Many callings: An active diver since 1980. An award-winning photographer specializing in the Channel Islands and underwater images. A volunteer naturalist with the National Park Service, serving as hiking guide, campground host and fill-in ranger. She monitors giant sea bass in an ongoing project. A former crew member for the Island Packers boat company that takes people out to the islands; she still manages the company's Web site design. She teaches group fitness and an outdoor adventure-recreation class at Moorpark College; she's a faculty member in the Department of Physical Education. She teaches two days a week at the Ventura Nia Center, something called fusion fitness, which incorporates dance and yoga. Of it, she said, "That's my newfound passion. It's a lovely form of movement."

The Channel Islands, after all, aren't everyone's cup of adventure. Windswept, chilly at times, often fog-caked and hard to get to, they can seem menacing dots out on the frothing big blue just off our collective doorstep.

But to her, they're nirvana on the high seas, a rewarding journey that has taken her underwater to the inky depths and top side, as she puts it, on the lands above. This has allowed her to sport her myriad talents: diver, award-winning nature photographer, chronicler of the mysterious giant sea bass and, of late, volunteer naturalist-guide for the National Park Service.

If you've visited the islands in recent years on a public recreation trip, there's a pretty good chance she led or took part in the tour. They are her virtual second home; she can be out there two or three times a week or twice a month for five days at a time amid a hectic schedule (that includes two teaching jobs).

"It was a magical moment," deWet-Oleson recalled. "It was a summer day. It was foggy. This rocky structure came out of nowhere on the surface of the ocean. It's still clearly imprinted on my mind.

It was Anacapa Island, in 1980. She was a student at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, taking a diving class. The diver certification field tests happened to take place near Anacapa.

"A lot of people perceive our ocean as a hostile environment because it's cold and has less visibility than other places, such as the Caribbean," said deWet-Oleson, now a 47-year-old Ventura resident. "To me, it's a very peaceful place, an interesting place with interesting wildlife."

She's found a wealth of incredible life and color in the depths, the places that most never see, as well as near the surface: bright red club-tipped anemone, luminous and eerie sea jellies (called jellyfish by most), seals and sea lions, whales and dolphins.

From the early 1980s to mid-1990s, deWet-Oleson estimates she went on more than 2,000 dives off the local coast, many of them out near the islands. She was averaging 150 to 200 dives per year in her heyday. With each dive down, the total only goes up.

Many of those times, she hauled around cameras and gear such as artificial lights with her, in bulky packs weighing 30 pounds or more. It was labor that spawned and nurtured talent.

"You start to develop an eye for the ocean," she explained. "A large amount of my underwater work is macro, or close-ups. I'm working at very close distances."

"I'm looking for more abstract compositions, detailing colorful patterns in nature and cryptic, smaller wildlife," the veteran diver said. There are nudibranches, for example tiny sluglike creatures maybe an inch or two long that are found along the ocean floor. Decked out in fantastic bright blues and yellows, purples and oranges heck, pick a color they trundle along with all the flair of a Rose Bowl float.

One other dive stands out to deWet-Oleson. It also occurred near Anacapa, in May 1997. A routine journey turned surprising when deWet-Oleson suddenly found herself amid 12 giant sea bass, this after seeing only a handful of them on all her previous dives combined.

The giants, also called black sea bass, can grow almost 7.5 feet long and weigh more than 550 pounds. Once decimated by fishing, they've been protected since the late 1970s, but in the decades since, encounters with them have been rare. "No one knows very much about them," deWet-Oleson noted.

She's observed giant sea bass behavior and learned, among other things, that they habituate the islands from May to September and can change colors like a chameleon; for example, they'll adopt a mottled, spotted pattern to blend in when they're hanging around reefs.

DeWet-Oleson is no fish out of water when she comes up from the depths. Top side, to borrow her term again, she's no stranger to the island's marvelous bevy of land features and vistas. They are full of varied landscapes such as San Miguel Island's caliche forest and a weird rock canyon on Santa Rosa Island that seems straight out of Utah, wildlife such as the island fox she's seen on Santa Cruz Island, wildflowers all over in the full rainbow of colors, soaring cliffs and the right shaft of light dabbing one of the islands' swirling, isolated coves in an exquisite turquoise. The Islands are a perfect place to drink in a sunrise or a sunset, or both.

For a while, she and her husband, Jim, ran a charter dive-boat business. She later worked for about 10 years on the crew for Island Packers, the Ventura-Oxnard boat company that shuttles national park visitors to the five rocks that make up Channel Islands National Park: Anacapa, Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa, San Miguel and Santa Barbara.

She also teaches fitness and an outdoor adventure-recreation class at Moorpark College. The latter includes a trip out to Santa Cruz each spring (and for landlubbers and/or east county residents wishing to stay closer to home, treks into the Santa Monica Mountains).

"I have a habit of spending some of my free time out at the islands, too," she said with a chuckle. "It's an opportunity to roam unencumbered by people and take photographs."

"She's an excellent interpreter, and her knowledge of marine life is phenomenal," Connally continued. "Her love for the ocean shows in her work."

Park ranger Derek Lohuis, who supervises her volunteer work, ticked off a long list of things deWet-Oleson does: hike leader, interpretive guide, campground host, fill-in ranger, educator of school groups and the general public about island resources. She's also donated photos for park use and done a kayak safety video for enthusiasts, he added.

Park Service spokeswoman Yvonne Menard was even more effusive, saying: "She's an amazing woman. She's incredibly resourceful. She's such a pleasure to work with and we constantly get comments from the public about the great job she does."

DeWet-Oleson is part of an admirable, often unsung volunteer effort. In the year ending Sept. 30, some 676 area volunteers donated 54,660 hours of service to Channel Islands National Park the rough equivalent of having 26 more full-time employees, Menard noted.

For all her dives and hikes over the years, deWet-Oleson said she's never had a scary encounter with wildlife. There's no great-white shark or orca tale in her experience (and despite the hysteria such reports can generate, both beasts are very rare sightings in local waters).

Almost three decades later, she still thinks of that 1980 day out at Anacapa that launched her life's adventure. Another thing she remembers from that day is the incessant Anacapa foghorn. It still drones on, a three-second blast once every 27 seconds, to warn ships of a potential graveyard. "To me, that's sort of my calling to the islands," deWet-Oleson said.

It is a sound, she admits, that others dislike. But it's music to her ears, a signal that she's in a familiar, comfortable place. She's as at home on the islands as a trucker is on the interstate.

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