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.”