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“Y
ou shouldn’t be a diver if
you’re not willing to be blown
out from time to time.”
That’s
the advice I’ve been spouting
for years, which has come
back to haunt me as our
traveling troop of five divers stuffs gear into a van double-
parked in downtown Tokyo. It has been less than two
days since a typhoon chased us off the southern island
of Hachijo. And here we go again, running ahead of the
weather, this time leaving a prepaid apartment two days
early in an attempt to beat a second storm marauding its
way toward our next destination, Japan’s Izu Peninsula.
Did I mention it’s not yet dawn and it’s beginning to rain?
Four hours later Shingo Suzuki, our dive guide and
driver, pulls onto an overlook of Suruga Bay with iconic
Mt. Fuji rising in the distance. Shingo points below to the
inner bay at Osezaki — the most visited dive park on Izu.
Much of the site’s popularity is due to Cape Ose, a long
finger of land sheltering a beach-lined basin a quarter mile
across. In fair weather, experienced divers prefer the rocky
slope on the outside of the cape, but with the seas still
unsettled from last week’s storm, the inner bay is our best
bet for getting into the water. Ten minutes later the van
ON ANOTHER PLANET
30
|
SPRING 2016
ENCOUNTERS
Below:
Koke-ginpo (blenny),
Neoclinus bryope
Opposite, clockwise from left:
Cocktail wrasse,
Pteragogus
flagellifer
; juvenile John dory,
Zeus faber
; Japanese searobin,
Lepidotrigla japonica
; pinecone
fish,
Monocentris japonica
JAPAN: PART2
Text and photos by Ned and Anna DeLoach