Skeleton Sea

CHAPTER 4

A buzz ran through the Sea Spray, a heady feeling like we had entered a secret place.

Looming up from the sea a few dozen yards from us was a large flat-topped rock, its character screened by fog and swirling birds. Birdshit Rock, I gathered. Birds everywhere, over the rock, over the sea. This was surely the bird convention but it was not what I’d expected, it was somehow set apart from the surrounding ocean. It was somehow off.

I said, to Walter, “Is this right?”

He didn’t answer. He was watching the sky.

The sky was ferocious with birds. Birds swarming, near-colliding, like street gangs jostling for turf. Birds in flocks and lone-ranger birds. Big birds and huge birds. A pelican folded its wings and pointed its beak downward and kamikazied into the water. And then another. And other species, spiraling and diving, bellied down upon the creatures in the sea.

The bird watchers shouted out names. Storm petrel! Sooty shearwater! Sabine’s gull! Black-footed albatross!

“Albatross.” Walter smiled. “The bird that made the breeze to blow. A good omen.”

Ah, the Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Again. I'd almost learned it by heart. Mariner’s ship gets lost, albatross appears in the fog and leads the ship to safety and fair weather, mariner in boredom kills the bird, bringing a curse upon the ship. I scanned the sky until I found the black-footed bird gliding on giant wings, wingspan a good seven feet across. It was, after all, just a bird, but I wouldn’t say no to good omens.

The bird crossed behind the boat and Captain Keasling came into my line of sight, surveying the scene from her raised platform. She eyed the albatross, wearing a ferocious frown. I thought of the ancient mariner with his crossbow.

She turned her frown down to the water.

I followed her look.

The surface of the sea was thick with feathers and birds on the attack and it took me some time to filter out the birds and pay heed to the fish. Small silvery arrows feebly schooling, bigger duller fish in blues and greens, strange fish with blunt heads and big jaws and slim bodies. All of them just hanging out. They didn’t dive deep to hide. They seemed dazed, and I guessed I’d be dazed too under such ferocious attack. But yet, they didn’t follow that primal instinct to escape, survive. They appeared, I thought, depressed. How crazy was this?

And then someone yelped and now the sea came alive from the depths. Huge maroon tube-bodied things shot upward all around our boat, opening their red arms to engulf the dazed fishes, extending their tentacles to hook onto their prey and pull it down to parrot beaks. They struck anything and everything. They snagged small birds. They went after larger birds, which screamed and rose into the sky. They went after birds that were going after them. When a nervy seagull circled back in, a squid swiped its tentacles into the sky and pulled down the gull.

I thought, so that’s what they look like.

Tolliver, at the rail outside the wheelhouse, looked my way and nodded.

A hush fell over the boat.

Captain Keasling broke the quiet. “All right, folks,” she boomed, “just squid feeding. Usually come up at night, but…” Her voice trailed off. She regained it. “Must be the banquet. They’re called Humboldt squid. Jumbo size! Devils of the deep! What a show! Don’t forget that when it comes time to tip.”

Okay, I thought, but what caused the banquet?

I left my spot and went over to join Lanny. The deckhand was glued to the rail, watching the show like everybody else. I moved beside him and asked, “What happened to the fish?”

He turned. Broke into a big smile. “You feel good now?”

“Yes. Thank you. Really.” I nodded at the sea. “But what about them?”

He frowned. “I don’t know.”

“Seasick like me?” I smiled.

“Fish don’t get seasick.”

“Good point.”

“If Jock was alive, he’d know.”

“Who’s Jock?”

“Jock Cousteau.” Lanny touched his beanie. “He took care of the ocean.”

Ah. Jacques Cousteau. I’d seen his films in high school bio class — undersea explorer, early champion of the ocean, had something to do with inventing scuba diving, wore a red beanie. I said, “I’m sure there are people now who take care of the ocean.”

“Not like Jock.”

Doug Tolliver instructed Captain Keasling to bring the Sea Spray in closer to the rock.

Birdshit Rock was well-named, a wave-scoured mesa just poking above the water, a bleak outpost. Right now it was blanketed with birds and sea grass.

Hard to ascertain the geology of the rock through the fog and the birds. Sandstone, most likely. Not out of the question that it included iron oxides, but that would have lent it a reddish tint. This rock looked whitish. Could be due to all that birdshit. In any case, I wondered how a boat would get close enough to scrape against it without getting more seriously damaged. The Sea Spray certainly wasn’t going to be able to get close enough for us to hack off a sample. Indeed, Walter was taking a picture with his telephoto lens, which should at the least allow us to distinguish the rock type.

And then Walter whispered, “Oh dear.”

“What?” I said. “What?”

Before he could answer I heard Captain Keasling mutter “what the fuck?” and then she cleared her throat and muttered “sorry folks, slip of the tongue,” and when I looked at her she was frowning more ferociously than ever. She turned her back to stare at the rock.

Walter passed me the camera at the same time that the boat drifted closer and then I didn’t need the telephoto to see what was going on.

Everybody saw.

Again, a hush fell over the boat.

I could now see the upper slope of the rock rising from the sea, and what I’d taken at foggier distance to be some sort of sea grass I now identified as something else entirely. It was a mass of moving bodies. It was a mass of reddish crabs creeping up the flank and the word that came to my mind was escape. They were escaping the sea. Unlike the dazed and dying fish that littered the water, these creatures were able to climb out.

And the birds made a banquet yet again.