EARLY MORNING–PALAU, MICRONESIA
I paused, as I always did, to reconsider my next steps. Then, having made my decision, I ran recklessly to the edge, feeling that mixture of faith and doubt as I committed to leaving solid earth. What followed was a full-on sensory assault: the final impact of my plant foot as I launched myself into the emptiness; the sight of nothing but a massive, empty horizon; the sound of air rushing past my ears, the sudden shift in smell as I plummeted; and then the quick nip of chill as my sun-warmed body plunged into the cool ocean thirty feet below the cliff. It never got old.
The sense of pressure rose as the water embraced me, enveloping me in a riot of bubbles, before the chaos resolved into a womb-like bliss. My descent slowed, the noise dissolved into silence, the water diffused the sunlight, and the current carried away the cocoon of bubbles. Gone was the world I’d awoken to that morning, replaced by my magical second home. And then, a few quick flutter kicks drove me toward the surface for a gulp of warm ocean air.
Popping up at the water’s edge, I pulled myself onto the narrow, rock-lined shelf where my gear lay. Within minutes, I had rechecked my pressure gauge and diving computers, and pulled on my buoyancy compensator, tank, and mask. As I cinched up my straps, a flock of shearwaters flew by, gliding silently over the surface of the water. I noticed they were feeding—a sign there were baitfish near the surface, likely driven upward by predators below. Above me, beyond the top of the cliff, a noisy flock of dusky sparrows burst from the jungle hillside, then banked sharply and disappeared back into the canopy.
With fifty pounds of gear on my back, and an uneven, unforgiving surface beneath my dive booties, I didn’t spend much time taking in the scene. Waddling the few feet to the edge, I tested my regulator for proper airflow, shoved it into my mouth, and leapt in. I was treated to another quick flurry of bubbles and then silence. Floating to the surface and drifting with the current, I pulled on my fins, dumped air out of my buoyancy compensator, and flipped upside down, descending farther away from the chaos of the world—weightless and free. Beneath me, the cliff plummeted almost straight down until it was swallowed by the shadows.
*
Ricky’s Rocking Spot was my oasis. It wasn’t perfect, and those imperfections added to its charm. For years, locals had used its crystal-blue waters as a dump site for things they couldn’t reuse, repurpose, sell, recycle, or give away—castoffs that had outlived their utility and were viewed as just taking up space. I had seen a cockeyed Barco reclining lounger, a suitcase packed with still-sealed porn videos, and even a nearly new Camry, its Hertz bumper sticker just starting to peel. I had a hard time getting past the short-sighted, selfishness of it all—not just from the perspective of ruining natural beauty, but the very real destruction of the environment. The car, I was sure, was still leaching out petrochemicals that poisoned our fish and everything up the food chain. But marine life can be resilient, and it eventually embraces the surface world’s jetsam—some of it had settled on the ledges and occasional slopes, providing new habitats. Most, though, just dropped down into the darkness of the sand bottom almost two hundred feet below. Still, it gored me that people could so casually choose to turn their problem into someone else’s.
I dropped down to a sculpted coral reef one hundred feet below the surface and thousands of miles away from my worries. The diving was perfect, a virtual Zen state. I was flying. Spinning and somersaulting, I was trans- ported back to a rare, carefree moment in my mid-teens when I was living with Mom. It was one of the good summers—she had enrolled me in a live-in circus camp for a month. I loved the aerial work, the liberating feeling of it, and here I was, fifteen years later, still getting off on the flying sensation like I had the very first time. The tights and tank top of the wannabe circus aerialist had been replaced with three millimeters of neoprene and a load of scuba gear, which made me feel a little less free, but, on the plus side, the consequences of falling were a lot less daunting.
A steady but gentle current had pushed me along a dramatic underwater cliff. Carried along like a leaf on a river, I did my underwater ballet, rolling and twisting in my weightless environment. Not a care in the world. Just the fish and me. A pair of bluefin tuna approached from down-current and sped by, scanning the depths for a quick meal. Although these fish were somewhere north of four hundred pounds, they were never a threat, feeding only on small baitfish. Sometimes the big fish had sharp teeth and a wider variety of dining options, but they didn’t bother us nearly as much as we bothered them.
Although I dived the site solo, I wasn’t lacking company that day. Besides the bluefins, a good-sized hammerhead shark was patrolling the depths. I gradually descended to a hundred forty feet to get a better look, something I couldn’t do with most of our paying customers. We didn’t take vacation divers anywhere near that depth... our reputation and bottom line couldn’t afford a customer getting “the bends,” a risk that increases as the dive goes deeper.
Contrary to their reputation, sharks are generally nonthreatening. Some can even be playful, but in a domineering way. Despite cable TV depictions and hysterical reports whenever there’s a shark “attack” leading most to believe the worst, sharks tend to let people go their own way. We don’t look or act like their normal food source, and we most certainly don’t taste like it. This hammerhead, though, had my attention. I figured it was just curious and my mellow demeanor gave it the confidence to hang around, cutting tight 180-degree turns close to the reef wall. That, or it was agitated. It’s always hard to tell, and I didn’t want to be the blue-plate special should a shark decide it’s dinnertime. They are deceptively fast and relentless when hunting.
As they weren’t in the realm of the hammerhead’s diet, the bluefins were still zipping about. Hammerheads favor meals on the sand bottom—octopus, rays, crabs, that sort of thing—so it was a perfect moment for me to be alone with some of the great creatures of the sea, coexisting in my private playground, its appeal ironically improved by the garage-sale look acquired over the years. The fish truly thrived in that environment as it provided an array of places to hide from predators.
After my time with the shark, I moved shallower, knowing it was best to avoid spending too much time so deep. Besides, the light was better in the shallower water, and the morning glow was beginning to bring out the marine wall’s color.
Everywhere I looked there was a smorgasbord of fish. Many of the small ones were tucked into nooks and crannies, both the reef’s natural ones and the new ones provided by the islanders’ rejects. Some darted about from hiding place to hiding place, while others braved the open but stayed inches away from safety. At some point, though, even the well-hidden needed to emerge to eat, so a healthy population of larger predators patrolled the zone, waiting for one to make a mistake. Large cuttlefish blended into the scenery, changing color and texture to match their background. Schools of jackfish and barracuda flashed silver as they circled and waited. More tuna cruised through, turning on the afterburners as they pursued a mass of baitfish, and I could see splashes above me as the shearwaters dived into the ocean, attacking the school as it was driven to the surface.
With all of that rich soup of fish life buzzing about, this spot was ideal for predators, including any industrious spear fisherman willing to bypass the easy pickings of his local lagoon in search of bigger fish. So, as I drifted with the current, I wasn’t totally surprised to see a man nestled down on a wide ledge a hundred feet below the surface of the ocean. The wall was concaved just below the ledge, so it was an ideal spot to look straight down to view prey. The local hunters picked spots like that where they could blend into the environment and lay there waiting for their prey to wander a little too close.
*
I was in awe of the locals. They’d been fishing beneath the waves their whole lives, often using homemade gear including their spears and masks. Most fished from shore or in shallow waters from dugouts and small runabouts—they seldom went deep and didn’t need to. Ringed with over one hundred miles of reefs providing shallow, calm, clear water, the island chain was fringed with mangroves whose roots provided a sanctuary for the juveniles and other small fish.
Even so, a few special locals chose to go after the bigger prey like snappers, groupers, or the big wrasses, and did so with factory-made gear, usually purchased used, or accepted as gifts from departing visitors. Those were the free-diving ninjas. No scuba tanks for them. On a single breath of air, they kicked down to depths of a hundred feet or more, hovered motionless for a minute or even longer as they waited for their prey, fired the spear perfectly into the fish’s brain, and then surfaced, ready almost immediately to do it again.
I was in no hurry and knew he’d have to surface soon, so I turned back into the current, swimming against it, putting some distance between us. There is nothing a predator, human or otherwise, hates more than an oblivious interloper spooking their prey. And I selfishly resented his intrusion into my space. Gently finning, I slowly pushed myself against the water flow and moved up-current about a hundred feet, deciding to take a couple of minutes to peek around in the coral. The metronome in my head clicked off the seconds.
*
Given the state of bliss I’d been in since hitting the water ten minutes earlier, I hadn’t paid much attention to the smaller details of the reef. Normally I was deeper when I passed this point in the dive. I realized the interloper provided me an opportunity to chill and poke about—a good formula for centering myself, with the bonus of exploring an unfamiliar section of the wall. So much of the diving in Palau is spent drifting and looking into the blue for sharks and big fish—scanning the forest and missing the trees. It was easy to forget that some of diving’s most joyful times were spent focusing on a tiny spot loaded with interesting critters.
I stopped to inspect an old kettle-style barbecue hanging lopsided on the slope. It was hooked by one leg onto an outcropping, slowly being enveloped by encrusting sponges spreading across its metal frame, gradually making it part of the reef. Soft corals in a kaleidoscope of orange, red, and yellow had taken root on the grill. An eel poked its head out of the metal bowl as I approached, and eyed me suspiciously, rhythmically opening and closing its mouth.
I drifted down-current a few feet, to a larger multicolored mound of sponges which I realized were part of a World War II army truck, one of many that had been abandoned as US troops moved off the island. The locals used them as workhorses for years after the war. Judging by the extent of encrustation, this one had been jettisoned long ago, but not before giving its all.
Over what was probably at least a decade, it had become a sponge-covered sculpture, although it was still recognizable thanks to its shape and a single headlight not being completely covered. What had looked like a small cave was actually an open or missing window. Schools of small baitfish no larger than tadpoles hovered inside the passenger compartment, sometimes moving out through the opening into less-protected water.
Having been finning into the current to stay where I was, I checked my status, time, remaining breathing gas, and depth displayed on my computer, then relaxed my rate of kicking to allow myself to slowly drift on.
A few feet past the truck, a school of baitfish darted into a refrigerator, its door slightly akimbo on one hinge, providing just enough space for their rapid excursions outside and even speedier retreats. Two lionfish hovered nearby, probably having just missed a prime feeding opportunity.
I figured I had given the spear fisherman at least three minutes—more than his lungs could handle— and stopped kicking, allowing the current to take me along the wall again. As I drifted around the corner and neared the concave, I was surprised to see him still there. Although I knew that some of the real hotshots in this area could stay down that long, and longer, something about him gave me the willies.
He was facing away from me in the classic hunting attitude, pointing in the direction of the current so that he could see the big fish swimming into it. They’re slower going in that direction and easier to spear. But other than that, things were out of sort. First, he had no fins. Although a lot of spear fishermen swam without fins in the shallows, they all used them for these deeper ventures. Second, there was no visible spear. This didn’t feel right at all. Drifting farther along the cliff to get a closer look, I realized the skin-tight black material on his body wasn’t a wetsuit.
It was a business suit.
Crap!
As I hovered no more than ten feet from the body, trying to wrap my head around what I was seeing, that “crap” turned into a shitstorm.
*
For a reason still unknown to me, my attention shifted upward just in time to see a cartwheeling axle ricochet off the reef wall, passing far too close for comfort, with a chain snaking behind it pulling some new guy attached to its end. Unlike the first, this man was most decidedly not dead. As he shot past, I saw clearly his bugged-out, begging eyes as bubbles burst from his open, screaming mouth and his pawing, outstretched, mutilated hand.
As I instinctively reached for him, the whipped chain yanked him away from me. Jackknifing and kicking quickly, I started down into the depths, but he was almost immediately out of sight. At the speed he had passed, I was sure he was already beyond the range to which I could safely descend, so I stopped. And I began to shake.
Reflexively grabbing my regulator so I wouldn’t spit it out, I vomited.Â
