of what life must have been like. Lucy chose a site right off the coast, where a small barge had sunk and where there was still a large amount of material still on the bottom. I was really looking forward to another archeological dive with Lucy, they are always so incredibly interesting, her knowledge and enthusiasm brings the entire experience alive. Unfortunately, our communications equipment went down and all we could hear was a constant buzzing in our ears that drove us crazy the entire dive. On top of that, one of my hoses malfunctioned towards the end of the dive and started spewing air violently, whipping around and rapidly depleting my oxygen supply. There I was minding my own business and all of a sudden it was as if an air bomb had gone off. I quickly assessed the situation as my air supply rapidly dwindled; I had no choice but to swim to the surface while I managed to keep my wits about me and not panic. It was a pretty scary experience, which served to reinforce the serious nature of what we are doing. Onboard the boat, everyone was pretty worried but I assured them that everything was alright. Once I had caught my breath I was a little shaken but more concerned about testing my gear and making sure I could do the next dive.

Apparently one of the valves hadn’t been seated in the regulator properly, which was promptly fixed and after a long surface interval to rest we were given the okay to get back on the wreck. The second time around the communications equipment still didn’t work (it had been down the first dive too) and I was very disappointed. While I could make out some of the material, not being able to hear Lucy crippled my appreciation for what I was seeing. Her knowledge and enthusiasm is infectious and can bring what would seemingly be a pile of rubble to life. Thoroughly cold, wet, and disheartened by the malfunctioning equipment we all made our way back to base. While the dive was an overall success it just seemed like everything was ganging up on us to make life difficult at best.

I kept my drysuit on for the journey to the octopus dive site so that as soon as we arrived we could pile the gear into the boat and head out on the water. We had seen an animal the night before so we were hoping to get a betting glimpse and more footage tonight. Well, that was not to be. By the time we made it out there, with the help of local fishermen who found some octopi, the visibility was so bad that even the camera couldn’t see more than a foot away. The communications were still going haywire and screaming static in our ears, the visibility was worse than I had ever seen it and the cold was creeping into our bones and successfully penetrated every nook and cranny of our beings. By 9PM we had struggled enough and called it quits. Thoroughly disheartened, we made our way to a late dinner and a welcome glass of wine before retiring to bed. Tomorrow we return to Port Arthur and then, weather permitting, to the kelp forests off shore but right now all I can think of is my head on my pillow.

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