Dive! Dive! 01/08/21

Grayton Beach State Park, Santa Rosa Beach, Florida

Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence.  God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways.  ~ Genesis 6:11-12

I’ve recently discovered a mostly user-driven website (that means people who visit places add their pictures and information) called atlasobscura.com.  It’s a fantastic website for locating ‘off the beaten path’ kind of stuff all over the world.  Sort of along the lines of TripAdvisor, but without the reviews.

It led us to today’s outing – Man In The Sea Museum.

This place was pretty unique, but needs quite a bit of work.  It’s a museum for diving that began in 1982, and has recently moved to its current location in Panama City.  There were only two people working there – a woman who’s a paid employee and keeps the place open Thursday-Sunday from 10-4, and her volunteer husband who’s a retired deep-sea diver for the Navy.  I say they’re retired, but they seemed to be in their mid-forties.  Extremely nice couple who bent over backwards to make sure we had a great visit.

Once we were in, she turned on a movie for us.  She said it was an hour long and I had grave doubts about sitting through something that long, but it turned out to be well done, and very interesting.  The time flew by! 

It was about the history of saturation diving.  I know.  You’re beginning to doubt my sanity now, aren’t you?

You’ll just have to trust me.

Saturation diving is deep-sea diving in which the bloodstream is saturated with helium (and yes, they talk funny!) or other gas to enable them to dive to great depths and remain there for as long as necessary. 

It involves breathing pressurized air. Inert gases in it, such as nitrogen, dissolve benignly into your blood and tissues—as long as the weight of all the water above you keeps them compressed. But when you want to return to the surface, that gas needs time to diffuse out slowly. If not, if a diver shot straight to the surface, the gas would form bubbles, like in a shaken can of soda. Inside that diver’s body, it would be as if millions of tiny explosives began to detonate. Known as the bends or, more technically, decompression sickness, the condition can be catastrophically painful and debilitating, and, depending on the depth, nearly impossible to survive. Diving to 250 feet for an hour, for example, would require a five-hour ascent to avoid getting even slightly bent. ~ article accidently discovered on atlasobscura.com

The above article is very long, but interesting.  Should you want to check it out, go to https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/what-is-a-saturation-diver

I found several different salary bases on-line, so I don’t know which is accurate – anywhere from $30,000-$180,000/year.  That’s a huge difference!!  Maybe it depends on how deep they have to go?

The museum is home to SeaLab I, the product of pioneer researcher and developer George Bond.  It was built and used for research purposes during the mid-1960s, around the same time men were first orbiting the moon.  This drew attention away from the outstanding breakthroughs being done under the sea.

When astronaut Scott Carpenter heard about what was going on, he volunteered to be a guinea pig for the project.  He was convinced that more could be done and developed under the sea than could ever be done in space.

Anyway, despite its small size and need for upgrading, it was a good visit, and one we really enjoyed!

Except we were freezing outside!  More wind, and temperatures only in the mid-forties!  Yikes!

Back home, we were able to warm up, before heading out for dinner at Bayou Bill’s.  I wanted seafood, and this place was rated the best.  In addition, it was more reasonably priced and offered actual plates of real food, instead of the “foo-foo” places that we found online.

The Blue Crab dip appetizer was very good, the broiled seafood platters we ordered were good, but they sprinkled everything with the same orange dusting, so it all had the same flavor.  We prefer our broiled seafood without seasoning so you can taste the individual flavors of the Mahi, shrimp, scallops and deviled crab.  We didn’t know, or we probably would’ve asked them to leave off the seasoning.  And we took Key Lime pie slices home for dessert.  Yummy!

I was unable to locate a picture of the Key Lime Pie, but it was different. It was, how shall I describe it?, fluffy? But it was nice and tart! Wonderful end to our day!