Gearing up on the platform for my last dive of the trip, I peer into the electric-blue water trying to visualize the winding path we plan to follow as Scott “Bear” Fritz, my fast-talking dive guide, fires off directions. “We’ll drop down this pillar here,” he gestures with his right hand. “At about 80 feet you’ll see a small opening. That’s the Secret Tunnel. It’s off the regular dive path, but it’ll get us to the Lake Room in a matter of minutes. From there we’ll follow the wall to the tar boat, go up a set of ladders through Clinton Shaft, follow the railroad ties into the Grand Canyon Bowl and loop back around into the Lake Room.” “Pheew,” I think, “OK, I’ve got it…maybe.” But then he starts talking again, “Then we’ll turn and swim through the Rope Room, pass through the Trail 3 slit into the 1095 Bowl and we’re back to the dock.” My mouth hangs open slightly. “Tell you what,” I say. “I’ll just stay right behind you.”

It’s a good choice. There’s no better guide to Missouri’s Bonne Terre Mine. Fritz has been diving the mine for more than 20 years, and he’s the training director who makes sure all the mine’s dive guides are fully prepared to take tourists or students into this underwater maze. There are more that 50 planned trails open to the public that the guides must know like the backs of their hands. Though, under special circumstances, exploratory dives are possible here as well. Dubbed “Bear” trails, these more advanced dives, lead by the eponymous guide himself, delve into the unlit and underexplored sections of the mine. But Bear Trails, like the one I’m about to dive, are only for divers who prove they’ve got the scuba skills and the air consumption to do them, and once we drop down the aforementioned pillar and enter the Secret Tunnel, I understand why.

We slide one-by-one into the narrow, square-cut shaft under a hundred feet of rock. Along the floor, a pair of metal ore-cart tracks stretches past the edges of our high beams. It’s easy to imagine men in this tunnel, urging stubborn mules hitched to ore carts, lugging load after endless load to the edge of this shaft, tipping the cart over the lip, sending a shower of ore into the bowels of the machine. But imagination time doesn’t last long. When we emerge on the other side, we’re in an unlit chamber, a cavernous void that swallows the beam of my light, and I focus on the bottom to maintain a point of reference until we reach the opposite end, and yet another square-shaped passage. This one is wider than the last, and we swim side-by-side until we arrive at Clinton Shaft, a system of round, tight tunnels, angling different directions as they traverse upward through multiple levels, with fragile wooden ladders leading from one hole to the next. Bear points his hand-mounted light into the narrow shaft and motions me forward. “Here we go,” I say to myself as I fin carefully up the length of the ladders, following, in the still silence, the footsteps of men who lived and died to create this labyrinth in the name of industry.

This is the lure of what the Bonne Terre crew has dubbed “deep earth diving,” a seemingly endless underground world, frozen in time. Fritz openly admits he has “the fever,” a driving desire to explore, to see what’s down the next tunnel, that has kept him coming back for more than two decades. Pillars, shafts, sheer walls and ceilings—hewn entirely by human hands—stretch for miles in all directions, leaving a sprawling, five-level catacomb beneath the town, and at every underwater turn all manner of artifacts—shovels, rock drills, ore carts and blasting caps—lay strewn across the landscape, as if the workers who left them simply went home at the blow of the foreman’s whistle and never returned to clean up after themselves. Of course, back in the day, the mine’s deepest reaches were not underwater. A massive pump system stemmed the flow of encroaching groundwater as the miners pushed ever deeper. But when this, the world’s largest lead mine, was all mined out, the men retreated, the pumps were turned off and the water trickled in to fill the void. These days, mine owners Doug and Cathy Georgens have turned the pumps back on, but it was never their intention to drain the mine completely, just enough to keep the water level constant and provide divers with access to their unique underwater vision.

And a big part of what makes that vision possible is light. The electric blue of the water is a product of the 500,000 watts of high-powered stadium lighting that the Georgens and their team have strung from pillar to pillar, through hundreds of feet of subterranean air space. The crystal-clear, rock-filtered water is clean enough to drink, and the long, blue waves of light that penetrate to the darkest depths of the motionless, billion-gallon lake lend an almost Caribbean illusion. But that illusion disperses as fast as your body heat when you make that first giant stride. Bonne Terre’s dive deck hovers on the water’s surface a full 150 feet into the earth, and though it’s a short walk down from the small shed that covers the mine’s only opening, the environmental change is complete. From the searing Missouri summer heat, it’s like entering the world’s largest walk-in refrigerator, where the air stays a constant 62 degrees, the water a brisk 58, year round.
Of course, those temps sound pretty good during the winter, which is Bonne Terre’s high season. Here in the Midwest, regional dive shops are short on spots to take Open-Water classes, especially when the quarry temperatures dip below freezing. So Bonne Terre Mine’s constant conditions provide year-round diving opportunities for students and divers who don’t have the time, money or desire to go coastal. But the mine has also attracted higher-profile attention. In 1983, Jacques Cousteau’s film team came to document the dramatic underwater scenery, in April 2000, “National Geographic Adventure” named the diving at Bonne Terre Mine one of the top 10 adventures in America, and over the years, a handful of documentaries have been filmed here and shown on the Discovery and History channels.

For everyday divers, the diving experience at Bonne Terre is very accessible. The town of Bonne Terre, Mo., is about an hour’s drive south of St. Louis. The dive operation is only open on weekends, and there are on-site accommodation options. The diving itself is totally safe because it is highly controlled—a necessary precaution in a place with innumerable overhead tunnels that can easily swallow even an experienced diver who doesn’t know his or her way around. Every group of divers has a guide and a safety diver, and every diver’s first visit to the mine starts with a checkout dive, no matter what their experience level. Visitors to the mine dive the 24 trails in sequence—they get a bit a harder as the numbers get larger—so if you make it through Trail 6 your first weekend, you’ll start at Trail 7 on your next visit. Dive lights are not allowed or necessary on the guided tours.

As for me, following Fritz around for a weekend proves a very tempting taste of what the mine has to offer. As we exit Clinton Shaft, I stay right on Fritz’s fin straps through the winding path back to the dock. Like an enthusiastic newbie, I turn my head in all directions—from rock walls and narrow passageways, to discarded drill bits and shovels—trying to take it all in, but at one point, we swim onto a ledge and Fritz stops me short. He puts his hand on my shoulder and points out into what looks like open water. Then he kicks his fins out in front of him, leans back and sits down on a rock like a man settling into his favorite easy chair. He looks over at me and spreads his arms wide. By this time, my eyes have focused, and I see pillar after pillar stretching out into the soft light like a massive forest marching into the distance; I settle down beside him to admire the scene. “That’s my favorite spot, where I go to relax” Fritz says when we climb out of the water. “We call it the Redwood Forest.” I nod my head in agreement, looking back over my shoulder at the water. Fritz laughs, “Looks like you’re getting the fever,” he says. “You’ll be back.”

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When you start thinking about diving for a living, you ultimately come to a fork in the road, as there are, simplistically speaking, two professional diving paths: the recreational side and the commercial one. A career in recreational diving is what most scuba divers fantasize about: tropical islands, white sand beaches and easy, shallow reefs where people fin around and marvel at the marine life. Follow the commercial diving path, and you enter a world of underwater roughneckery. Scuba tanks are replaced with diving hats and surface supplied air. And clinging to the struts of an oil platform, laying down a bead with a welding torch while fending off sharp-toothed creatures of the deep is just another day at the office.

Commercial diving is labor-intensive work that often requires divers spend months at sea or abroad in less than appealing destinations. But the money’s good. A commercial diver fresh out of training can command close to 50 thou a year—not bad for someone without a college degree. And then there’s the lifestyle. Like commercial fishermen, the stereotypical commercial diver loads up on women and booze between one fat paycheck and the next. “There’s a reason so many of us marry strippers,” jokes Mike Oden, career advisor for the Ocean Corporation, one of the leading commercial diving schools in the country. “When you’re offshore for months at a time, you go a little crazy when you get back on land.”
Ten years ago, as an 18-year-old fresh out of high school with a penchant for underwater adventure, I stood at that fork in the road, simultaneously doing my divemaster training and putting my feelers out to commercial diving schools like the Ocean Corporation—which actively seek out impressionable youths in search of adventure and a decent paycheck. Ultimately, I took the leisurely fork in the road and made my way as a dive instructor in some of the world’s most enviable diving destinations. But one question always lingered in the back of my mind: What if?
And last August, the Ocean Corporation gave me, and 14 other average Joes from all walks of life, the opportunity to see how the other half lives. By signing up for the school’s annual Commercial Diving Experience (CDE), I got an all-access pass to spend a weekend in a commercial diver’s shoes—and diving hats—and answer that question for myself.

Nestled into the urban sprawl that is Houston, Texas, Ocean Corp has an unassuming appearance. From the front, its gate opens onto a small parking lot, and its façade gives every impression that it’s just one more in the string of office buildings sharing its street. But when I crack the front door, a shelf of antiquated hats, spearguns and photographs greets me, and by the time I pop out the back end into the staging area, I’m transported to a more familiar world. Gear cages hold racks of drysuits patched with duct tape, banks of compressed air, scuba equipment and huge coils of hose. And a multilevel wooden platform behind the building is where the magic happens. The 4.2-acre campus has six diving tanks—three eight-foot tanks for underwater welding and cutting training, two 12-foot tanks and a 24-foot tank complete with a mock oil platform inside—not to mention a permanently installed medical decompression chamber, a portable decompression chamber and a 400-foot-rated lock-out diving bell.

Saturday morning, I join my fellow campmates, the student helpers and a handful of Ocean Corp instructors. The schedule says we’ll start off with an equipment orientation and safety meeting before we “mobilize” at the 12-foot tank for some hat time, basically a meet and greet with the gear we’ll use throughout the weekend. Two by two, we each strap on a harness with an emergency-bailout scuba tank, pull the neck dam—a metal ring with a drysuit-style neoprene seal—over our heads, and lock the hats down before leaping into the tank. The hats weigh 30 to 40 pounds each, so a weight belt isn’t necessary, and topside, the weight puts a fair bit of strain on my neck. Underwater, I’m only slightly negative, albeit top heavy, and I hop my way around the tank like an astronaut on the moon, getting a feel for the flow adjustment valves and the less-than-clear communication system before running an out-of-air drill.

That afternoon is devoted to a mock work-dive scenario. I gear up on the edge of the 24-foot tank with my dive buddy, and when we’re both ready to go, we make the leap and grab the down lines running to the bottom. With a loop of rope around one hand, I use the other to force the hat in and up on my face, which crams the hat’s nose plug into my nostrils so I can equalize as I descend. Once I touch down on the bottom of the tank, my first task is making the switch from nitrox to mixed gas—a helium, nitrogen and oxygen mixture. “Crank your free flow, and count to 20,” says the voice in my hat. “One, two…breathe…three, four…breathe,” I respond. By about 14, my voice takes on the twangy, high-pitched character that lets my tenders know the mixed gas is flowing, and I turn to make my way hand-over-hand, low-gravity style, about 10 feet up the mock oil platform to the pipe flange we’re here to assemble.

It’s a relatively complex process requiring lift bag maneuvers and indirect communication with my work partner—we can’t talk directly, but rather speak via the tenders on the surface—made even more challenging by the limited field of vision offered through the hat’s faceplate. After about 15 minutes, we finish the task, put our tools back in the basket hanging from the surface and I return to my down line to switch over to nitrox and make my controlled ascent.

Because it’s a simulated work dive, we feign a long, deep bottom time, and once we get out of the water, we have five minutes to strip down and climb into the decompression chamber before our blood starts to “boil.” It’s 100-plus degrees here in Houston, and a cramped metal tube baking in the summer sun doesn’t look terribly inviting. But we climb in and make our way through the locks system into the main chamber where we’re taken down to 50 feet and slowly brought back up to sea level over about 15 minutes. Amply decompressed, we scramble out of the chamber—it feels a bit like climbing out of pressure cooker—and go through a quick neurological evaluation before the instructors give us the all clear.

With the next day comes the highlight of the weekend, the moment many of us in the camp have been waiting for: Underwater cutting and welding. The cutting part uses a thermic rod—ignited by direct current and fueled by liquid oxygen—that burns at 6,500 degrees and cuts through damn near anything. The welding, in terms of the tools and basic concept, is similar to welding above water, but doing it underwater requires different techniques and an added safety concern—namely avoiding the electric current running through the water. Les Joiner, the former president of Ocean Corp, is on site today to take us through the two processes. “Like everything else in this industry, the safety rules for underwater welding and cutting are written in blood,” Joiner says at the start of his safety briefing. “And all you have to do to avoid electric shock is not find yourself between the ground and the lead. If you get between where the plate’s grounded and the end of this torch, you’ll find out why they call it direct current.” It’s a simple rule. As long as we don’t walk to the other side of the tank or point the end of the torch toward our bodies, there’s no real risk of shock.

First, I hop into the cutting tank. A length of pipe stands upright on the cutting table. I pull the handle to let the oxygen flow, spark the torch and pierce the solid steel pipe with the tip of the rod. It slides through like the proverbial hot knife through butter. With a slight sawing motion, I attempt to cut a straight line across the pipe, but the result is a jagged mess. The welding process is equally simple to enact, but equally hard to do with any dexterity. Pulling the torch along what I hope is a straight line with one hand, while holding the bucket bouncing on my head with the other and trying to see anything through the billowing bubbles of smoke and the one- by three-inch welding lens duct taped to my mask, I gain immense appreciation for the focus and skill this school’s students master on their way through the program. And when I get out of the welding tank and head for the showers, I realize my question has been answered.

Everything we’ve done this weekend is set up in a controlled environment so we can get a feel for the work these divers do every day without experiencing the true danger and desolation of a real working situation. But I get the picture. These divers are essentially living tools employed by the massive machines—usually the oil business—that they work for. They hang like bait on a hook in the open ocean, power tools in hand, doing work that’s not only dangerous in and of itself, but also because of its depth and offshore location. The instructors who’ve been showing us the ropes are survivors. They beat the odds in a dangerous world and came out the other side to train the next generation, but the hardened looks on their faces and the gruff tones in their voices tell more about this life than any words could do. It’s a job for the young. It’s a job for the brave, maybe even the stupid. It’s not the job for me. But for divers who have that same question gnawing in the backs of their heads, Ocean Corp is alone in the commercial diving world as a place that provides this camp to let people find that answer for themselves.

Sidebar: The Ocean Corporation is one of the world’s leading commercial diving facilities. It’s an accredited technical school that offers a variety of diver and nondiver training. The Commercial Diving Experience is offered annually at the beginning of August. Participants must be scuba-certified and 18 years or older; cost is $499 per person. For more information visit oceancorp.com or campcde.com

Sidebar: Get More
Want to see Ocean Corp’s Commercial Diving Experience in action? click the “on assignment” channel at scubadiving.com/video for original video, shot on location by ShrimpTank Productions.

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“You want to shoot it or stab it?” Fischer asks me on the phone as I’m arranging my custom hunt. “Most people want to stab‘em.” Days later, in the back of a mudsplattered 4WD pickup, dogs whine and scrape at the doors of their cage as we pull to the side of a rutted dirt track. Joe Fischer and Phillip Dickerson, local hunting guides of the good ol’ boy variety, train these dogs from birth for a single purpose: tracking feral hogs. And they live for it. When Fischer cracks the door to the cage, the muzzles, tongues and paws of a seemingly uncountable number of canines push through the cracks, and when he lets it fly on its hinges, the barking mass spills onto the ground. As a pack, they’re on the scent before they even catch their balance. “Let ‘em go,” Fischer says. “When they start barking we’ll know they’ve got one.” It’s maybe 7 a.m., already a little late for hog hunting—these nocturnal animals are often well on their way to bed by this time of day—but within just a few minutes, I hear what he means. When the pack catches up with its quarry, the dogs “bay” the pig (surround it), usually in a clump of Lowcountry swamp brush, and bark at the top of their lungs from all sides to keep it penned into the area. The change in the dogs’ cries is unmistakable, even for a first time hunter such as myself. The hunt has already begun.

Once we slip into knee waders and collect our hunting gear—a four-inch hunting knife, .357 revolver and one muscle-bound pit bull on a chain for backup—we ford the roadside canal and push through the low-lying shrubs and spider webs, making our way toward the frantic barking. Ten minutes of slogging through the swampy forest that surrounds the private cornfield that we’re here to protect and we’re getting close. Fischer stops short, looks at me with a furrowed brow and puts his finger to his lips in the universal signal for, “keep your mouth shut, noob.” Then he slips the revolver into my hand. “We’re gonna creep around this side,” he whispers, gesturing with his left hand. “When you see the hog through the bushes, make sure you’ve got a clean shot, and take it down.”

We move around the perimeter and the telltale snout comes into view, then the light tan body begins to take shape through the leaves and branches. Almost 150 pounds of sow now stands before me, frozen momentarily, as dogs stand jumping and barking all around her. With a mixture of relief and regret, I lower the pistol to my side. I came here to shoot a pig, not a dog, and I decide I don’t want it bad enough to risk a shot with the dogs so close.

Just as I turn to explain my dilemma to Fischer, a hole opens up in the pack, leaving the pig a clear escape path away from her canine captors. She bolts for the one thing standing in her way: me. With visions of cloven hoofprints dancing across my chest, I raise the pistol, crack off a shot from the hip and the charging sow takes a nosedive not ten feet from my knocking knees. Fischer slaps me on the back. “Nice shot, John Wayne,” he says with a laugh. My voice cracks with the complete opposite of confidence when I ask what would’ve become of me had I missed. “Aw, she probably would’ve just bumped into you—it ain’t like she’s got any tusks or anything,” Fischer answers in his jocular Georgia drawl.

This is hog hunting, Lowcountry style. It’s an activity of necessity as much as it is one of sport. These swine are invasive, omnivorous pests that will eat just about anything—from grain, roots and acorns to carrion, livestock and earthworms—they’re pigs after all. “They turn over food plots and front yards, damage roads and destroy endangered native plant species and the natural habitats of native animal species in their hunt for food,” explains David Mixon, game management supervisor for the Department of Natural Resources (DNR). “And the hog population grows fast. One female can produce three litters annually, with 10 to 15 piglets per litter.”

Hogs aren’t actually native to North America, so all of our hogs today, feral or otherwise, are descendents of livestock brought over from Europe as early as 1498. Different colors, shapes and sizes—from squat, fat farmstyle piggies to the lean, longtoothed razorbacks of Southern lore—can be found running wild all around Savannah’s perimeter, across Georgia and much of the U.S. for that matter. These days, they all fall under the blanket term—”feral hog.”

Adult hogs usually grow to be about three feet in height, weighing anywhere from 100 to 500 pounds depending on their access to food and how hard they have to work to get it. And while they range pretty much anywhere they can find food and shelter, feral hogs generally prefer the cover of dense brush for protection. When the temperature rises, however, the swine spend much of their time wallowing in swamps, wetlands, ponds and streams close to protective cover.

As a sport, hog hunting comes in many flavors. The hardcore outdoorsman can crawl through the brush of late dusk or early dawn, examining pig signs and stalking prey on their wits alone. Pigs can be hunted from a blind with a hunting rifle or bow and arrow or on private land, with the appropriate permits, they can be attracted by bait at night and shot under 12-volt lighting. One of the most efficient and effective ways to hunt hogs is with dogs. Hunting guides like Fischer and Dickerson, or any of the hunting plantations scattered around the Savannah area, use well-trained hunting dogs to offer softer-skinned stalkers with a penchant for pig sticking a virtually guaranteed, customized killing experience.

Shoot or stab? I ponder my decision and see the dog-hunting technique first-hand when Fischer loans me a DVD of some of his past hunts. There are two types of dogs: “bay” dogs, in my case Catahoula and Parker Curs, and a fiercer breed, like a pit bull, known as the “catch” dog. Bay dogs can pick up a scent as old as four hours and the hunters amble through the forest until the dogs have cornered or “bayed” the prey. Then, the catch dog is unleashed—taking the hog down and pinning it to the ground. This allows the guides to grab the swine by the legs and hold it belly-up while the hunters make quick work of the beast with their weapon of choice. In my pre-hunt
DVD, the killers are clad head-totoe in camo and whooping encouragements like “git ‘er done” and “stick that pig” before thrusting their knives up to the hilt to the tune of Deliverance-style pig squealing and licking the blood from their dripping blade.

“I think I’ll shoot it if you don’t mind,” I decide. “I understand,” Fischer says as we walk through the forest. “Honestly, I get worried that some of those guys will go home and stick their wives afterward. And all that blood licking, that’s disgusting. I bet those people get sick something awful.”

Having dispatched my pig with what I hope is a minimum of pain, suffering and squealing, it’s time to
take on the task of dressing the animal; getting it home and butchered before the flesh goes bad in the sweltering Georgia summer heat, which Fischer explains can happen in as little as an hour on a hot day. Because of restrictive USDA regulations, it’s almost impossible to find a butcher in the Savannah area willing to dress a wild hog. Hunters mostly take on this duty themselves—and hunting guides will often butcher the pig as part of the experience.

Fischer doesn’t have any qualms about undertaking this role. With a hunter’s skill, he makes a slit up the belly and deftly removes the guts before looping a chain around the upper jaw and dragging the carcass back to the truck. Back at the house we toss a rope over the low-hanging branch of a tree, hoist the hog up by its hind legs and hose it down while it spins spread-eagle. Fischer makes cuts in the skin around each of the four legs and peels the hide down over the hindquarters, slicing through the fat that connects it to the muscle. With the skin hanging inside-out like a macabre cape, he uses a hefty butcher’s knife and hack saw to remove the backstrap (the loin running on either side of the spine), shoulders (front legs), hams (back legs) and ribs, and puts them on ice in a large cooler.

The majority of the meat stacked neatly in the freezer, I set about making my first meal. A wild animal, the meat of a feral pig is less fatty and much tougher than farm-raised pork. This makes a stiff marinade and a slow cooking process a requirement not to be ignored. After soaking the backstrap in an orange and lime-based Cuban Mojo sauce for 48 hours, I pop it in the oven on low heat until the meat reaches the requisite 170 degrees (to kill any risk of trichinosis) and sit down to a dinner that puts every pork chop I’ve ever tasted to shame.

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