Searching the depths

Alicia Robinson

Braving gloomy gray skies and brisk winds, a handful of divers

plunged into the water near Reef Point on Wednesday.

They didn’t find the ancient artifacts they were looking for, but

they did leave behind something to help the ocean ecosystem.

Wednesday’s dive, undertaken by Crystal Cove State Park Supt. Ken

Kramer and four members of the state parks department’s dive team,

served two purposes. Kramer and two divers helped volunteers from

Orange County CoastKeeper plant kelp underwater, and two divers

searched for artifacts near the spot where a stone pestle was found

in February.

The pestle, a grinding tool thought to be an artifact of native

peoples known as Juanenos, gave officials hope that more such items

would be found. Before Wednesday’s search, Kramer showed the divers

pictures of shell jewelry, arrowheads and bowls like what they might

expect to find in the area.

“What you’re looking for down there is any natural object that

looks like it’s been touched or manipulated by the hand of man,”

Kramer told the divers.

Park officials have long suspected there were artifacts lurking in

the waters off Crystal Cove, but before the pestle was found state

parks officials didn’t have any reason to look in a specific area.

Searching for something smaller than a breadbox in a 1,100-acre

underwater park brought to mind a needle in a haystack, Kramer said.

The divers resurfaced Wednesday empty-handed but for an angular

rock a little larger than a deck of cards with a smooth, rounded

indentation on the middle. A state parks archeologist will examine

the find, but Kramer theorized the dent was made by a sea urchin.

“It’s not really consistent with the size and shape of the

artifacts that are commonly found on land,” he said.

The dive was still an unusual event in some respects. Dick Deboer,

a lifeguard on the state parks dive team, said he saw some crabs and

an octopus, and everyone said they heard sounds made by a whale,

which made a few brief appearances on the surface.

As well as occasionally searching for ancient artifacts, the state

parks dive team also performs search and rescue dives and works to

protect natural resources in the water.

There’s more time for diving now, before the lifeguards’ busy

season starts in June, said state parks department lifeguard Paul

Milosch, who drove the boat to the dive site.

Locating items underwater is much harder than on land because

divers can’t talk to one another and their sense of direction can be

thrown off, Milosch said.

“Having not really done this before, you’re virtually looking at

every rock,” agreed Eric Dymmel, a state parks lifeguard and dive

team member.

Now that they know where to look, Kramer said lifeguards would

keep their eyes open for other artifacts during the hundreds of

dives, mainly for training, that they perform each year.

The trip also allowed divers to plant more kelp, part of an

ongoing project by Orange County CoastKeeper to restore the

underwater plants that have been decimated by predators and man-made

hazards.

The kelp project, in fact, is what led to the artifact search -- a

CoastKeeper volunteer who was planting kelp found the pestle.

* ALICIA ROBINSON covers business, politics and the environment.

She may be reached at (949) 764-4330 or by e-mail at

alicia.robinson@latimes.com.