Skeleton Sea

CHAPTER 24

Doug Tolliver ushered us on board the police boat.

“Your choice, port or starboard, ocean view from either seat.” Tolliver smiled at his own joke.

Walter took port, I took starboard.

Joining us was Tolliver’s sergeant, a taciturn young woman who headed for the cabin to take the helm. “Faith James.” She gave us a nod. “Yes, Faith’s my real name. No, you don’t need it to ride with me.”

Walter chuckled.

I appreciated the good humor. I had nothing to offer.

Tolliver settled himself on the jump seat at the back railing. He planned to give us diving tips on the way.

The police boat was a thirty-footer painted in crisp blue and white, everything in its place, antennae and nav gear bristling atop the cabin, ropes tightly coiled along the steel rails, bench cushions spotless, deck gleaming, tank rack shipshape, the rest of the dive gear stowed in a locker. The Breaker was a neatnik’s boat.

As we left the harbor Tolliver explained that the boat had been named in a contest at the local middle school.

As we motored into open sea, the Breaker showed its moves.

Brawny and fast, at least with Faith at the helm.

Tolliver beamed, his pompadour quickly destroyed by wind and sea spray.

Walter hooked an arm over the railing and stuck his face into the wind, looking nearly as happy as Tolliver.

I chewed fennel seeds.

It helped that the day was warm and sunny, unlike the chilly fog on our last outing aboard Sandy Keasling’s boat. I preferred seeing where I was going. Today I could see ahead to the far horizon. I turned to check on the view behind us. The coastline was shrinking. The seascape was expanding, boats here and there.

Next time I looked back, the boats were specks and the coastline had shrunk to a thin brownish line.

I watched until the line disappeared.

Blue sky, blue sea, nothing in the world but two blocks of blue.

And us.

“Couldn’t ask for better seas,” Tolliver said.

We had waited two days to make this trip.

Day before yesterday, after leaving the CalPoly campus and the inimitable Violet Russell, Walter and I had returned to our motel lab and put the final pieces of the puzzle together.

We had Franciscan basalt that pointed to several areas on Cochrane Bank, we had Stylaster californicus that narrowed the range to a pinnacle and a reef, and we had Macrocystis pyrifera, giant kelp, that pointed to a small patch of kelp forest spanning the two targets.

Today, the time had come to pay our targets a visit. Faith James had fed the coordinates into the Breaker’s Garmin chart plotter.

Tolliver was talking diving and I was watching the view behind us when another speck of a boat appeared. I waited for it to grow into a recognizable shape. Sailboat, cruiser, harbor patrol, fishing boat, whale-watching boat?

It maintained its pace, at a speck-like distance.

After awhile I said, “Is that boat following us?”

Tolliver went into the cabin and checked the radar display. He came back and took his seat. “Okay, we’ve tagged the target. We’ll watch its direction of travel.”

“A big boat?” Walter asked. “A small boat?”

“Hard to say. The material and shape of the target affects how large the onscreen blip appears. I’ve seen hundred-footers look smaller onscreen than fifty-footers. And then you get into the math, and that’s where I bail.” He shrugged. “Faith will keep an eye on it.”

Sometime later I saw a new speck on the horizon, this time ahead of us.

As we advanced, the speck expanded into a thin line.

It put me in mind of the coastline when it had shrunk to a thin line.

However, this line ahead was a different color, a reddish-orange.

For a moment I thought this must be another piece of land. An island. A bit of shallow reef revealed by the tides.

And then we neared and Tolliver said, “Well how about that.”

The thin line thickened into a large irregular stain on the water. It looked scummy, like a crust. There was the faint odor of rotten eggs.

Walter said, “Is that…”

“Algae bloom,” Tolliver said.

“The harmful sort? The sort that sickens sea life?”

“Right color,” Tolliver said.

Walter said, “How about that.”

The Breaker slowed to a stop. Faith idled the engine. “Here we are.”

Walter and Tolliver and I exchanged a look. Yeah, I thought, how about a harmful algal bloom sitting on top of our target neighborhood? The sort of bloom that produces a poison that bioaccumulates in plankton-eaters like anchovies, which sea lions then consume. That causes a sickened sea lion to beach itself, which brings a rescue team that includes Oscar Flynn and Jake Keasling. How about that for a coincidence?

Tolliver said, “Well, it’s red tide season. This won’t be the only one out here.”

Still, I thought. How about that.

Tolliver studied the bloom. “It's kind of patchy, beginning to break up, but you can see why it's hanging around. See how the water kind of dips, holding the bloom in place? That’s an eddy. You know, the water rotates…” He twirled a finger. “Something to do with currents and what the seafloor underneath looks like.”

Faith called from the wheelhouse, “Where do we anchor, Doug?”

“Hang on.” Tolliver took out his own handheld chartplotter.

Walter and I crowded in for a look. It showed a 3D map of the seafloor and I recognized the contours from our bathymetric map — the target neighborhood. A long ridge extended along Cochrane Bank, and from the crest it sloped down toward the outer continental shelf. The ridge looked something like a caterpillar with smaller jagged ridges and canyons bristling like legs off the central crest. I recognized our two targets. They straddled the caterpillar.

I pointed them out to Tolliver.

He looked from the chartplotter to the sea. “One’s over there.” He pointed to the bloody red patch of ocean. “I’m damned if I’m going to anchor my boat in that mess.”

“Then shall we settle there?” Walter pointed to the pinnacle on the chart.

We looked up from the chart and scanned the sea and saw several dark patches rippling the water — they had to be the kelp beds. The closest dark patch appeared to form a canopy over the pinnacle.

Tolliver called to Faith, “Let’s anchor just shy of that kelp bed.”

We motored over to the dark patch and stopped at the edge. Faith pressed the button to lower the anchor. It clanked and creaked and slap-splashed into the water and then Faith killed the engine.

Here we were.

Our world went silent and still.

No wind, calm seas.

I looked back toward the invisible coast. The boat speck had disappeared.

It was just us now, and the world beneath.

Faith came out of the wheelhouse and we all looked over the side.

Directly below, the water was cobalt blue, clear, unlike the bloody red water of the algal bloom a few dozen yards away.

Directly ahead the water was carpeted by green-gold fronds. Giant kelp, Macrocystis pyrifera. It was hard to think of it as a forest. I was used to looking up through a forest to the treetops. Here, we looked down from above. The canopy was laid out flat along the surface of the sea. The long slender blades were attached to sturdy stalks, swelling into fat gas bladders that held the plants aloft. The blades swayed lazily in time with the gentle currents.

It was mesmerizing.

My stomach surged.

As the blades moved they released a fuzz of tiny bubbles.

I focused on the science, on kelp caught in the act of photosynthesizing, sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and turning it into the energy needed to build itself, and in the process releasing oxygen.

I sucked in a huge helping.

“Kelp diving’s an art,” Tolliver said. “You’ll need to follow me.”

I shifted my focus from swaying kelp to solid rock. Through a patchy spot in the canopy, the pinnacle was visible a dozen or so feet below. I stated the obvious. “There it is.”

Walter nodded. “For clarity’s sake, let’s call this Target A. Which makes the reef beneath the algal bloom Target B.”

Tolliver shook his head. “Nah nah, somebody — me probably — is gonna at some point say, now which one was Target A again? How about this, reef over there under the red tide we'll call Target Red and the pinnacle here we'll call Target Blue, for blue water.”

“I can live with that,” Walter said.

“Now that we know where we’re talking about,” Tolliver said, “let’s talk logistics.”

Plan was, we concluded, we would dive down to Target Blue, diving through clear water to the seafloor at the edge of the kelp forest, where we would begin our sampling. Then, into the forest and up the pinnacle, sampling if need be. Then over the top of the caterpillar ridge and down to Target Red to sample there.

We’d be looking for something to tie Robbie Donie to this site.

We posited that he had made two separate trips here.

On trip one, he came here — for whatever reason — and found the yellow float. Perhaps it was some sort of warning buoy, for boaters. The float was perhaps anchored to one of our targets — judging by the mineral and coral grains embedded in its rope — and it broke free due to the faulty snap hook. Donie plucked it out of the water and stashed his prize in his duffel bag. And then upon returning to shore, he took his prize to his shrine at Morro Rock.

On either trip one or trip two the Outcast encountered something that scratched its rub rail and embedded iron particles.

On trip two, Donie returned here — for whatever reason — and anchored at Target Blue or Target Red. In either case, he anchored close enough to the kelp to snag and break off a holdfast harboring a telltale pebble.

On trip two, he disappeared.

If he'd gone overboard here, was he down below? Or what remained of him? Tolliver had explained that cold water at depth would slow decay. That the body would sink and then be subject to the ebb and flow of currents and tides. That it would be at the mercy of marine predators, likely small fish and crabs. That aside from some nibbling and pruning, the body would be in good enough shape for the medical examiner to establish cause of death.

That is, he’d added, if we were able to locate the body.

I cleared my throat and said, “If this is the site where Donie did the squid fishing, what’s the chance we’re going to see some Humboldts?”

“They mainly come up at night,” Tolliver said. “I know, we saw them daytime out near Birdshit. Guess they couldn’t resist all that action. Look, we’re not jigging bait, we don’t look like a meal, so even if there’s Humboldts in the area, no reason they’re gonna bother us.”

Walter and I nodded.

“They’re like rattlesnakes,” Tolliver added.

“Oh?” I said.

“You come from the mountains, you know snakes, right? You see a rattlesnake, what do you do? You leave it alone. Don’t rile it and it won’t pay you any attention. Same idea in the water. You see a Humboldt, you leave it alone, it’ll leave you alone. That make sense?”

“I’m clear on Humboldts,” I said, “but what about jellyfish? Like the kind that stung the diver?”

“Purple stripe, so I understand,” Tolliver said. “Yeah, they live out here. They’re drifters, on the currents. Could be anywhere. We don't know where Silva got stung.”

I rather hoped, not here.

“End of wildlife lesson,” Tolliver said. “Time to dive.”

We stripped down to our swim suits and turned to the job of wrestling into our wetsuits. Walter and I had rented our gear at the local dive shop, under Tolliver's critical eye. Tolliver handed us waterproof slates with attached pencils, for underwater communication.

We finished suiting up.

Shrink-wrapped in thick black neoprene, sporting blue buoyancy compensators, burdened with weight belts and high-volume tanks, we moved to the dive platform.

Faith raised the dive flag and settled into Tolliver’s jump seat.

“Okay, last-minute do's and don'ts. First off, we'll use the anchor line as a guide,” Tolliver said. “Descent and ascent.”

I nodded. We'd learned that in Belize.

“If we get to Target Red and need more bottom time we'll ascend there and Faith will pick us up. But damned if I want to surface in that mess. I'm planning our time so we return to the anchor line.” He tapped the dive computer on his wrist. “You'll notice I’m also carrying a pony bottle.” He patted the bright yellow tank strapped to his flank. “Emergency air. Don’t plan on needing it. Just standard procedure.”

I nodded.

“And this here,” Tolliver patted the reel and line clipped to his harness, “is a guideline. On the off-chance we need to enter an overhead environment, I lay the line. It shows the way out.”

I nodded. The dive master in Belize had carried one.

“Finally,” Tolliver said, “if we do enter an overhead environment we're going to do a gentle frog kick to direct the force of our fins away from the bottom so we don't stir up the sediment. Can't see a damned thing in a silt-out.”

I nodded.

Tolliver glanced at Walter.

Walter's eyebrows lifted. “I believe we've mentioned that we're not new to diving.”

“You're new to me, in my ocean.”