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.”
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.