by Derek Hansen
Aubrey didn’t know what he would do if his tenure was not renewed, as seemed most likely. He’d made too many mistakes. When his brighter students and burgeoning talents from other institutions had come up with ideas on classification that challenged his, he should have embraced their insights and, in embracing them, contrived a degree of ownership. He’d seen other faculty members do exactly that and had been contemptuous of them. Now he understood their wisdom. Instead of emulating them and ensuring his retention, he’d resisted every idea that threatened a dimming of his light, with the inevitable consequence that he came to be thought of as out of step and behind the times, a fuddy-duddy, an obstacle in the way of progress. He’d tried to shore up his flagging career by extending his expertise to all vertebrates, thinking the extra strings to his bow would increase his value to a university perennially strapped for funds. In hindsight, it was another mistake. The university wanted a mistress, not a wife. It wanted excitement, glamour and the ‘sexiness’ of new discoveries. Discoveries generated publicity and publicity generated grants. Aubrey’s diversification only took him a step closer to the door.
Aubrey had every reason to be concerned about his future. Outside of academia his knowledge held questionable commercial value. His most recent paper had been a highly derivative study of the Patagonian toothfish, a compilation and analysis of other people’s work. As an attempt to gain a degree of ownership it had failed dismally, but it had acquainted him with the peculiarities of the species. His work had been based on a desire to preserve the toothfish in its subantarctic environment for all time. Now it offered him a shred of a lifeline. Maybe he could sell his specialised knowledge of the fish’s feeding habits, growth rate, breeding cycle and whereabouts to the companies that fished for it. With luck, he might even score a consultancy. The downside was that the personal cost would be considerable. Everybody he’d ever worked with or taught would shun him for ever after. And they were the only friends he had.
He started at the sound of applause. Somehow, his mind had drifted away from the dissertation to his own predicament. He was aware of people standing to applaud and shot to his feet, desperately hoping his indiscretion had not been noticed. Fortunately for him, the auditorium lights were slow in coming back up to full power. He looked down to the stage where the young woman acknowledged the accolades and felt the arrow of envy pierce his heart. A new luminary had been born and now shone where once he’d stood.
Aubrey had some serious thinking to do and did what he always did when the need arose. He checked the tide and moon charts and his own diary of what fish should be where and when, and prepared to go fishing. Fishing for Aubrey involved a six-point-three-metre Bertram half-cabin, which was capable of the fifty-kilometre run out to the edge of the continental shelf in the right conditions, but was also ideal for fishing in Broken Bay and the lower reaches of the Hawkesbury River. He noted that high tide was due at 11.03 pm on a moderate flood and that the new moon would be only briefly visible in the western sky between 8.15 pm and 10.00 pm. His lunar charts indicated that the best time for fishing would occur around midnight, although the fish were not expected to be voracious. That was fine by Aubrey. He was more interested in thinking than fishing and only wanted a couple for the pan to justify the expedition and confirm his expertise.
He motored to his special flathead spot near the conjunction of the Hawkesbury River and Broken Bay. He’d found the spot by accident and had kept it secret ever since. He never fished there in daylight, even when he knew big flathead were in residence and eager to wrap their jaws around anything that moved. The Royal Australian Navy had been responsible for his discovery. They’d begun a program to map the sea bottom in Pittwater, Broken Bay, Sydney Harbour and for three kilometres out to sea as an anti-terrorist measure. The idea was that if they knew what the bottom looked like, they’d be able to spot anything that might subsequently be planted there — smart mines or nuclear bombs, for example. Aubrey thought the navy’s concerns were a bit over the top, but he welcomed the opportunity to take part in the program as an observer. He also wanted to know what the bottom looked like to get a clearer idea of fish habitats, likely species and population densities. It was his good fortune that he was aboard the naval launch the night they mapped the ripple strip.
The ripple strip was a series of bumps on the sandy bottom of a kind you’d expect where an outgoing river met an incoming tide. Certainly the naval officers saw nothing worth remarking upon. But Aubrey did. Typically the ripples the sonar identified should have been in shallow water and no more than ten centimetres apart, rising no more than three or four centimetres. But the ripples were actually in a deep trough, up to three metres apart and rising as much as fifty centimetres. Aubrey had never seen a profile like it and had no idea what had caused it. What he did recognise, however, was its potential for harbouring flathead and jewfish, and he took a quick reading from the GPS. With the coordinates noted, he could find the spot again on the darkest of nights, which was precisely his intention.
Aubrey anchored a buoy upstream of the trough and drifted backwards from it, slowly paying out line until he was positioned directly over the ripple strip. He rigged up two rods with enough lead to hold bottom thirty-five metres below, with four-metre traces set one metre above the sinker so his bait would move about in the current. He put a live yellowtail on one line and a gang-rigged pilchard on the other, and sat back to wait for a bite.
The night was even more perfect for thinking than it was for fishing. Once the new moon slid behind the dark mass of Ku-ring-gai Chase the darkness became almost absolute. He left his anchor light on as the law required but with his canopy up he was shielded entirely from its glow. He held his hand in front of his face and grinned when he couldn’t even see its outline. With the still water and lack of wind or distraction, the night really was ideal for letting his thoughts run.
Perhaps encouraged by the conditions, his thoughts began optimistically as he considered consulting with the navy, the fisheries department, fishing companies, companies that farmed fish such as tuna, snapper, barramundi, trout, Atlantic salmon and Nile carp, and others that farmed prawns, yabbies, marron and trochus. The possibilities seemed endless until he remembered that the Atlantic salmon farms in Tasmania were in dire financial straits, tuna farmers were under attack from conservationists, snapper farmers were struggling for viability, and yabbies and marron were proving a lot trickier to farm than anyone had imagined. But the really depressing thought was that all these options took him away from where he most wanted to be — lecturing in a university where his knowledge was valued, or as principal research scientist of the fish or reptile section of a reputable museum.
The last possibility was the most attractive but also the most remote because he lacked contacts and, even more to the point, newsworthiness. He had to accept that he’d done nothing in the past twelve years that was outstanding or deserving of such a role. He simply wasn’t ‘sexy’ any more.
The ratchet on his starboard reel announced that a flathead had taken the bait and he rose to wind it in. At one-point-five kilos it was hardly a monster but perfect for the pan. Its arrival did nothing to lighten Aubrey’s mood. He simply dropped the flathead into a slurry of ice and saltwater after spiking its brain to kill it, rebaited with another live yellowtail and sent his line back down to the bottom. He returned to his seat, opened a beer and tried to regain his thoughts. But instead of thinking constructively, he allowed himself to wallow in all the ‘if onlys’ and ‘might have beens’. There were lots of them, far too many, and he couldn’t help wishing he’d been smarter, or that he could have his time over again. He surrendered to his reveries, and why not? His past was immensely more promising than his future.
He was deep in his memories, almost on the verge of sleep, when he was jolted out of his chair. The Bertram dipped momentarily towards the stern before settling. Aubrey grabbed a torch and raced aft. His first thought was that a log had collided with his boat, but logs drifted
downstream not upstream and would have hit the bow not the stern. His second thought was that a large shark had homed in on the weak electrical current generated by the incompatible metals in his stern drive and taken the leg and propeller in its mouth. He’d heard of this happening, had seen photographs, and knew enough about how sharks located their prey to realise this was a very real possibility. He was also aware that he was fishing in the corridor for sharks tracking south down the coast and up into the Hawkesbury River. It was only five short steps from seat to stern but, by the fourth, Aubrey was convinced that when he shone his torch into the water he’d find himself eyeballing a large tiger shark or bronze whaler. Instead he caught a glimpse of a bald head, a beaked mouth, two beady eyes and a carapace over three metres long. A carapace over three metres long! His brain refused to process what he was seeing.
The night was black and the water even blacker but there was no mistake. The top of the carapace was out of the water and the beam of his torch revealed details so unexpected, so improbable, that Aubrey stopped breathing. He noticed his line wrapped around one of the creature’s flippers, heard the ratchet on the port reel suddenly scream, saw the carapace dip, heard his line ping as it snapped, and saw the object of his attention disappear so abruptly and completely that he only had the broken line to confirm that it had ever been there in the first place.
‘No!’ he shouted. He needed more time, time to confirm the impossible, to confirm his instinctive identification, to confirm to his complete satisfaction the miracle that had occurred.
‘No!’ he cried again.
He’d seen salvation, looked it in the eye, only to have it abandon him as quickly as it had come — but maybe not! He covered the five short steps back to his seat in four large strides and stared at the screen of his fish finder. There the creature was, in mid-water, still diving, a red splotch on his screen at fifteen, sixteen, seventeen metres. Suddenly another red splotch came onto the screen from the side at ten metres, followed by another at twelve metres. There were three of them! Aubrey looked on, incredulous, certain that what he was witnessing was momentous. The upper two splotches were rising. Rising! Coming up to breathe! They exited to the left of his screen at six metres. Aubrey rushed to the side of his boat, tried to judge their trajectory and waited, torch poised, peering into the blackness.
Bluh!
He heard the creature exhale and directed the torch beam further to the left.
Bluh!
This time the sound was further right and out a bit. The torch beam caught disturbance on the water and he briefly glimpsed a dark round shape. Then, frustratingly, it was gone.
Bluh!
Bluh!
Aubrey spun around. This time the sound — no, two sounds — came from the starboard side and closer to his boat. His heart slapped into his ribs like a loose piston and his hands shook so badly he had to rest the torch against the canopy struts to steady it. And there they were, two beady eyes staring back at him as though fascinated by the beam. Even five metres away, with the night and the water swallowing up the light, Aubrey could make out the distinctive ridge and mounds on the anterior carapace. He studied it, suppressing his disbelief, concentrating with all of his might, willing the creature to remain where it was while he logged every single detail into his memory. He couldn’t risk another mistake, couldn’t afford to base all his hopes on an error of judgement, couldn’t stand the ridicule if he was proved wrong. The creature hung there, looking up at him for what seemed an eternity but was probably no more than five seconds. Then slowly, ever so slowly, it submerged.
The dawn light made Aubrey look up. He hadn’t worked so hard since he was a brilliant young ichthyologist out to make a name for himself. His desk and the floor around it were covered by reference books, and his printer was stacked high with material downloaded from the net. The first book he turned to had provided the confirmation he sought and everything subsequently had confirmed the confirmation and filled in the gaps in his knowledge.
Unlike fish, turtles had never really been a passion for him. Green turtles up to seventy centimetres in length frequently popped up to say g’day when he fished on the edge of the sandbank just south of Portuguese Beach. He welcomed their company but wasn’t drawn to figure out what they were eating or what had attracted them to his boat. While an authority on both fish and reptiles, Aubrey was widely regarded as being a fish man. But that was then and this is now. Turtles were suddenly the most fascinating and exciting creatures on earth and Aubrey couldn’t learn enough about them.
The ancestors of turtles first appeared in Africa three hundred million years ago and quietly went about the business of evolving and adapting while dinosaurs came and went. The first primitive ancestors of tuataras, lizards, snakes, amphibians and crocodiles emerged around a hundred million years later. Throughout their steady plod through evolutionary time, turtles had changed very little in basic structure.
Aubrey knew all this, had even taught it, but forced himself to check back over his data in case he’d missed something, or in case some other bright wunderkind had come up with a new theory that changed everything. But he hadn’t missed anything, and bright young things had added nothing significant to the sum total of knowledge about turtles.
Aubrey rose from his desk and made himself a pot of strong coffee. He was dizzy, not from lack of sleep but from excitement. The young woman had blown everybody away with her paper the day before, but he was in possession of facts that made her discoveries look more mundane than fish and chips wrapped in yesterday’s news. Yesterday’s news — a criticism often levelled at him, but never again! The university wanted sexy and, boy, could he give them sexy! But even as he enjoyed this thought and tried to imagine the look his discovery would bring to the faces of the vice-chancellor and the governing board, he realised the inherent problem confronting him: nobody would believe him.
Nobody would believe him!
Aubrey’s excitement collapsed in panic and horror. Why should anyone believe him? He could picture himself standing before his department head, telling her that he’d discovered not one but at least five and possibly an entire community of Archelon marine turtles, alive and thriving less than seven kilometres from his back door. He could see her smug, supercilious face and knew exactly what she’d say. He could already hear her patronising voice and its all-too-familiar ring of impatience.
‘Really, Aubrey,’ she’d say. ‘A living Archelon! Sorry, a community of living Archelon. You are aware, of course, that the Archelon has been extinct for the last thirty-eight million years. Doubtless you are also aware that no turtle fossils of any of the major groups have ever been found in Australia, none from the Cretaceous or Tertiary periods, and certainly no Archelon or any other species from the family Protostegidae.’
She’d dismiss his request for funding and resources out of hand. She wouldn’t go so far as to accuse him of fabrication but he knew she’d dismiss his discovery as a pathetic attempt to save his job. Any hopes of resurrecting his career would be washed away in a flood of contempt. Suddenly the glorious morning of his triumph became the dawn of just another sad day.
Aubrey stared into his empty coffee mug. When had he drunk the contents? He poured himself another and slumped down at his desk. What had he been thinking? Did he really believe he could rush into the university, announce he’d just discovered a species of giant turtle from the Cretaceous that had been extinct since the Oligocene and be showered with accolades and plaudits? No, he needed proof, conclusive proof, before he even opened his mouth. He knew some herpetologists who’d even require a live specimen, plus full documentation of its habitat, diet, breeding cycle and favourite TV show before they’d be convinced. He groaned aloud. Without funds or resources how could he ever provide adequate proof?
He was on the verge of surrender when he realised that was exactly what he’d been doing for the past twelve years. Success came at a price and that price was application, diligence, persistence and industry. Damn
it! There was a time when he’d had those qualities in abundance and he could see no reason why he couldn’t demonstrate them again. He, the forgotten man of ichthyology and herpetology, had the opportunity to deliver the greatest discovery in the history of biological science, to shine once more and bask in international fame and glory, to regain the professional security he craved. All he needed was proof, enough proof — but how much proof was enough? And what kind of proof could he provide?
The answer was so obvious he felt ashamed of himself for even contemplating giving his discovery away. How had he confirmed the identity of the Archelon? By checking his recollection against photographs of fossils. Photographs. He was an accomplished underwater photographer, a skill he’d developed and polished on innumerable field trips with students. Selling reproduction rights of his photos even made a worthwhile, though hardly substantial contribution to his income. All he had to do was take a photograph.
Provided his Archelon returned to the ripple strip.
He groaned again and with good reason. He’d been brought up in Pittwater, still lived in the Clareville home he’d been raised in. He’d fished there for most of his forty-two years and knew people who’d fished there longer. He’d fished the ripple strip at least a dozen times, always at night and always just before the flood and two hours into the ebb. So how come he hadn’t discovered his Archelon before? Clearly, to have survived undetected for so long, the turtles had learned to avoid contact with mankind. Was his discovery an accident, a freak event not to be repeated for another thirty-eight million years? There was only one way to find out.
Aubrey’s lecture that day did nothing to enhance his reputation. He came home the moment his duty was done and slept for six hours, after which he laid out his wetsuit, face mask, fins, tanks and regulator, camera and underwater light. He checked his equipment thoroughly and found no fault. Aware of the risks in diving alone, particularly at night in a known shark corridor, he considered inviting one of his old students along. The guy was a good diver and often teamed with him on recreational dives. But Aubrey hesitated. Even one diver might scare the giant turtles off; two almost certainly would. He weighed the risk of diving without a buddy against the possibility of results and opted to dive alone. Results took priority over safety.