One morning I saw a large piece of driftwood floating close to shore and retrieved it before it could be carried out to sea. Queenie was elated. We put the piece on her sled, which was now full, and usually that meant the end of our day together. But Queenie tugged at my sleeve and motioned for me to follow her. Before long we stood in front of a small house that had fallen into disrepair. Remembering how my father had described Queenie’s home, I knew where I was.
She deposited the large piece of wood that we had found earlier next to the house, then beckoned me to follow her inside. I couldn’t believe what I saw. The furniture, the cabinets, the pictures on the wall and the many exquisite-looking sculptures—all were made from driftwood.
“Queenie, did you make all these things?” I exclaimed.
She nodded her head, smiled a toothless grin and gestured for me to sit down. She left for a second. When she returned, she placed some cookies in front of me and scribbled on a large note pad. Her message said, “Hello Anne, my name is Erma. Welcome to my home.”
I smiled and answered, “Hi Erma, these cookies are great, and your house is beautiful.”
She reached over and patted my hands with great affection and then began to write again. “I don’t talk very well, but I want you to know that I love your company.”
“Me, too, Erma.”
We continued our daily quests until it was time for my family to return to the city. Summer was almost over, and school beckoned. I saw tears in my friend’s eyes as I said good-bye, and I assured her that I would see her next summer. She placed a small package wrapped in newspaper in my hands and kissed me on the cheek. I ran home, not turning to wave, as I knew I would cry. Inside the package was a seagull carved from driftwood. Today, some forty-eight years later, it still stands in my curio cabinet. Sadly, I never saw Erma again. My parents sat me down after school one day to say a letter had arrived from the chaplain at the hospital on Long Island. Erma had been rushed to the hospital after being found lying in the snow near her home. She had lingered for several days before she succumbed to pneumonia. Before she died, she had written a letter in front of the chaplain addressed to “My best friend, Anne.”
The chaplain knew my parents and of my association with Erma and had forwarded the letter to us. It said simply: “Thank you for being my friend. I love you. Take my driftwood and make others happy. Love Erma.” It took me weeks before I could talk to my parents about Erma’s death. She was the first person I knew who had died. I found it hard to relate to the fact that I would never see her again. I dreamed about her, the ocean behind her smiling face, the beauty of her driftwood.
My family donated the collection to the church community center for all to see and use. I told my parents that I knew this would make Erma happy. They agreed. Every summer, the first stop we made, upon arrival, was at this small meeting hall. I would stand and gaze in awe at the items that had come from the ocean and had been transformed into works of art by my friend. Mom and Dad said they were proud of me for the kindness I had shown toward Erma. I knew I had received so much more than I had ever given. I had learned that, like the ocean, love goes on forever.
Anne Carter
A Sign of Love
One morning at the Aquarium of the Pacific, three divers were preparing to feed the thousands of fish that inhabit the aquarium’s 360,000-gallon Tropical Pacific Coral Reef Habitat. The first stop was the Aquarium’s husbandry kitchen where the divers cut up large cubes of squid, shrimp and clams for larger fish, smaller cubes for medium-sized fish, and a blended “soup” for the very small fish. The food was then put into rubber containers that the divers could take under the water.
One of the dive volunteers would feed the smaller and medium-sized fish off to the side of the sixty-foot-wide exhibit window, and another volunteer would use his supply of food to attract the largest fish to the center of the exhibit. The feedings were always popular with visitors, so one diver had the responsibility of explaining what was going on. Bob Buck, the dive-team leader, would be the “spokes-diver.” Using a special Aga-mask, Bob would answer questions from underwater via a volunteer docent stationed on the dry side of the glass.
As soon as he was in position, Bob received his first question. “Aren’t you afraid of those sharks?” someone asked. Bob answered that, fortunately, the sharks in the tank had already been fed. He explained how and when sharks eat, then he took the opportunity to decry shark-finning, a practice in which fishermen remove the shark’s dorsal and other fins, then dump the shark back into the ocean to die. “Can you imagine that?” Bob said. “Does this extraordinary animal deserve a death so wasteful?”
Later, a group of young schoolchildren outside the glass window caught Bob’s attention. Instead of talking to each other like the other kids, these children were communicating with hand gestures. Bob, who had a hearing-impaired sister and had learned sign language, realized the children couldn’t hear any of the information he’d been sharing. But he still wanted to connect with them. As a school of golden trevallies swam by, he looked at a little girl in the group and made the sign for “beautiful fish.”
The children beamed!
They signed back at Bob. Their silent questions, comments and ecstatic responses filled the air. Bob continued to speak to the audience as he had done before, but now his comments were echoed by a flurry of sign language. As the presentation ended, Bob had an inspiration. He added a final thought, one that the children could take with them to always remember their first visit to this fantastic underwater world. He held out his hand and bent down two fingers. It was the sign language equivalent for “I love you!” Joy filled the faces of the children as each of them returned the love.
To this day, every diver presentation at the Aquarium includes the sign for “I love you!”
Warren Iliff
Sand Castles
Hot sun. Salty air. Rhythmic waves. A little boy is on the beach. On his knees he scoops and packs the sand with plastic shovels into a bright red bucket. Then he upends the bucket on the surface and lifts it. And, to the delight of the little architect, a castle tower is created.
All afternoon he will work. Spooning out the moat. Packing the walls. Bottle tops will be sentries. Popsicle sticks will be bridges. A sand castle will be built.
Big city. Busy streets. Rumbling traffic.
A man is in his office. At his desk he shuffles papers into stacks and delegates assignments. He cradles the phone on his shoulder and punches the keyboard with his fingers. Numbers are juggled and contracts are signed, and much to the delight of the man, a profit is made.
All his life he will work. Formulating the plans. Forecasting the future. Annuities will be sentries. Capital gains will be bridges. An empire will be built.
Two builders of two castles. They have much in common. They shape granules into grandeurs. They see nothing and make something. They are diligent and determined. And for both the tide will rise and the end will come.
Yet that is where the similarities cease. For the boy sees the end, while the man ignores it. Watch the boy as the dusk approaches.
As the waves near, the wise child jumps to his feet and begins to clap. There is no sorrow. No fear. No regret. He knew this would happen. He is not surprised. And when the great breaker crashes into his castle and his masterpiece is sucked into the sea, he smiles. He smiles, picks up his tools, takes his father’s hand and goes home.
The grown-up, however, is not so wise. As the wave of years collapses on his castle, he is terrified. He hovers over the sandy monument to protect it. He blocks the waves from the walls he has made. Saltwater soaked and shivering, he snarls at the incoming tide.
“It’s my castle,” he defies.
The ocean need not respond. Both know to whom the sand belongs. . . .
And I don’t know much about sand castles. But children do. Watch them and learn. Go ahead and build, but build with a child’s heart. When the sun sets and the tides take—applaud. Salute the process of lif
e, take your father’s hand and go home.
Max Lucado
Guiding Light
Original painting by Wyland © 2003.
Sea of Curiosity
In my dreams, a monstrous wall of green water races my way, hissing, roaring, towering, inescapable, sweeping me into a cascading aquatic mayhem. I am lifted, tumbled, churned, pushed and fall, gasping, clawing for air. My toes touch sand; a sweet breeze soothes my lungs. I stand, choking, face the next advancing wall and leap into it, exhilarated!
In reality, when I was three the ocean along the New Jersey shore first got my attention much as it happened in the dream: A great wave knocked me off my feet, I fell in love, and ever after have been irresistibly drawn, first, to the cool, green Atlantic Ocean; later, to the Gulf of Mexico, warm and blue, serving as my backyard and playground through years of discovery; and thereafter to other oceans, to reefs, raging surf, calm embayments, steep drop-offs and the farthest reaches of the deep sea beyond. The “urge to submerge” came on early and continues, seasoned and made more alluring by thousands of underwater hours, each one heightening the excitement of the last as one discovery leads to another, each new scrap of information triggering awareness of dozens of new unknowns.
The lure of the sea has enticed explorers to probe the mysteries of that vast, sparkling wilderness, probably for as long as there have been human beings. Our origins are there, reflected in the briny solution coursing through our veins and in the underlying chemistry that links us to all other life. We are probably the most versatile of creatures, anatomically gifted with an ability to climb mountains, swing among treetops, leap into the air, race across plains and briefly enter underwater realms. While we are not naturally equipped with wings to remain aloft or gills to stay submerged for long, we are endowed with ingenuity, and thus have been able to respond to another human gift, especially evident in children and those who happily never quite grow up: an irrepressible curiosity.
Dr. Sylvia A. Earle
5
FRONTIERS
OF THE SEA
The sea never changes and its works, for all the talk of men, are wrapped in mystery.
Joseph Conrad
Who’s Watching Who?
Nature is the ultimate divine mystery.
Wyland
I never considered myself the corporate type. I didn’t want to sit behind a desk, and I liked to fish. So studying marine biology seemed like a natural. But after graduating college, I found myself working for the South Carolina Marine Resources Division doing exactly what I had tried to avoid: sitting at a desk crunching numbers. The job wasn’t without perks, though, and occasionally I left my desk and numbers to join the research teams on multiple-day trips at sea.
The purpose of one of these cruises was to collect golden crab specimens about 120 miles offshore. Usually, we fought through rain and choppy seas. This time the sun was shining. And the glassy water made hauling in the crab traps more enjoyable, if not exactly easy. By the last day of the trip, everyone was in good spirits, satisfied that we had produced substantial data for analysis back at the lab, and we were seizing the opportunity to do some deep-sea fishing when the boat jerked into gear.
All of us looked up. Captain Pete was at the helm. He seemed to be focused on something in the distance. Keeping my hands on the rail, I worked my way toward him. “Pete,” I asked. “What’s going on?”
He pointed to a disturbance in the water about five hundred yards away. “There’s something over there,” he said. “We’re going to see what it is.” As the boat moved closer, I recognized the heads and flukes of whales, about twelve animals in all. The pod was mostly adults with a couple of juveniles, but the one that held our attention was the male at the lead, by far the largest of the group.
Pete slowed the boat, keeping the whales on our starboard side.
Everything about the pod seemed routine until the lead male broke away from the group, swam across the bow and turned to pass us on the port side.
I looked at Pete.
“Now what do you suppose he’s doing?” I said.
Pete shrugged.
The whale passed the boat completely. He turned another 180 degrees and began to follow us. He crept closer to the stern, then moved up the starboard side into the space between the hull and the outrigger. We leaned over starboard, near the bow, as the whale swam forward beside the vessel. When he reached the water just in front of us, he rolled onto his side and looked me right in the face.
His eye was the size of a grapefruit.
I had to catch my breath. He was checking us out! Here was a bunch of researchers, watching the strange behavior of a whale, and we were all dumbfounded. This was a definite role reversal. The boat suddenly seemed like a big petri dish, and we were the subjects of study.
I thought about the whale the entire way home. I wondered why I always jumped at the chance to join these research teams. After all, the work was hard, the conditions were usually awful. I realized, perhaps, that it was because I instinctively needed to do it. Maybe the whale left his pod to observe us on our boat for the same reason. Maybe we’re all just glorified curiosity-seekers, but it’s clear there is something driving us. We often find ourselves in places we were never meant to be, seeking some little piece of the truth that we hope exists there. There are lots of researchers in the world. I was just surprised, I suppose, to discover that some of them live in the water. Now when I’m at sea, leaning over the rail of a boat, it often feels like a giant one-way mirror, and I wonder who might be observing me from below.
Joe Moran
CALVIN AND HOBBES © Watterson. Reprinted with permission of UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE. All rights reserved.
The Jonah Factor
I was new. It was the summer of 1988, and I had just started working for Howard Hall Productions, developing an undersea documentary for PBS. We were hearing reports from fishermen that a large number of “really big” whales were appearing off San Diego. The descriptions sounded like blue whales, but the odds of that were slim. But since the stories kept flooding in, we were on board, loaded and motoring toward the Los Coronados Islands in less than twenty-four hours.
I had not spent much time on the open ocean, but it was easy to tell something was different. As opposed to the usual vast expanses of empty blue water, the ocean was alive. All the animals we passed seemed to be on alert, either as predators or prey.
Large schools of anchovies at the surface were being feasted on from above by pelicans and sea gulls, and from below by Pacific mackerel. Flying fish, yellowtail jacks and the strange mola mola, or ocean sunfish, passed quickly under our boat. Blue sharks were everywhere, as they finned just below the surface. All this activity was caused by the presence of a small red shrimp, Euphausia superba, or krill, as it is more commonly known.
The ocean had turned blood red in huge patches one hundred feet across. The krill were being herded conveniently into tight balls by the action of thousands of small anchovies. Blue sharks materialized from all directions to gorge themselves on a free shrimp lunch. Howard and Bob Cranston had been diving with blue sharks for years and knew this type of feeding behavior had never been documented before on film. Howard was his usual calm and professional self, and Bob expertly motored our dive boat around the patches of krill. I expertly ran around the boat, yelling and pointing.
Bob shut down the boat’s engines, and we drifted. We only needed to see one huge whale with a small dorsal fin and an immense blow to know we had found the blue whales we had hoped to see. The dilemma was, do you stop and film great shark behavior or try for an uncertain chance at blue whales? The unwritten rule in underwater filmmaking is, “Get it while it’s hot.” Wait until tomorrow, and chances are there will not be a shark or whale in sight.
I went below, loaded the camera and met Howard on the dive step of our boat, the Betsy M. The king of understatement said, “Try not to let any sharks bite me on the back of the head.” A reasonable request, but all I could
think about at the time was, Who’s going to keep the sharks from biting the back of my head? Before I had time to get that question out, Howard said, “Let’s go,” and jumped into about three thousand feet of water in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
It was easy to see thirty or forty blue sharks in any direction. The shark’s method of feeding was to wait for the attacks of the small bait fish to herd the krill into tight balls. The sharks would approach from below, their eyes covered by a nictitating membrane, and swim through with their mouths wide open. Taking huge gulps, they seemed more like filter feeders than sharks. They ate so much their stomachs stuck out like bowling balls.
With no protection other than our cameras, my job was to keep the sharks off of Howard while he was filming. I was also told to take documentary still photographs and stay out of the way. The blue sharks immediately swam toward us to investigate, and a good bump on their nose with our fists was the only means of keeping them from swimming directly into us. The sharks seemed very fond of Howard’s orange camera housing, which they bit constantly.
This was all happening within a few feet of the surface. Howard would periodically surface and look around, only to realize we were completely surrounded by whale spouts. This was just a bit more than he could take. Once the “out-of-film” signal was given, we raced back to the boat, changed film and lenses, and prepared to chase whales. Howard turned to me and very casually said, “There is no way we will be able to keep up with them in the water, so let’s go wait in a ball of krill and they will come to us.” As I said before, I was new. I was knee-deep in that “I’ll-follow-you-anywhere” stage, so this half-brained idea seemed quite plausible at the time.
The water visibility was great, but inside the krill balls you could barely see your hand in front of your mask. So we would take turns poking our heads out to see if anyone was coming. The Jonah factor was high, and I was beginning to wonder if my day rate was a little low. All of a sudden, Howard grabbed my arm, and we swam backwards as fast as we could. A freight train, shaped like a whale, swallowed our hiding place in one gulp. We were so close it was easy to see the whale’s huge eye. It looked at us both, apparently not concerned with something so small. I began to understand what one hundred feet and 150 tons really mean. I swam slowly back to the boat, wondering if I had even remembered to take a picture.
Chicken Soup for the Ocean Lover's Soul Page 11