Deep commitment.

Byline: Karen McCowan The Register-Guard

NEWPORT - Some volunteers answer telephones. Some stuff envelopes. Some pick up litter.

Bob and Nancy Brazie dive with sharks.

Volunteer gigs don't get much better than this, the Dexter couple say. The Brazies are among 90 certified scuba divers who regularly volunteer inside the underwater habitats of the Oregon Coast Aquarium.

Their duties can sometimes be mundane. Participating divers must be willing to do windows and floors. (They regularly clean the 3-inch-thick acrylic Passages of the Deep viewing tunnel and debris from the sandy bottom.)

But the setting is always spectacular: The clearest water on the Oregon Coast and guaranteed sightings of some of the ocean's most fascinating inhabitants - eels and octopuses, skates and rays, giant halibut, sturgeons and sharks.

"There aren't a lot of people in the whole world who get to do this," said Bob Brazie, a construction contractor.

"I'd be here every day, if I could," agreed Nancy, who works as a teller and new accounts specialist at Siuslaw Bank.

The volunteers do much of the aquarium's underwater maintenance, freeing the highly trained aquarists to concentrate on fish and animal care.

But they also get plenty of opportunity to work directly with the 3,500 inhabitants of the three Passages of the Deep exhibits: Orford Reef, Halibut Flats and Open Sea.

Divers help feed and inventory fish and animals. The volunteers are extra eyes underwater, helping spot ill or injured creatures. They sometimes catch species in soft nets for weighing or transporting to different habitats.

"They contribute so much," said Open Sea aquarist Colleen Newberg.

She even relies on volunteers to help with such exotic tasks as capturing the exhibit's 20 bat rays for their regular weigh-in and medical exam - a tricky job that may take two days' worth of diving by an entire team of volunteers.

Vallorie Hodges, the Oregon Coast Aquarium's dive safety officer, agreed that the divers are essential.

"Some aquariums see volunteer divers as a necessary evil," she said. "Here, we couldn't stay open without them."

Close encounters

Florence diver Vern DiPiet- ro reported for his regular Monday shift one day this fall to find a distressed shark in the Open Sea exhibit's medical pool.

Six-foot Angel, one of the largest seven-gills sharks at the aquarium, had been swimming in a corkscrew pattern, suffering from what was eventually diagnosed as encephalitis.

"We took turns swimming her around, trying to keep water moving over her gills so she wouldn't drown," the big, bushy-bearded diver recalled.

Eventually, she couldn't even do that.

DiPietro continued to work with the dying, 100-pound shark, pumping water into her mouth in a last-ditch effort to keep it flowing across her gills.

Though he was unable to save her, the close encounter with such a magnificent creature was something he will never forget.

"My face was, like, this close to hers," he said, holding his hands less than two feet apart.

"What an opportunity. It was amazing - a religious experience."

DiPietro, a recently retired U.S. Coast Guard officer, volunteers as often as three days a week and has logged almost 600 hours in 2003.

Because the aquarium exhibits are only 26 feet deep, divers use compressed air slowly and can safely make several long dives in a single day's volunteer "shift."

The volunteer program was launched in January 2000 by then-dive safety officer Corrina Wood. In nearly four years of operation, there have been no injuries - not even among the veterans who dive in the Open Sea exhibit, which contains large seven-gill and leopard sharks.

Though sharks tend to be as wary of humans as the other way around, safety precautions include volunteers working in teams of three: Two divers use a chamois to clean the outside of the viewing tunnel, for instance, while a third works as "shark tender," carrying an 8-foot pole wrapped in duct tape, candy-cane style.

The pole is not a weapon, Hodges stressed. Rather, it acts as a portable virtual shield: Sharks have keen perception of electromagnetic fields, and the metal in the duct tape tricks them into sensing a larger object than is actually in the water.

Serious commitment

The Brazies first talked about diving in the aquarium back in the mid-1990s, when Keiko the whale of "Free Willy" fame was the main attraction here. The couple came to see the famous Orca, and noticed some of his professional handlers in the water.

"We thought, 'Wouldn't that be fun!' ' Nancy recounted.

So they didn't hesitate three years ago, when they read about a new class to train divers as aquarium volunteers.

When Hodges became dive safety officer in 2001, she'd asked Diana Hollingshead of Eugene Skin Diver Supply to develop a Professional Association of Dive Instructors certified course for Oregon Coast Aquarium divers, so volunteers would receive consistent training throughout the state. The Habitat Diver course is now offered at several association affiliated shops.

To qualify for the course, divers must have the association's advanced open water certification and at least 50 logged dives - 25 in water below 70 degrees. (Temperatures in Passages of the Deep exhibits hover around 50 to 55 degrees.) The Brazies qualified on both counts.

After completing the $175 training at their own expense, the Brazies faced an even bigger commitment. In order to be accepted into the program, divers must agree to volunteer at least one day every three weeks for at least a year.

Some drive from as far away as Bend and Portland to do so, Hodges marveled. Many, including the Brazies, also spend the night in Newport before their shift, again at their own expense.

"We signed up, and we haven't looked back," Bob said. "We just think of it as a mini-vacation every three weeks."

When Nancy "clocked in" on an aquarium computer late last month, she had logged more than 350 hours as a "volunteer animal husbandry diver" since July of 2001.

Backlot view

Following the Brazies on a volunteer shift last month was initially a bit disconcerting.

Imagine slipping out an emergency exit in Disneyland's "Pirates of the Caribbean" ride, only to step into harsh sunlight and see that the enchanting twilight you just left was a facade.

That, in reverse, is what divers experience when getting into one of the three aquarium exhibits.

The Brazies parked near Hodge's modular building office in an industrial park south of the aquarium. They loaded their dive gear onto hand trucks and wheeled it through a chain-link fence to what is essentially the Passages of the Deep backlot.

After stopping in a unisex locker room to don the thick wet-suits or dry-suits that keep them warm in the frigid water, volunteers climb a two-story set of metal stairs and enter a dim room filled with what appear to be three large and two small metal tanks of sea water.

Only after your eyes adjust does the place begin to resemble the underwater wonderland inside the aquarium.

A closer inspection of one of the small "medical pool" tanks, for instance, reveals it is actually a nursery for hundreds of baby spiny dogfish.

Before entering the water, volunteer divers check large, white boards on which aquarists note new developments in the underwater environment, as well as the day's tasks.

"First perfect egg mass of the fall - it's a doozy!" proclaimed one recent message. "About 6 inches in diameter, it belongs to the wolf eel pair in the den south of the flat window."

On a dive that day into the 275,000-gallon Halibut Flats exhibit, Bob uncoiled a long, white vacuum hose from a hidden corner of the exhibit. After turning on the suction, he held the nozzle just above the bottom and gently stirred the white sand with his other hand, so bits of crushed shell from a recent feeding could float up and be sucked away.

Nancy, meanwhile, used a cloth to clean algae off the exhibit's "kelp" - artificial because no sunlight in the enclosed exhibit means no photosynthesis can take place.

At one point, she noticed a group of tourists walking through the tunnel above, and swam up to delight a small child with an eye-level wave.

Building relationships

Like many volunteers, however, Nancy has found her non-human aquarium encounters most rewarding. Her most memorable experience involved a female giant Pacific octopus.

"I was feeding the wolf eels when she came right up on the steps where I was sitting," Brazie recounted in amazement.

"She rolled over, so her underside was up, and let me place food right on her beak."

Octopus are among the most intelligent creatures in the aquarium, Hodges noted.

"They are really smart animals," she said. "They pick up right away on the fact that the divers are not a threat. Really, that's the way they beg.'

Volunteer Dave Wyatt of Carlton needs no convincing. He once watched in amazement as an octopus wrapped its tentacles around a jar of food, then unscrewed the lid to get to the contents.

At aquariums in major U.S. cities, the waiting list can be as long as five years for divers who want to join the pool of volunteers. Because of its relative isolation from large population centers, however, the Oregon Coast Aquarium is still about 30 divers shy of what Hodges considers ideal. As a result, she can schedule volunteer teams only every other day during the week. "I would love to have volunteers diving here every day," she said.

Karen McCowan can be reached at 338-2422 or [e-mail].

CAPTION(S):

Metal in duct tape on a pole tricks sharks, with their keen perception of electro- magnetic fields, into sensing a large object is near.