Under the Ice. Photo by Zach Whalen.

I’ll be honest with you – I tend to stay on top of the water when I’m in the ocean. Or, I try, anyway. As a surfer the goal is to spend as little time underwater as possible. Especially in the winter. But I’m starting to think I’m missing out on something by avoiding the chilly depths of our Gulf of Maine.

The Boston Sea Rovers, one of the oldest underwater clubs in the nation, hosted its 59^th annual show this past weekend, and I was lucky enough to be there with some fellow CLFers. We went to talk about the importance of preserving valuable habitat, like Cashes Ledge, for protecting our fragile ocean ecosystems and helping our dwindling groundfish stocks recover.

We hoped that by showing people Brian Skerry’s beautiful photographs of the gorgeous kelp forest and amazing animals of Cashes Ledge, the divers would be inspired to help us protect it. They were – we got hundreds of signatures on our petition to ask our fisheries managers to protect essential habitat in the Gulf of Maine. And, while we may have gone there to talk, we ended up doing a lot of listening as well. Here are just a few things I learned after spending two days talking with divers:

• The Gulf of Maine is an excellent place to dive. There are so many wonderful animals to see here.
• But visibility often stinks. This is partly due to the very productive nature of our waters. As phytoplankton bloom and the food chain gets going, it gets a little harder to see. Or, poor visibility can be due to human activities in the water (see next bullet).
• The ocean floor looks pretty bad after a bottom trawler comes through. I heard this dozens of times this weekend. “It looks like a freshly plowed field,” said one diver, and you can see the sediment plume from miles away.
• The next time I want to talk to divers about the amazing beauty of Cashes Ledge, I’d better bring a map so they know how to get there and see for themselves.
• The Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and the Discovery Channel have partnered to develop a robot that can follow a white shark. Seriously. I saw the footage. More on this later in the month (yes, I am totally geeking out on this).

I also learned that, in spite of difficulties equalizing my ears underwater, there may be ways I can still get down below, if I take things very slowly. I’m pretty stoked to find out if that’s true. My 10 year old son, who was with me this weekend, wants to learn also. Even more motivating!

I’m not sure I’ll be as hardy as diver Zachary Whalen, who took this awesome picture under the ice, but maybe I can at least go down below on a warmer day and watch the seals that I usually only see when they pop their heads up next to me while I surf.  But if there are waves – I’m bringing my board.

As I travel around the Seacoast, it is such a pleasure to talk with people who share my love for Great Bay.  Recently, I made a presentation to the Durham Garden Club – a group that recognizes the importance of clean water – and ran into an old friend who cares deeply about the health of the estuary.

Dennis related his own experiences as a scuba diver and the changes he has witnessed beneath the surface in our coastal waters. I was so moved by his comments, that I asked him to write a letter to the local papers. His letter appears in both the Portsmouth Herald and Foster’s Daily Democrat, and I urge you to read it. As you’ll see, Dennis poses the question – based on his personal observations as a scuba diver – “Where have all the fish gone?” He notes significant and troubling changes, including “a huge decline in fish populations along our coast” in recent years, and “marked reductions” in critical habitat in the Great Bay estuary rendering it “largely inhospitable for fish to spawn.”

The changes Dennis describes are not easily evident viewing Great Bay from the shoreline, which is what makes his observations so important – observations that confirm the urgent need to reduce pollution in the Great Bay estuary before it’s too late.

As Dennis concludes:

“These changes negatively impact both the sport and commercial fishing industries and the recreational value of the Great Bay estuary and of our coast. We need to require that all of the municipalities upgrade their sewage treatment facilities to reduce nitrogen pollution before it is too late. We have an environmental catastrophe in the making.”

Again, I urge you to take a look at Dennis’s excellent letter as well as his underwater photography presented in the above slide show, as it provides a view of the Great Bay estuary that is largely invisible to so many of us.

For more information about the Great Bay-Piscataqua Waterkeeper and my work to protect the Great Bay estuary, visit: http://www.clf.org/great-bay-waterkeeper/. You can also follow me on Facebook and Twitter.