The Oregon Coast Aquarium in Newport, Oregon is a world-class aquarium on 23 acres along the Yaquina Bay.

Certified divers may dive 2 of the aquarium’s Passages of the Deep exhibits; Halibut Flats, where halibut, colorful rockfish, California skates and giant sturgeon abound, as well as the Open Sea exhibit, populated by mackerel, sardines and salmon in addition to spiny dogfish, leopard sharks, soupfin sharks and broadnose sevengill sharks.

The day starts off by being greeted by Morrie, one of the aquarium’s volunteer diver guides. Aside from Morrie, another guest diver would be joining me that day, but he was a very experienced diver and a dive instructor himself. After a before-hours tour of the Passages of the Deep exhibits, where we observed other volunteer divers cleaning the exhibits’ acrylic tunnels and got to spend time observing and identifying the fish in each exhibit, we took a behind-the-scenes tour of the actual tanks where the sea life is kept and divers enter and exit the water. We filled out the required paperwork and then received our safety and dive brief. The dive is considered cold water because the exhibits are meant to simulate coastal Oregon, so tanks are kept in the mid-50’s, but with no surge, tide or current to worry about, most of the safety brief covered entering and exiting the water safely, being mindful not to touch or scare the sea life and to be aware of our surroundings, being careful not to scratch the acrylic tunnels or bang into any part of the exhibit.

After prepping our dive gear, we went back downstairs to change into our suits and boots, went back upstairs to the dive platform and wheeled our BCDs and tanks to the edge of the exhibit, we strapped on fins and our BCDs, wiggled out to the edge and plopped in. The first exhibit is Halibut Flats and once you’re in the water, you’re in the exhibit, so as you descend, you have to control your buoyancy as to not smack into any fish or rocks. The water was nothing I hadn’t experienced in Monterey, so once I was able to actually achieve some negative buoyancy and start swimming around, I was quite comfortable. The exhibit is only about 25 feet deep, so equalization wasn’t too hard for me, and once you get down there, you are pretty much free to explore the rocks, the simulated shipwreck and the fish. The one thing Morrie cautioned me about was the sturgeon. Apparently they are blind and if they don’t feel or hear you, they can just smack right into you and dislodge your mask or your regulator, so you keep your hand near your face and if one gets close, you give it a gentle karate chop and it’ll be on its way. The best part of Halibut Flats was getting to interact with the aquarium visitors, adults and kids alike who are fascinated by the divers in the tank with the fish. Swim up to the acrylic tunnel and give them a wave or two and see their faces light up. This is also the spot where an aquarium staffer will take your picture as a memento of your visit. On this dive, it’s pretty much up to you as a guest when the dive ends. When your tank gets low, the water gets too cold or you just want to get out, you signal to the guide and you’ll end your dive as easily as you started it. A shelf/step is provided at the edge of the tank to help you get out of the exhibit and back on your feet.

After getting out of Halibut Flats, you’re required to rinse yourself and your gear off in warm water to avoid contaminating the Open Ocean exhibit. I sat down for about 20 minutes and rested/warmed up and then got ready to come face to face with some sharks. The entry into Open Ocean is pretty similar, but the water is a bit warmer, and instead of diving directly into the exhibit, you dive first into the 13 foot deep “Observation Ledge”, which is really just a section of the pool that is gated off from the much deeper full exhibit. After we’re all the water, we all want to achieve negative buoyancy so once we pass through the gate, we drop down to the bottom of the exhibit immediately. I purge all of the air out of my BCD and as Morrie stands guard at the gate with his striped PVC pipe to warn off unwanted visitors, he motions me through and I sink like a rock to the bottom of the shark tank. As I wait for Morrie and my fellow guest diver, I observe the sharks, rays and other fish swimming in a counterclockwise circle above my head like an aquatic merry-go-round. I let Morrie take the lead with his PVC pipe and we crawl along the bottom of the tank behind him, watching as he waves the pipe when a shark gets too close or stop completely when the oldest and largest shark in the tank, Miss Piggy comes along. Unfortunately, we can’t really explore the tank or swim up to the acrylic tunnel in the event that we’ll get in the way of one of the sharks and unintentionally provoke them. After a few laps of the perimeter of the bottom of the tanks, Morrie takes us underneath the center of the acrylic tunnel and as we work our way along the bottom, I notice drops of blood the size of quarters speckled along the concrete. As we get underneath the tunnel, Morrie signals for us to flatten ourselves out and I see Miss Piggy, who has suddenly become curious about her new visitors. She circles around to check us out, getting within about 6 feet of me, and I smile with the novelty and the absurdity of the situation. Miss Piggy decides to take another look at me and circles back, getting within 3 feet from me, and my heart starts racing. I guess she can sense my heartbeat and decides to circle back one more time, this time coming within an arm’s reach of me before dismissing me as unworthy of anymore of her time. As she swims off, we follow Morrie up to the gate, he watches our backs as we swim back through the gate and into the observation ledge again and I can’t believe the experience I just had. This is not what I thought I would be doing when I signed up for scuba lessons, but it was an incredible experience. After I rinsed off all my gear again, we went back downstairs and changed out of our suits. I toweled off and changed back into my street clothes and Morrie surprised me with a souvenir, a shark tooth he found of the bottom of the tank. After I packed all my gear into my car, I got to explore the rest of the exhibits at the aquarium, but it’s hard to be impressed with a pool of starfish when you’ve just finished scuba diving with sharks.

Overall, I enjoyed my experience immensely with the Oregon Coast Aquarium. One of the primary reasons I got into diving was my fascination with fish and aquatic life, and there are probably few places in the world where you will find so many fish in such a small area who are accustomed to humans. The Oregon Coast Aquarium website describes their guest diver program as the “best shore dive in Oregon.” As a beginner, I would be hard-pressed to disagree with that. No currents, no surge, no tide, no rocks to climb over, no boats to worry about, and visibility that you won’t find anywhere outside of tropical waters. For an experienced diver, this may seem like a tame experience, but the other guest diver I was with has decades of experience and he seemed to be impressed. I’m personally glad this was the first dive I did after getting certified. It was an easy, fun dive that never provided a dull moment and was a great reminder of why I put on all this heavy, wet gear in the first place.

This is not my video, but it is a pretty in-depth view of the experience:

For more information about the Guest Diver program at the Oregon Coast Aquarium, please visit:

www.divetheaquarium.org