"Once you start cutting, visibility drops from 30 feet to zero because the water clouds up with particles and tiny creatures that get shaken loose," she said. "At one point, I was frantically cutting off pieces of netting when one or more was tugged upward by an air bag.
"I looked around and discovered that I was in a kill zone. There were tons of bones and a bunch of sea lion skulls by the propeller and a whole shark caught in the fabric. My fellow divers were close by and had their eyes on me as I backed out into the clear."
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Tuesday, January 13, 2009 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 59 words Type of Material: Correction
Fishing net: An article in Monday's California section about the removal of a snagged fishing net from a sunken trawler off Santa Catalina Island said that divers on the project used scuba tanks containing nitrous oxide. In fact, their tanks were filled with a special mix of nitrogen and oxygen used to decrease their risk of developing decompression sickness.
The limit for normal scuba diving is 120 feet beneath the surface. But because of the depth of the wreck and the 20 minutes per dive needed to hack off appreciable portions of fishing gear, the divers relied on tanks filled with a special nitrous oxide mixture that enabled them to spend more time at the bottom while reducing the chances of contracting the bends, or decompression sickness.
By midafternoon, the team had raised about 800 square feet of netting, which was piled in a corner of Captain Jack's big wooden back deck.
Wind-driven waves bucked the hull as several children on board plucked a variety of critters -- strawberry anemones, sea cucumbers, brittle stars, shrimp, crabs and snails -- off the retrieved netting and tossed them back into the ocean.
Kennedy speculated that it would take as many as nine more diving days to retrieve the bulk of the net after the Infidel teeter-tottered into the sea near Church Rock, a natural landmark at the southern end of the island and about 22 miles from the mainland.
Shortly after the vessel went down, its owners called Kennedy for help, initially thinking their biggest problem was an underwater fuel hazard.
Eventually, he said, "the owner's insurance company paid him for the value of the boat," but it remained a hazard under the sea. "The net draped over the Infidel like a circus tent," he said.
"Worldwide, there are many thousands of derelict killer nets like this one, abandoned and adrift in the in the seas," said marine biologist Cooper. "In one case, abandoned fishing gear in Puget Sound was studied for 10 years. An estimated 30,000 marine mammals, fish and birds were killed each year in it."
Shaking his head in dismay, Cooper added, "There seem to be no laws when it comes to dumping in the open ocean."
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louis.sahagun@latimes.com
