Editor’s note: This story is the second in a series appearing occasionally that is intended to give readers a glimpse into unique courses available at Syracuse University and the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry.

Bubbles are everywhere. Push them away with a free hand and dazzling colors become visible. Green Hawaiian flowers and citrus patternsfloat all around.Though this pool has nothing to discover but your classmates’ bathing suit patterns, someday you could be swimming in a coral reef.

That’s because every student enrolled in the PED 221:‘Scuba’ classhas the chance to become a certified diver with the National Aquatic Service. Before they can scour the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, they must conquer the Katharine Sibley pool in the Women’s Building. The class, available to all students, meets from 7:10 to 10:10 p.m. Tuesday nights.

After strapping gear weighing about the same as a 5-year-old to their backs, divers splash into the shallow end. Before diving in, students sign medical waivers. At the start of the semester, students watched a video warning about equipment misuse that could lead to drowning or oxygen toxicity. But six professional divers are on hand during pool time to assist students.

Freshmen Lis Webber, a photojournalism major, and Krislyn Engelke, an information technology major, aren’t intimidated by the talk of risk. The friends are the only scuba students who choose to wear full wet suits to class, and they call themselves Team Black.

‘It’s actually pretty relaxing once you get used to it,’ Webber said.

Like many of their classmates, they took the class so that they can eventually enroll into PED 223: ‘Underwater Photography,’ the next class in the sequence.

Resembling penguins sliding off a glacier, students waddle to the edge of the pool wearing inflated buoyancy control vests, masks and fins. They dip their feet in – it doesn’t seem too cold because of the insulated booties underneath, but then they fall in the rest of the way and shiver.

Once they are in the pool, students grab hold of the oxygen tanks, which are kept lying horizontally for safety reasons. When handing them out, head instructor Marc Turenne gave students a warning.

‘If it falls over and just happens to land on that shiny nozzle there, the PSI will send that thing into the air and through the wall like a bottle rocket,’ he said.

No one wears a dry suit, a nylon and neopreneshell that keeps the entire body dry and warm except for the head and hands. That comes at the end of the course, and getting adjusted to one makes for an adventure of sorts.

‘The first time they get in with the dry suits, they kind of look like big dumplings floating on the surface. It’s humorous,’ co-instructor Ken Cameron said.

Separate certification in the suits is necessary because the class will dive into Skaneateles Lake, about 40 minutes away, at the end of April when the water is typically still about 45 degrees, Cameron said.

Turenne said he once taught a girl who asked whether there would be fish in the lake. Of course, he told her. She didn’t want to see fish. ‘Then what the heck are you diving for?’ he asked. The purpose of scuba, he said, is to see things that humans normally do not encounter.

‘You’ve got to watch out for freshwater jellyfish,’ Turenne said to the class. ‘Don’t worry, they’re so small they look like snot.’

Scuba diving is gear-heavy. Divers work with buddies for safety purposes in an open water setting. They help each other into dive vests, regulators and mouthpieces for breathing, weights for sinking and fins for swimming.

Once they deflate their vests and sink to the bottom of the pool, students push down on their regulators to receive oxygen. The compressed air they breathe feels just like normal air. Some students need to put extra weights in their pockets, depending on how much ‘flotation assistance tissue,’ as Turenne calls body fat, they have.

Underwater, dozens of students dove further down in the same direction, constantly bumping into each other. Fins don’t make for the sharpest turning devices.

‘You need to be able to swim, but you do not need to be a great swimmer,’ said Turenne, who has been teaching scuba at Syracuse University for the past seven years.

Every so often, dive buddies check in with the ‘OK’ sign, an ‘o’ shape made with the thumb and index finger. They don’t use the thumbs-up sign because that signals they want to return to the surface. When they’re not underwater, they put their masks on their necks. Masks on foreheads signal a distressed diver. Students study signs like this in the classroom session that takes place before pool time.

The instructors teach a bit of science, like how to combat pressure on the eardrum when diving deep. But Turenne tries to keep the class equally educational and lighthearted.

‘There are two kinds of divers,’ he said to the class. ‘Those who pee in their wet suits and those who lie about it.’

sfanelli@syr.edu

Published on April 2, 2012 at 12:00 pm