Skeleton Sea

CHAPTER 25

Cold water slapped my face.

This was not Belize. This was not a bathtub tropical sea. Ah hell, this was field work and the fact that the field was underwater was simply a matter of logistics.

Tolliver and then Walter disappeared beneath the surface and then it was my turn on the anchor line. I clamped the regulator in my mouth, sucked in canned air, deflated my buoyancy compensator, and dove.

Down below, I saw Walter’s fins gently kicking.

Good form, partner.

Lessons learned flooded in. Relax, breathe slowly, watch your bubbles. You want a slow trickle. I tipped my head and checked my bubble trail. Too big, too fast. Tolliver had given a tip: hum to yourself to ensure your breathing is slow and easy. I cast about for a tune. What came to mind was the theme music to Jaws.

Never mind.

I concentrated instead on the metallic ring of the regulator exhaust bubbles and found my rhythm.

My bubble trail slowed.

Down the anchor line I went.

A peppy orange fish came by, examined me, flashed his blindingly bright orange self at me, and then dashed into the kelp forest.

We descended just outside the forest, which draped the pinnacle.

Out here, clear of the forest, the visibility was good, the water clear and blue and sunlit down to the seafloor below.

Down below, the base of the pinnacle flared out and tapered into fingers, and between the fingers were sand channels that ran bright and white as sugar. The rocky fingers were haired with kelp — the colonizing outer reach of the forest.

Plan was, we’d descend to the rocky fingers and take our first samples there.

As Tolliver and then Walter neared the bottom I glimpsed a dark triangular shape cruising one of the sand highways, slowly flapping fins that looked more like wings. The bat ray appeared menacing and graceful at the same time.

I saw Tolliver reach bottom and point to the creature.

I saw Walter join Tolliver, and then wave his arms in imitation of the ray.

All's good with you, boys?

When I reached the sandy seafloor the men gave me a nod and then Walter indicated the nearest rocky finger and cocked his head. I nodded in return. Good enough. Tolliver pointed to a nearby stalk of kelp, pointed to himself, and then made a cutting gesture. He was going to take a kelp sample while Walter and I addressed the rock.

I studied the rocky finger. It was a dark volcanic mix, a fine-grained melange, dark gray I thought, although colors underwater were not the same as colors in the lab. Still, I was willing to make a field ID and call the rock a Franciscan basalt.

This could be the source of the pebble lodged in the holdfast caught in the Outcast’s anchor.

Walter took a hammer and chisel from his dive bag and whacked at a fragile-looking knob, careful to avoid the spiky greenish creature parked nearby.

A sea urchin. I thought of the Keaslings. Spiky creatures — two of them, at least.

We took our rock samples and Tolliver rejoined us with a kelp frond sealed in a collection bag.

Tolliver checked his wrist dive computer and held up five fingers. Fifty minutes bottom time remaining.

Walter wrote a word on his slate: coral.

Time to go hunting on the main body of the pinnacle.

Tolliver took the lead and found an opening into the tangle of the kelp forest — a trail of sorts. Walter followed Tolliver. I trailed. Tolliver’s kelp-diving lessons kicked in. Put your hands together in front of you, palms outward, at the ready to sweep the kelp aside as you pass through. Kick gently. Streamline yourself. Be a fish.

I entered the rubbery woods, a big awkward rubber-skinned fish.

The sunlit blue water gave way to the filtered amber light of the kelp forest. It was like moving from a mountain meadow into a thick forest of pines. From the open into the enclosed. From light to shade.

My breathing picked up. Bubbles streamed. I needed to see blue. I rolled my head sideways and back, looking toward the surface, hunting for the sky, but all I saw was the kelp canopy like a large hat blocking out the sky above, shielding the world down below. It seemed a clandestine world down here, a world of shadow and hidden things.

A few spears of light penetrated the canopy, gilding fronds here and there.

Kelp stalks thick as pillars soared all around me.

And then — in the manner in which my eyes would adjust to shade in a terrestrial forest — my vision adjusted to this liquid forest.

It burst into color.

The fronds were muted shades of green and gold and brown.

Big blue fish roamed above. Dozens of silvery needle-nosed fish shot by, like someone had emptied a pincushion. Cigar-shaped black-spotted orange fish converged on a spray of scabbily-encrusted fronds and seemed to scrape them clean.

A golden-shelled red-footed snail inched up a slender stalk.

I glimpsed a pugnacious red crab guarding its patch of kelp, claws clacking, and I wanted to smile but that would mean losing my death grip on the regulator mouthpiece feeding me air.

I had gotten so distracted by the citizens in the kelp forest that I fell behind the others and I had a moment of alarm before I caught sight of Walter’s black fins, just disappearing round a bend ahead.

As if I’d momentarily lost him on a hiking trail.

I kicked harder.

I became a fish, moving like everything else down here in time with the current and the gentle ebb and flow of the surge, fronds and stalks and fish and me all undulating, swaying, in tight synchronization with the heartbeat of the sea. I swam though Tolliver’s narrow trail, through a sudden tunnel of long flat stalks that looked like belts, belts fringed with feathery blades that tickled my face as I swam. The tunnel narrowed. Blades and supple stalks seemed to caress me.

The caresses tightened.

Wrapped me.

I was no longer moving forward.

I kicked furiously.

Not a fish.

Don’t belong.

Breathing hard, bubbles volcanic.

If I had become entangled in brush on a hiking trail on a mountain path the way an air-breather should be hiking I could have calmly worked my way out of trouble and yelled to my hiking companions up ahead to wait.

I couldn’t yell down here or I would drown.

All I could do was hum.

Theme from Jaws.

Bubbles slowed, just at the edge of perception.

Okay lady, you’re caught in the kelp. You got your fins entangled. Stop kicking. Reach down to your leg and draw the dive knife from the sheath. That’s why dive knives were invented.

I bent and twisted and tried to reach my knife but the entanglement went all the way up my calves.

And then my worst nightmare bloomed and I suddenly did not want to look behind me to see what had hold of my legs, because what if it wasn't kelp? It was not out of the question that my legs were entangled in the tentacles of a jumbo Humboldt squid or a purple-stripe jellyfish or some sort of encasing toothy eel.

I froze.

Don’t rile it.

Like starting a bar-room brawl, I recalled Tolliver saying about chumming for Humboldt squid.

I waited for it to bite me, sting me, or release me.

It did nothing.

I came to my senses. First, get that breathing under control. Think of a mountain meadow in the sunshine.

Breathing slowed. Bubbles slowed.

Next, I reached into the mental file drawer where Tolliver’s kelp-diving lessons were stored. Searched for the heading if you’re stupid enough to get entangled. Found it. Draw your knife, cut yourself free. Couldn’t reach the knife. Next? Very steadily, without twisting your torso, pull your knee — or knees, plural, should you be stupid enough to get both legs caught — up toward your chest.

Very steadily, without twisting my torso, I pulled my knees toward my chest. Astonishingly, they came. Along with their wrapping.

Next? Unwrap the kelp from your limbs.

I reached down and grasped the tangle of kelp — snapping stalks and pulling the mess free of my limbs — and when I had finished self-rescuing I streamlined myself into one hell of an agile fish and in short time I caught up with Walter and Tolliver.

It appeared they hadn’t missed me.

Lessons learned.

The kelp trail branched and branched again but Doug Tolliver, along with his wrist compass, led us to the pinnacle.

We had sampled its spreading fingers, outside the forest. Inside the forest, the pinnacle was a thick-bodied pillar of rock, wider at the base and thinning as it rose.

It looked like a Christmas tree.

It was hung with all manner of gaudy decorations. There were anemones the color of strawberries and apricots and limes, some of them large as dinner plates. There were volcano-shaped sponges and spreading sea fans. There were orange and red and purple and rainbow-hued sea stars wrapped around rocky knobs. There were creatures for which I had no names. Huge white stalks topped with carved disks sprouted from the rock like cauliflowers. Squishy things the shape of caterpillars in neon red and yellow crept along the wall. One bright cobalt-blue crawler wore a crown of gold spikes and could audition for a Disney flick. The cracks and fissures of the pinnacle were inhabited by crabs and snails and one tiny red octopus. A thick-lipped thing in a huge scalloped shell hogged an entire ledge to itself.

We ascended the pinnacle, searching for a gaudy purple in the gaudy tapestry.

It was Tolliver who found the hydrocoral, looking like the photo we'd seen in Dr. Russell's office.

Stylaster californicus.

Tolliver pumped his fist.

We were not going to whack at it. The organism took twenty-five years to grow one inch, so I’d read. Taking even a tip would rob it of a few years. Tolliver used his underwater camera to do the sampling.

Walter pried off a pinch of the Franciscan rock near the coral and I marveled that he'd found an unoccupied section of wall to sample.

We’d done well at Target Blue. We’d found a credible source for the kelp and pebble embedded in the holdfast caught in the Outcast anchor. And we had found a credible source of the mineral grains and coral bits embedded in the yellow float's rope. What we had not yet found was any sign of a float anchorage, any reason the float would have been attached to this slice of the pinnacle.

We conferred in sign language.

Consensus: ascend the pinnacle, looking for signs of a float anchorage. Then cross the ridge to Target Red and see what we can find over there.

There was nothing more to be found on the Target Blue pinnacle, other than beauty. When we reached the spot where the pinnacle butted up against the caterpillar ridge, we struck out for Target Red.

And then Tolliver investigated a shortcut, a tunnel through the ridge.

Dim light showed at the other end.

On land, I'd entered tunnels and mines and caves, out of necessity. I wasn't fond of overhead environments but, actually, this one looked navigable.

We all switched on the fat torch lights mounted on our gloves.

The tunnel opening was a toothy triangle that quickly swallowed Tolliver and then Walter and then me.

Finning carefully, silt avoidance technique.

There was life inside the tunnel — some of the same animals clinging to the walls as clung to the pinnacle — but here in the darker realm, in this gullet through the ridge, I did not see beauty. I saw only shadows of life and it wasn’t the shadows per se that unsettled me, it was the imagining of things unseen that tightened my chest.

My bubbles came faster, hit the ceiling of the tunnel, died there.

I angled my torch to illuminate the crowding right-hand wall and calmed myself with a quick and dirty field ID of the rock. Sandstone.

All right, then.

Up ahead, Walter was just exiting the tunnel.

I finned toward the light.

I emerged from the tunnel to find Tolliver and Walter gripping a rock outcrop, bodies drifting in a gentle current.

I too grabbed hold.

My legs trailed.

It wasn’t just the current that had us holding on tight. It was also the scene before us.

I took in this new underwater world.

Was this right?