Not a Wet Blanket Present as Party-Goers Take a Dive

Nancy Keyes met Santa Claus on Saturday--on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.

But when the 28-year-old Anaheim diver swam up to claim her Christmas present, Santa didn’t give her anything from his soggy bag of goodies.

“He said my hands were too full,” Keyes, a computer instructor, lamented afterwards. “I had a camera in one hand and I was trying to take pictures of him.”

Keyes was participating in one of Southern California’s more unusual yuletide celebrations. She accompanied 24 other divers Saturday who raised a Christmas tree and received gifts from Santa in the chilly waters off Catalina.

The so-called “Santa Claus Dive” has been an annual ritual of the Los Angeles chapter of the Underwater Photographic Society for much of the chapter’s 32-year history. The tradition, little-known even among many local divers, is also observed by a handful of other Southland scuba clubs and shops.

Sea D Sea, a dive shop in Redondo Beach, for example, has been sponsoring a Christmas dive every December for the past 20 years, shop owner Barry Friedman said. This year’s Sea D Sea dive drew a full boat of 35 divers, including Ed Mandich of Rancho Santa Margarita and his two brothers, Steve and Jerry.

“It’s fun,” said Steve Mandich, 32, a mortgage banker from San Pedro who has joined his brothers in Christmas dives for the past 12 years. “The owner of the shop dresses up like Santa Claus and we all have a big barbecue.”

Saturday’s dive by the underwater photographers drew novices and veterans alike.

“To us, it’s pretty normal, but every time we tell someone else they think it’s abnormal,” said Mark Dell’Aquila, 27, of Manhattan Beach, president of the underwater club’s local chapter.

Susan Hamusek, 45, a first-time Christmas diver from Lynwood, said she signed up because she thought it would be a serene experience.

“This is just a nice, calm way to celebrate Christmas, unlike going to the malls,” said Hamusek, a nurse who belongs to South Coast Divers, a South Bay scuba club.

The divers rendezvoused at daybreak on a San Pedro dock, where the 78-foot dive boat Charisma awaited them for the two-hour cruise to Catalina.

They brought with them two small boxes; one containing a collapsible, plastic Christmas tree with silver and gold garlands, and the other a red and white Santa Claus suit with a white beard made, appropriately from a mop.

En route to the island, veterans of past Christmas dives swapped stories. Dick Turner, a 43-year-old engineer from La Canada, for instance, was marveling at how nice the weather was Saturday. Two years ago, he recalled, the underwater Christmas celebration had to be scrubbed because of rough waters.

Mary Wicksten, a marine biology professor at Texas A & M who travels all the way from her home in College Station for the dives, laughingly recalled the odd reception that the event receives from other divers.

“Last year, we were pushing the Christmas tree through the kelp beds and people passing in other dive boats just looked at us like: ‘What are you doing?,’ ” said Wicksten, a former San Pedro resident. “But that was nothing compared to the way the fish were looking at the tree. Apparently, the fish thought we were crazy, too.”

With the Charisma anchored in 30 feet of aquamarine water in the Isthmus Cove off northeastern Catalina, the divers set about locating a smooth, level place upon which the tree could rest. That done, they assembled the tree aboard the boat, lowered it into the sea, and swam it down to its chosen location, anchoring the tree’s round, wooden base with divers’ weight belts.

The role of Santa Claus this year fell to Dell’Aquila, who said he would have preferred to take pictures. Grudgingly, he suited up, strapping on the scraggly white beard and wrestling an ill-fitting Santa costume over his diving suit. Then he held his nose and jumped boots-first into the 60-degree water.

Santa, without Rudolph, had a little trouble finding his target.

“Where’s the tree?,” he said patiently at first. Then, “Where the hell’s the tree?”

Charisma skipper John Hess gestured in the direction of a concentration of air bubbles, which marked the spot where the other divers were gathered. Within minutes, Santa had moved into position, perching on a ledge next to the six-foot tree and receiving fellow divers on his lap.

He spent the next 20 minutes handing out gifts--liquor bottles wrapped in foil, for the most part--and posing for pictures as the diver-photographers swarmed around with cameras and video recorders. Orange-colored garibaldis, California’s protected state fish, darted in and out of yellow beds of kelp.

Back topside, Dell’Aquila was roundly praised as he squirmed out of the Santa suit and the tree was disassembled.

“He was a good Santa Claus,” allowed Cory Gray, a Culver City engineer and club membership chairman.

Nancy Keyes, who learned to dive only a year ago, was left with a warm impression--despite having failed to receive her present.

“They’ll have another one next year,” Keyes said as the divers toasted from bottles of wine on their return to shore. “We’ll make it even better than this.”