By Olly Constantine,
Media Editor.
Biology teacher Kayla Catelani has been scuba certified for around 15 years, during which she has spent a lot of time diving with her family in Maui and more locally in Monterey. Monterey Bay, known for its vast and vibrant kelp forests, is a great place for scuba divers to visit. “It’s an entirely different world under there. . . . It’s almost like you’re walking through a forest because this kelp is huge and when you’re in it you can see all the way up to the surface,” said Catelani. Among divers, Monterey is considered a fairly difficult area to dive due to frequent low visibility. Typically, divers can only see roughly four feet in front of them.
Catelani once had an unfortunate encounter with jellyfish in 2018 while diving in Monterey. Something to note about those particular jellyfish is that their stingers are long and very difficult to see, especially when visibility is low. She and her scuba diving partner were watching a sand dollar cove when jellyfish suddenly started swimming around. While trying to shoo the jellyfish away, her glove got caught in the stingers of one of the jellyfish. The rest of the dive continued as normal until she got out of the water and noticed a rash on her face from the jellyfish stingers. During the dive Catelani adjusted her mask, causing the tentacles to touch her face. “I had stung myself with the jellyfish tentacles, so I had this joker smile for like two weeks from this jellyfish sting going up my face,” Catelani explained.
However, later during that same dive she met a much friendlier creature. She had gone further under water, about 40 feet deep. At this point it was pretty dark because sunlight can’t reach that far below the surface. Suddenly, a shadowy figure about six feet long swam past. Catelani stopped her partner and pointed out the strange creature. “The first thing I thought was [a] great white because we have those off our coast and it was the time of year,” said Catelani. She immediately started to try and find a way out of the situation. Catelani loves sharks and studied them in university, but running into one isn’t very ideal. “As cool as it would be to see a shark face to face, I don’t necessarily want to see one face to face in that situation when you’re so vulnerable,” said Catelani.
She and her diving partner were debating what to do—whether to swim up or stay where they were and hope that the shark would swim away—when the creature darted forward and put its nose right in Catelani’s face. She was shocked to discover that the ‘shark’ was really just a huge sea lion. “Imagine. . . a puppy looking at you turning its head side to side,” said Catelani. While she was freaking out about how quickly the sea lion had swam up to her, her diving partner was laughing at the whole situation. When she breathed through the regulator mouthpiece, bubbles were released through the mouth piece and the sea lion was playfully trying to bite at the bubbles. Once Catelani realized that the sea lion wasn’t aggressive and was just trying to play, she had the opportunity to swim around with it. “It was following us. . . so I’m swimming and it was biting at my flippers, swimming and playing with us and all the bubbles coming off us,” said Catelani. It’s no surprise that this ended up being one of the most memorable dives for her: “It was so magical.”
Diving often brings unexpected moments, some magical and others less so, but it’s a great way to explore the ocean, a part of the world open to discovery.
