Skeleton Sea

CHAPTER 31

We took the Breaker.

It seemed that every official vehicle in Morro Bay was on the move. Coast Guard vessels and helicopters and the lone Morro Bay Police Department chopper all headed southward, following the currents, tracking the bloom, heading for the beaches to the south.

Tolliver had also dispatched one PD boat up the channel to search the back bay, on the lookout for more moon jellies.

We could have taken Tolliver’s car to the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant but the route by road was slower than by sea.

And so we drove to the dock and piled aboard the police boat.

Tolliver took the helm and Walter and I stood gripping the rails and the Breaker charged out of the harbor and headed south.

We skimmed the coastline and passed a gray sand beach that was uninhabited save for a couple of horseback riders. No swimmers in sight. Indeed, the entire stretch of coastline was wild and uninhabited, just bluffs and rocky coves and crashing waves.

Along the way Tolliver explained everything he’d learned.

Trouble, in spades.

Ten minutes later we saw two white reactor containment domes hulking up above a long low-slung building on a bluff at the ocean’s edge, and then Tolliver skewed his boat into a sharp turn and charged into the little cove where the nuke plant sat.

The Breaker idled just offshore of the waterfall of heated water tumbling into the sea.

Tolliver was on his phone again, consulting with plant officials, getting the latest details.

He updated us.

The Diablo Canyon plant cooled its hot fuel rods by sucking in seawater and circulating it through pipes to absorb the heat from the active rods and to cool the spent fuel pools, and then discharged the now-warmed water back into the sea — that pretty waterfall spilling out of a concrete mouth.

Today, the intake system had sucked in moon jellyfish.

As soon as the jellyfish hit the cooling-water intake racks, alarms sounded and operators took one reactor offline and reduced power to the other.

They knew the drill.

It had happened before, gelatinous sea creatures coming in on the tide, plastering themselves against the debris screen, clogging the crucial intake system.

The cleanup had been costly and messy.

Divers had to go down to scrape off the intruders.

The Diablo people knew the drill.

This time — while we were rushing to the Morro Rock beach — divers at the Diablo plant were being sent down to scrape and clean the debris screen.

The two divers had joked about making sushi.

One diver got moon jelly tentacles across the face. The other diver did not, and survived, but he was not making jokes.

I listened to Tolliver relate the story of Diablo Canyon, and I thought about the beach at Morro Rock. In effect, there were two concurrent events involving deadly moon jellyfish. Where the hell were they coming from?

Tolliver was instructed to move to the next cove southward.

The plant facilities sprawled along a sloping terrace, spanning several coves cut into the rugged coastline. The Breaker motored around the corner to the next cove, which was embraced by two brawny breakwater arms.

This was the intake cove, where pipes sucked in cooling seawater.

And jellyfish.

There was nothing to see now, save for another long low-slung building perched on the bluff with a concrete curtain that dropped down into the sea. Some sort of debris shield, I assumed, which could not be expected to screen out slippery gelatinous debris.

Tolliver nosed his boat over to a small dock, cut the engine, tied off the mooring rope.

We disembarked and headed up the dock.

Our way was blocked by a plant official, a guy in a hard hat with a harried expression who pointedly asked how he could be of assistance to the Morro Bay PD.

Tolliver said, “We're following up a lead on a case.”

“Here?” the official said.

I looked around. The water was placid in this sweet little cove. The ambulance and the coroner's van had come and gone for the stung divers. The jellyfish still clogged the intake screens but they were under the water and well out of sight. I wasn't sure where to begin. All I had was Lanny Keasling’s devils, which may or may not have referred to moon jellyfish, which may or may not have referred specifically to moon jellyfish at Diablo Canyon. And if Lanny had been referring to this morning’s event, how could he have predicted that last night?

But diablo meant devil in Spanish.

Tolliver said, “To start with, we're trying to find out where the jellyfish came from.”

The plant official said, “Then you'd better talk to the jellyfish lady.”

We all three came alert.

“From Cal Poly, just down the coast. She consulted last time jellies clogged our pipes. Manager called her this time and she came right away. You wait here. I'll go get her.”

Violet Russell swept down the walkway to the dock.

The stylish professor who had commanded the auditorium stage three days ago now looked like a harried student rushing to class. She wore a blue T-shirt and jeans and sneakers and there was no clever comb in her Afro.

She halted in front of us. “Welcome to the intersection of Weird and Main.”

No movie-star smile, just a coiled intensity that made me nervous.

Tolliver gave her a weary nod.

She said, “How can I help you?”

I explained devil moons with the caveat that I might have misunderstood.

She gave a strained laugh. “Devil moons is good a name as any, for what we have this morning.”

Walter said, “Do you have any ideas about what we have this morning?”

“I can give you theories. Until I get a necropsy done on the jellies I collected, that’s all I’ve got.”

“Shoot,” Walter said.

“Theory A, we’ve got a mutation. In fact, there’s a program right now that monitors sea life in the vicinity of the heated water discharge, to see if that's altering the marine ecosystem.”

Tolliver said, “But if they originated here, how'd they get up to Morro? They were riding the outgoing tide from the back bay.”

“It's doable,” she said. “Aurelia are nearshore creatures. They like to hang in harbors and embayments. In their developmental stage, they're notorious for planting their polyps on nearshore structures like oil rigs and aquafarms and breakwaters and piers….”

I looked down at the dock beneath our feet.

“…so yes, they could have originated here. Or elsewhere, up or down the coast. Currents are changeable, take them south, take them north.”

Walter said, “But if you’re considering mutation due to the warm-water discharge, then you're saying they originated here?”

“I’m saying mutation is a hypothesis, and point source is up for grabs. Aurelia is highly adaptable. Common throughout the world’s seas. Conditions are changing throughout the world’s seas. You get a mutation in, say, Japan and Aurelia can hitch a ride in the ballast of a ship or on floating trash and be transported far and wide.”

“Japan?” Tolliver said. “Are you talking about that nuke plant over there that blew up?”

“Melted down,” she corrected. “I wasn't referring to the Fukushima disaster but yes, a couple of researchers have speculated that sea creatures near the plant might be in danger of genetic mutations — especially soft-bodied creatures like jellyfish.”

“Jesus,” Tolliver said, “some kind of Godzilla thing?”

She said, “Some kind of over-reaction there, Detective.”

“Over-reaction, my ass. I just watched four citizens of my town die.”

She snapped, “I just saw a diver from my town die.”

Walter stepped in. “We're all distressed at what happened today.” He added, “And puzzled.”

Violet Russell took in a long breath. “You got that right. We don't get jellies this toxic here.”

I asked, “Exactly how toxic?”

She frowned, inverse of the movie-star smile. “Again, I'll need to do the necropsy, but I would put today's toxicity in the realm of Chironex fleckeri. You might have heard of him. Box jellyfish.”

I thought, holy shit. I said, “You mean on the Discovery channel's top ten deadly creatures list?”

“That's the one. He's a tropical jelly. We do get his cousin, Carybdea marsupialis, but…”

“Box jellyfish in California?”

“Yes, Carybdea is a cubozoan, like Chironex, but his sting is milder.”

“That's what you said about the moons. Mild sting.”

“That's what's got me worried.”

Tolliver passed a hand across his face. “Sorry — for what I said. I see you're worried. I'm just hoping you can figure out what the hell's going on.”

She said, “Me too.”

“You gave us Theory A,” Walter said. “Do you have a B?”

She nodded. “A new species of Aurelia, which is not out of the question. For instance, there's an invasive species known as the clinging jellyfish in Atlantic waters that's recently become more numerous, and venomous. It’s either new, or the existing species has evolved. With Aurelia, take your pick. Mutation, new species.”

I said, “If it is new, and it originated here, planted its polyps here, are you…”

“I already collected,” she said.

I looked down at the dock again.

“No, not here, I sampled at the breakwater. This dock isn't a good candidate. The pilings have been wrapped in an anti-fouling material, to discourage polyp attachment.”

Walter and I exchanged a look. Small world. Earlier this morning we'd come across anti-fouling paint. And then we'd established that the red float paint was not the anti-fouling variety. Still, small world.

And then a word jumped out at me—pilings—and a comment made last week, something heard and forgotten and now ringing like a bell in my memory. It could be nothing relevant, but added to Lanny’s devils it made me take notice.

I glanced at Walter. He was frowning. Remembering?

Tolliver’s antennae were up. “What?”

“Give me a minute.” I moved to the end of the dock and got down on my hands and knees.

The others followed.

I leaned over the water and saw the pilings reaching down to anchor the dock to the seafloor.

Violet Russell joined me, sinking to her knees, the two of us now staring through the water at the pilings.

I saw what she had been referring to — a slick black material wrapped the concrete pillars. It seemed that the anti-fouling jackets were effective for I saw none of the organisms one sees on submerged surfaces. No sea muck. Certainly, no jellyfish polyps.

It was what Russell had said it was.

And nothing more.

But she was still looking. And then she reached for something in the water, at one of the pilings.

Tolliver said, “Will somebody goddamn clue me in here?”

She said, “There's a rope.”

Tolliver and Walter crowded in beside us.

It was a black nylon rope, and as Russell reeled it in, we saw what was attached to the end: a black rectangular plate. She let it rest just below the surface.

“I'll tell you what,” she said, “that's not right.”

“Looks like a serving tray,” Tolliver said.

The plate was caked with sea scum. There were organisms I could not identify — white daisy-like blooms, toothy-shelled cups, spongy bits and pieces — and then there were clumps of little pale balls.

Walter said, “Is that some sort of collection medium?”

“A recruitment plate,” she said. “Somebody has installed a recruitment plate to collect samples.”

“Collect?” I asked. “Or deploy?”

Tolliver said, “Deploy what?”

Russell looked at Tolliver. “Jellyfish. I'll need to have a look under the microscope to be certain but I'd say those disks are moon jellyfish polyps.”

“You mean, to keep them coming?”

“This would do it,” she said.

“You mean, somebody's creating a goddamn invasion?”

She said, after a long pause, “This would do it.”

Walter said, “Theory C?”

I stared at the pale balls on the black plate and I wondered if somebody was growing a serving of devil moons here.

And then the comment I'd heard and forgotten, the comment I'd been trying to retrieve, resurfaced in full. I asked Russell, “Who did the piling wrap job?”

“I'm afraid I don't know,” she said.

Didn't matter. I knew.