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Vicki Wawerchak -
I could hear my Mr. Coffee beginning its drip in the room next door and I knew it would be mere minutes before the repetitive chirp from my bedside alarm would alert me that it was 5:30 a.m. It had been a few rough weeks at work; long hours at the aquarium and my body resisted the notion that I needed to get out of bed.
Not many things get me up at this hour—a plane ride to a distant exotic location, an early morning training walk (albeit begrudgingly), a drive to pick up out of town friends—but this morning I was diving the Star of Scotland, a former gambling ship that sunk just off the Santa Monica Pier in 1942.
There is a romantic eeriness surrounding the subject of shipwrecks that has piqued my interest since I saw a Titanic exhibit at the Queen Mary when I was eight years old. Since then, I've been fascinated by wreck diving and allowed my imagination to soar as to what went on before the ship found its final resting place at the bottom of the sea.
I wondered about the conversations that took place behind the closed cabin doors, the shoes that were worn while ascending stairs to reach different decks, the food served to satiate the crew and guests, the color of the hand towels used by people decades ago and the unfortunate lives that were sometimes lost during its descent through stormy waves.
I first heard of the Star of Scotland about a year ago and was even more surprised to hear that it was situated so close to the Santa Monica Pier. We had talked about organizing a collection dive on it for months, but schedules had never cleared until now.
Our dive team included Jose Bacallao (HtB senior aquarist), Seth Lawrence (HtB aquarist), Sarah Sikich (HtB coastal resources director), and Zack Gold (longtime aquarium volunteer, Santa Monica High recent graduate, activist and friend).
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