THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 22, 1994 TAG: 9406220027
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: By PATRICK K. LACKEY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: 940622 LENGTH: Medium
``There is something about your day-to-day life,'' she said. ``You are dealing with bosses, you are dealing with problems. Little chunks get taken out of you. You start to feel reduced.''
{REST} Eight years ago she discovered scuba diving, and soon a dream was born.
``When I am diving,'' she said, ``it restores me; it refreshes the soul. It's like a revival. It makes it worthwhile to deal with the things you have to deal with on a day-to-day basis.''
Her dream is to make a living shooting photographs under water.
``If this were a great world,'' she said, ``what I would do all the time is travel, dive and take photos.''
She has long believed in self-improvement. She has bachelor's and master's degrees and is certified in several areas: insurance, stocks and bonds, financial planning. She took a mind-control seminar. She tried to better herself in some way every year.
But she was seeking without finding till the fall of 1986, when she saw a newspaper ad for a scuba diving course and entered an underwater world.
She had had dreams before that led nowhere, she said. ``You entertain daydreams and thoughts - I could be this, or I could be that - without any motions in that direction.
``With this dream, there's motion.''
When she first dove in the Bahamas, in the summer of 1987, she didn't even own a land camera.
The fish and the colors so enthralled her she longed to share the experience with friends stuck on boats or land.
Words failed her, she said, so she bought an underwater camera, and she has never stopped shooting.
Fellow members in the Virginia SEALS and Scuba Club began asking her for prints.
Soon she was selling them.
Her photographs are available - from $10 to $100, depending on size - at Discovery Diving in Beaufort, N.C., and Olympus Dive Shop in Morehead City, N.C. She sells her shots at outdoor arts shows such as the Ghent Arts Festival.
She just began teaching a week-end underwater photography course at Discovery Diving in Beaufort.
And this year she got what could be her first big break. On a dive off the Galapagos Islands, she met Stan Waterman, one of the best known cinematographers. He worked on the movie ``The Deep.'' A Discovery Channel special about Waterman was titled ``The Man Who Loves Sharks.
Waterman hired Sistrunk for a 10-day job this December off Cocos Island, a two-day boat ride from Costa Rica in an area known for schools of hammerhead sharks.
When she asked him what she should do, he said, ``Keep me alive under water.''
She'll get to do some cinematography herself.
Sistrunk, who is single, lives in Newport News with her mother, Ruby. ``My mother tells people,'' Sistrunk said, ``I would rather be with fish, which isn't quite accurate.'' She really likes sharks, which she called ``the king of the ocean.''
Her three weeks of annual vacation are taken up with traveling and diving. She's already used up this year's vacation and borrowed from next year.
She's had scary moments. Once a current swept her and a diving buddy away from the dive boat. They were lost at sea four hours.
She's been 200 feet down without special deep gear. ``That's not advised or recommended or smart, even,'' she said.
When a shark comes round, she said, she has learned to somehow sense it even before seeing it.
``I never feel more alive,'' she said, ``than when I am diving.''
by CNB