The ocean waters off Keystone may have been a bit on the frigid side Sunday morning with the air temperature hovering around the 40-degree mark, but that didn’t deter scuba divers Pete Pehl and Peter Johnson one bit.

Pehl is one of the instructors for the Whidbey Island Dive Center and was in the process of putting Johnson through his practical examination to qualify in a dry suit.

“He is taking a dry suit class and we’ve done one dive already today,” Pehl said. “I put him through a couple of drills to make sure he demonstrates proficiency. Now we are going to make a second dive and this one is just for fun.”

A proficient diver in his own right, Pehl retired from the U.S. Navy and put his diving skills to use while working at several jobs in Southern California before moving to Oak Harbor about a year-and-a-half-ago.

“I retired from the Navy in 1992 and before I moved to Oak Harbor, I was the diving safety officer for the Aquarium of the Pacific,” he said. “Prior to that, I was the diving safety officer for the University of Southern California.”

Pehl said he was a saturation diver during his Navy career.

“When I retired, I was the officer in charge of the Saturation Dive School for the U.S. Navy in San Diego,” he said. “I love living up here in Oak Harbor, it’s a great town. I tell everybody it reminds me of the town in Northern Cali-

fornia I grew up in. It’s like Rodeo, California in 1958, before everything got all built up.”

Johnson said he is also new to the area and moved to Oak Har-bor from New Hampshire about three months ago.

“I wanted to learn how to dive and I am in the process of making my final qualification in the dry suit today,” he said. “The water is a little bit cold today, but it’s really beautiful down there.”

Johnson said in addition to cold water and learning the “ropes” of dry suit diving, he has to carry a lot of additional weight on his belt.

“It takes a lot of weight to get down there and I have about 31 pounds of lead weights on today,” he said.

Further down the road at Fort Casey, another species of aquanauts were enjoying the waters below the main gun battery.

Apparently, three sea lions had read Ed Oldham’s most recent column in the Whidbey News-Times about how winter steelhead were beginning to show up in the area and some reportedly weighing in excess of 10 pounds were being caught off the beach.

The animals hung around in the area for quite some time so apparently Ed’s column was correct and the “fishing” was good, at least for those mammals who aren’t afraid to swim with the fish.