by Derek Hansen
The tide peaked at 11.07 the following night and Aubrey maintained his vigil from nine thirty until 1.00 am. There were two more false alarms as more schools of whitebait drifted downstream but no sign of the turtles. Aubrey took heart that he hadn’t been anywhere near as tense as on the previous night, but it was faint consolation. He was beginning to accept the very real prospect that his Archelon would not return at all.
The following day Aubrey phoned the university to tell them he had food poisoning and would be unable to deliver his lecture. The truth was, he wanted to rest and prepare himself for the new moon. When he wasn’t trying to relax by watching TV, he filled in his time checking and rechecking his equipment and practising the fatal thrust. Nevertheless, when he once more boarded the Bertram he was filled with apprehension.
The cold front had been good to him and had veered away south and east to give New Zealand a pasting. As he motored down Pittwater the water was dead calm and gave off a near-perfect reflection of the lights of Palm Beach. At any other time Aubrey would have appreciated the beauty. He motored out wide around West Head before turning southwest, keeping equidistant from both eastern and western shores. As he expected, there were fishing boats anchored over the Flint and Steel reefs and he gave them a wide berth. By the time he’d dropped anchor and played out line from his anchor buoy it had turned ten thirty. He switched off all of his lights except for the anchor light and hoped that none of the fishermen over the Flint and Steel would be so disappointed with their catch that they’d come over to see how he was doing, or simply anchor nearby on the suspicion that he had local knowledge.
He turned on his fish finder and began the long wait. At eleven he armed his powerhead and at eleven thirty, with thirty-four minutes still to go before high tide, fitted the tanks on his back and his weight belt around his waist. He thought about pouring himself a coffee but worried that he’d only throw it back up. His fish finder picked up signals from fish but he ignored them, refusing even to speculate on what species they might be. He felt hot in his wetsuit and cursed himself for his eagerness in putting on his tanks and weight belt. It was still only 11.45 pm. He occupied himself by mentally calculating how long he’d have to spend decompressing on the way up according to how long he spent on the bottom at thirty-five metres, even though he had a dive watch that automatically did the calculations for him. It was something to do to take his mind off the variables.
He tried to calculate how long it would take the turtle to sink twenty metres, assuming he managed a fatal shot, and how long it would take to attach the lines inflate the buoy and ascend back to the five-metre mark. He thought of another variable. What if sharks homed in on the dead turtle? The realisation that there’d still be the carapace and whatever flesh remained within, both providing sufficient evidence for further funding, calmed him down. He forced himself to take long, deep breaths.
He glanced at his watch. Midnight. Four minutes to the magic moment when the tide reached full flood, four minutes that could determine whether or not he still had a career. He stared hard at the screen of the fish finder. It was disappointingly devoid of any signs of life.
‘Forget it,’ he said softly. He cursed his stupidity in allowing his hopes to build up, in believing that he really could snatch a last-minute reprieve. Things just didn’t happen that way for him. He was becoming increasingly convinced that his sighting of the Archelon had been a once-in-a-lifetime fluke, an event contrived to torment him by a capricious God, when his screen lit up. There were three of them and they were surfacing. They were back!
Aubrey pulled on his fins, spat into his face mask and rinsed it, pulled it down over his face, jammed his regulator into his mouth and picked up his torch and powerhead.
Bluh!
Bluh! Bluh!
Suddenly Aubrey forgot his nervousness and became the expert he professed to be. He knew exactly what he had to do and set about doing it. He descended to five metres and began to revolve slowly, shining his torch up and down as he’d done previously. For some reason there was less sediment in the water, giving him at least another metre to a metre and a half of visibility. He glimpsed the shadowy form of one of the giants descending and knew that others were doing the same all around him. He continued to revolve hoping that his movement and the movement of his light would attract one of them to him. He tucked his light under his armpit, positioned the powerhead and took hold of the shaft with both hands.
Something brushed the underside of his fins and he only just managed to check his reflexive strike with the powerhead. What could he have hit other than the carapace? He forced himself to calm down and think clearly. All of his hopes could have come undone at that moment. Another turtle glided in front of him, turning its bald head and fixing him with its beady eyes. It was massive with a head the size of an outboard motor. Aubrey wondered how he could possibly miss such a large target and simultaneously wondered how his .303 bullet could possibly penetrate such a mass of bone.
A turtle took hold of his right fin.
Aubrey struck thirty centimetres to the right of his foot, struck with all his strength, felt the powerhead crunch down on something hard and unyielding and the recoil as the bullet fired, heard the muffled explosion and the unnerving sound of the turtle’s scream.
The turtle’s scream?
Even before he’d pulled his foot free and turned his light onto the stricken creature, he realised what a terrible thing he’d done. He let go of the powerhead as if it were something repugnant.
The turtle was still screaming, harshly, the sound now duller and more like a roar. It began to spiral down to the depths, its flippers twitching powerlessly. Aubrey followed. He hated what he’d done, what he’d had to do, but still he followed the stream of blood flowing from the turtle’s shattered skull. He had a job to do and now there was no choice but to see it through. He knew he’d get over his revulsion given time and the professional adulation that would follow.
He recoiled sharply as a giant turtle cut in front of him, interrupting his descent, and watched in amazement as turtles came from all directions to the aid of the dying Archelon. Even in the grainy, diffused light of his torch Aubrey could clearly see what the turtles were trying to do. They gently clamped their beaks around the victim’s flippers, positioned themselves under its belly and together began to lift it slowly back towards the surface so it could breathe. Aubrey was in no doubt that they were trying to save its life. Other turtles circled, their distress obvious in the agitated way they swam. But it was all too late and their efforts were in vain.
Aubrey’s strike had not missed its target. The stricken turtle’s head lolled from side to side, paused momentarily upright as if taking one final look at the members of its clan, then closed its eyes for the last time. A single bubble of air emerged from its beak. The turtles ceased their ascent.
Aubrey hovered above them. If it had been possible to apologise for what he’d done, he would have, unhesitatingly. The herpetologist in him watched in absolute fascination. What he’d witnessed was clear evidence of a community working together to assist a stricken member, but the Archelon’s primitive brain was not supposed to be capable of any such action, collective or otherwise. He was well aware that modern turtles were reasonably intelligent in that they responded to training and could learn routines, but these giant turtles were demonstrating a higher level of intelligence altogether. And, disturbingly from a personal point of view, they appeared to be exhibiting emotions: distress, sorrow, anxiety, affection. Aubrey abruptly dismissed the latter as a clear case of anthropomorphism brought on by his own regrets. Attributing human characteristics was reading far too much into the turtles’ responses.
The turtles slowly and reluctantly turned back towards the sea bottom, dragging the dead Archelon with them. Aubrey followed at a respectful distant but made sure his specimen was always within the range of his torch. He checked his pressure gauge as the turtles descended through twenty-five metres, thirty metres and finally rea
ched the bottom at thirty-five metres, giving Aubrey his first look at the peculiar ripple strip that had originally attracted his attention to this spot. It was only then that he realised the significance of the ripple strip and how it was formed.
It was an Archelon cemetery.
It was also a treasure-trove of fossils and the reason why no turtle fossils had been found in Australia even though it had always been supposed that turtles from the Cretaceous era would have touched on Australian shores. This monumental discovery alone would re-establish his reputation and standing. He cursed himself for not investigating the ripple strip first. If he had, he would have found all the evidence he needed to prove the existence of Archelon turtles and killing one would not have been necessary.
He looked on in wonder as the turtles began the process of burying the deceased. They placed Aubrey’s specimen belly down at the end of the last ripple and deposited sand and silt over it with their flippers. Aubrey lost sight of the turtles as the water clouded over. He checked his watch. There was a limit to how long he could remain at this depth and still have enough air to decompress near the surface. Another variable that could bring him undone. But suddenly he felt the ebb tide begin to flow and soon the silted water started to stream away from the site in a cloudy plume. Everything appeared to be working in his favour. All he had to do was wait until the turtles had finished the task of burial, uncover one of his specimen’s flippers and attach a line to it.
In fact the turtles quit when they’d only partially buried the carapace, leaving nature to cover the rest in sand and silt washed down by the Hawkesbury River. Again, the forces seemed to be on his side. He waited patiently, hovering above the burial mound until the last of the turtles completed its duties and swam slowly away. What he didn’t need was an inadvertent collision with one of the giants as he descended to attach his rope and secure for ever his place in the history of zoological science.
A turtle took his right fin gently in its beak.
Aubrey’s initial reaction was to interpret it as an act of forgiveness but he soon dismissed the thought as foolish sentimentality. The Archelon’s primitive brain lacked the ability to associate him with the demise of its brother. This turtle was simply doing what the others had done: it was demonstrating its curiosity.
A second turtle gently took his left fin in its beak. Aubrey smiled. If ever there was a creature that deserved the sobriquet of ‘gentle giant’ it surely was the Archelon. He reached down and gently patted the head of the turtle holding his right foot and began to withdraw his fin from its beak. To his surprise the turtle’s grip seemed to tighten. Aubrey wasn’t alarmed because the creature showed not the slightest sign of aggression. He patted the head of the turtle holding his left foot and tried to withdraw his left fin but it also tightened its grip.
Aubrey was confused. This wasn’t playfulness or simple curiosity. There seemed to be something deliberate behind their actions, a motive. He became even more convinced as the turtles slowly descended, dragging him with them. Frightened now, he tried to jerk his feet free. Neither budged a millimetre. When they pulled him down to the bottom and sat him alongside the carapace of their dead brother, Aubrey began to panic. He kicked out and to his relief his feet came free. He decided he’d surface and return to attach the line once all the turtles had gone. Just as he was about to push off, a massive flipper crashed across his face, knocking his regulator out of his mouth, dislodging his face mask, sending his torch spinning from his hand and laying him flat on his back. This was the kind of collision Aubrey had feared. His hands groped frantically for his regulator.
The flipper hit him a second time just as he located it, stunning him and sending the regulator spinning from his grasp once more. He searched groggily and unsuccessfully for it, lungs aching for want of oxygen. He tried to push himself up off the bottom but felt a sudden weight land on his chest.
Sand. A flipperful of sand!
Aubrey no longer had any doubt about the turtles’ intentions. His desperate hands finally found his regulator and he hit the purge button as he pulled it towards his mouth. Too late. Another mass of sand landed on his head and shoulders, burying them. More sand covered his belly, his legs, his arms. Aubrey couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe.
Couldn’t . . .
A last bubble of air escaped from his mouth.
Fat Boy and the Professor
Fat Boy was easy to dislike.
The first time I saw him I wanted to pick him up by the scruff of his neck and beat some decency into him. I wanted to tell him a few facts of life and how easily the world could do without spoilt, selfish, vindictive little pricks like him. I didn’t, of course. You don’t do that sort of thing when the parents are loitering nearby.
We were standing on Naviti Lau’s one and only jetty waiting for the resort game-fishing boat to unload and motor out to its mooring so we could bring our boat in. I didn’t take any notice of Fat Boy and the Professor at first. They were just two kids, ten or eleven years old, larking about. The Professor had just finished videoing the morning’s catch. Fat Boy’s father and his friend had caught two wahoo on the troll up Lighthouse Reef. Both fish were around twenty-five kilos and they would have been fun to catch if they’d been using ten- or fifteen-kilo gear. Looking at the rods in the rod holders and those being hosed down with fresh water by the Fijian crew, they’d fished with nothing lighter than twenty-five kilos. The best thing about catching wahoo is their first blistering run. There’s probably no faster fish in the ocean. But the shock of hooking up on a trolled lure against a heavy drag probably knocked half the fight out of them. I felt sorry for the fish.
Fat Boy’s father and his friend were boasting about their catch to my friend and host, Damian, in their broad Californian accents. Damian was being gracious though he was probably every bit as aggrieved as I by the use of such overpowering force on the hapless wahoo. There was nothing to brag about. I turned my attention to the kids. Apparently Fat Boy’s dad had also caught a barracuda on the way in. Now I hate barracuda, hate the way they smell and the look and feel of them. When we catch barracuda we do everything we can to avoid bringing them on board the boat, which usually involves hanging over the side and risking being bitten or, in extreme cases, losing a finger while trying to unhook the lure. Barracuda have teeth like dogs and take no prisoners. I guess Fat Boy didn’t like barracuda either because he was playing football with the one his father had caught. It flapped helplessly. I may not like barracuda but they do have a place in the scheme of things and I think they deserve better than to be kicked to death by some punk of a kid in overpriced sneakers. As I said, Fat Boy was easy to dislike.
I turned my attention to the Professor. Now here was a kid I could warm to. He was short, thin and bespectacled, with lenses that made his eyes seem as big as oysters. He had the look of someone who did nothing without thinking it through. He was crouched over, a light spinning rod on the planking in front of him, tying a snap swivel onto the line, the very picture of concentration. I watched as he pulled the line tight, tested the knot and clipped on a small metal lure. Clearly he intended to try to catch the trevally or small barracuda that hung around the piles. The moment he stood up and started walking towards the end of the jetty, Fat Boy snatched the rod from his hands.
‘That’s my rod,’ said Fat Boy.
‘No, it’s not,’ said the Professor.‘Yours is the red one.’
There was another spinning rod laid carelessly on the planking behind Fat Boy, just waiting for someone to stand on it and snap it in half.
‘It’s mine now,’ said Fat Boy.‘Anyway, they’re both my dad’s.’
The Professor silently accepted the injustice and turned his attention to the second rod. The line was hopelessly tangled and the tangles had been wound around the reel. Only an idiot or someone truly thoughtless and spoilt would do a thing like that. I looked at Fat Boy and had no need to look further.
As the Professor set about repairing the damage, Fat Boy a
ttempted to cast. He hadn’t bothered to wind the lure up to the tip of the rod and it swung dangerously on about a metre of free line. I was about to say something when Fat Boy let fly. The lure whipped up and caught the sleeve of the Professor’s shirt. The kid cried out in shock. The lure could have ripped across his face and scarred him for life, sent his glasses flying to the next island or, worse, plucked out an eye. It was a miracle he wasn’t hurt. I stood transfixed by the suddenness of this near disaster.
‘Get out of my way!’ snarled Fat Boy. He kept jerking the line trying to dislodge the lure. Every time he pulled, the Professor’s arm shot up in the air in a fascist salute. ‘Dad! DAD!!! Look what he’s done!’
‘What’s going on here?’ said Fat Boy’s dad. He took hold of the lure and began trying to unhook it from the Professor’s sleeve. The Professor was shaking.
‘Hurry up!’ said Fat Boy.
‘Hold still,’ said Fat Boy’s dad to the Professor.‘What were you thinking of, Anthony? You know you shouldn’t stand behind people when they’re casting.’