Santa Claus Goes Off the Deep End in Diving Tradition

Nancy Keyes met Santa Claus this week--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 afterward. “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 a diving expedition of 24 people Saturday who erected a Christmas tree and received gifts from a diving Santa in the chilly waters off Santa Catalina Island.

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 little-known tradition is also observed by a handful of other Southland scuba clubs and shops.

“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.

“This is just a nice, calm way to celebrate Christmas, unlike going to the malls,” added Susan Hamusek, 45, a first-time Christmas diver from Lynwood.

Embarking from San Pedro in the 78-foot dive boat Charisma, veterans of past Christmas dives swapped stories.

“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 Mary Wicksten, a marine biology professor who travels for the dives from her home in Texas. “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 assembled a collapsible tree, lowered it into the sea and swam it in place on the bottom.

Dell’Aquila suited up as Santa Claus, strapping on a beard and squeezing a Santa costume over his diving suit. Then he held his nose and jumped boots-first into the 60-degree water.

Perched underwater next to the tree, he handed out gifts--liquor bottles wrapped in foil, for the most part--and posed for pictures. Orange-colored garibaldis, California’s protected state fish, darted in and out of beds of yellow kelp.

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

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