The Helldivers' Rodeo: A Deadly, X-Treme, Scuba-Diving, Spearfishing, Adventure Amid the Off Shore Oil Platforms in the Murky Waters of the Gulf of Mexico

by Humberto Fontova

  "Patient, huh?" Pelayo huffed. "Patient? That's not what I remember. They were trying to scare the hell out of us. Telling us all those bullshit stories about shark attacks, about Floyd getting nailed from behind and losing half his ass. Then who was the other one? Oh yeah, Terry beating one off with his spear gun and getting his shoulder ripped open, showing us the scar and everything ... come to find out that night that the scar was a mortar wound from 'Nam."

  It worked. Both Pelayo and Tom were smiling again. "No shit, Tom," I continued. "Pelayo's right. Forget sharks. We'll probably see a few, but they never get close. But again, watch them triggerfish."

  Tom's face was creased with a wise-ass smile. "Triggerfish, hunh?" he chuckled. "Yeah boy, I'll sure watch out for them!"

  He figured we were using triggerfish on him like Buzzie and Floyd had used sharks on us. He figured this was another bullshit story like this mornings' Routine. And he wasn't about to fall for it again. "Do they take me for an idiot?" he was probably thinking. "What could be crazier? Trying to scare me with a goddamn aquarium fish?" Grey triggerfish rarely grow over fifteen inches long. Goofiest looking fish in the water. "Fudpucker," they call him in Florida. Even named a restaurant chain after him in Destin. Their logo shows a harmless, bucktoothed, cross-eyed little buffoon of a fish.

  Actually, I couldn't blame Tom. Like all of us, he'd tuned to the Discovery Channel two nights ago. Happens every year. Their "Shark Week" coincides with our Breton Island Blast. What timing. It's hell on beginners. All those great whites lumbering around, smashing into cages, ripping leg-sized hunks of flesh from some mangled goat carcass. Those cruel hooded eyes, all those teeth. Then that bimbo in a steel mesh wetsuit that looks like something out of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, waving dead fish around in a middle of a shark feeding frenzy. One finally obliges by grabbing her arm, then almost yanking it off at the socket. Then another one grabs her head and almost twists it off. Then everyone gasps back on board about her close call.

  Good TV, all right. But all that contrived drama distracts new rig-divers from the genuine perils under a rig, from genuinely dangerous fish, from fish that don't require any tricking or goading to chomp on a diver.

  Tom was learning the hard way. I could tell because underwater, a howl appears as a huge cloud of bubbles. Judging from the size of the cloud, Tom must really have been screaming. I wasn't actually able to hear him because of the rumbling from the rig, but I bet I could have if he'd been thirty feet closer ...

  A few seconds ago he'd been swimming over to show off his first fish of the day, a nice snapper, nailed with his spanking new spear gun. Now, however, the snapper was in shreds, and Tom was swinging his gun around him like a crazed samurai while bubbles spewed from his regulator in enormous clouds. About a dozen blood-crazed triggerfish had him cornered against a beam. He'd be out of air in five minutes at this rate, I figure.

  In truth, for sheer fish life, the scenery under an oil platform surpasses anything in the Caribbean. The panorama simply staggers. I've seen divers fresh from Cayman's Wall surface from under a rig too wired on adrenaline to do anything but stutter and wipe spastically at the snot that trails to their chin. I've seen an experienced scubababe fresh from Belize climb out from under a rig gasping and shrieking at the sights and sensations, oblivious to the sights and sensations she was providing with her bikini top near her navel.

  I've seen the less venturesome surface and vow never to rigdive again.

  It's all in the eyes-the eyes.

  With schools of spadefish, bluefish, mangroves, and red snapper finning around, we felt on top of the food chain-Tom certainly did. Even the little (six-foot) blacktip shark we saw on the outside of the rig kept his distance. He circled the rig politely, even after Pelayo enticed him with the thrashing amberjack on the end of his shaft.

  Pelayo was still tussling with his AJ on the opposite end of the rig when I noticed Tom extending his spear gun downwards. Focusing, I saw a school of circling snapper right above the silt layer. Schlink! went Tom's gun, and the snapper went berserk at the end of the shaft. No kill shot there, I thought. Tom pulled the cable in and grabbed the snapper through the gills like an old pro. I pumped my fist in his direction in a mock high-five.

  Tom was waving the snapper in my direction and doing the OK signal with the other hand as he finned over to show me the prize. He seemed jaunty, pumped. The water was gorgeous, the scenery spectacular. Fish were everywhere. Rig diving was everything we'd promised.

  He didn't see the school of triggerfish closing on him from behind. He slowed down to adjust his grip on the snapper's gills, and they surrounded him. They went for the snapper first, like always. But I knew it was just an appetizer. Tom didn't seem too concerned at first. He slid the snapper off the shaft with one hand while shooing them away with the other.

  Nothing doing. They wouldn't shoo. Three of them ripped into the snapper right at the spear hole and chomped off chunks of meat in a burst of scales and tattered skin. Now came another. And another. In seconds I lost sight of the snapper as a pack of ravenous triggerfish ripped into the mangled carcass, covering it completely, like a pack of starving wolves on a hamstrung moose.

  Fish blood stained the water. A cloud of scales, skin, shredded snapper flesh, and little gray triggerfish all but obscured Tom, who wouldn't let go of his snapper. More trigs converged on the feast from every corner of the rig. Their frenzy was starting, and I knew Tom was recalling our banter on the boat. "Geezum!" he was probably thinking. "It's true! I'm in a goddamned school of salt-water piranha!" That was my reaction almost twenty years ago. But nobody had warned me.

  Tom had much more meat on him than a ten-pound red snapper. His turn would come. I finned over to join the fray and started swatting and poking with my spear gun as Tom flailed and punched around him, dropping his spear gun in the process-a spear gun he'd neglected to attach to his waist with the cord like we'd advised repeatedly. He didn't seem to notice, so I plunged after it and left him to fend for himself.

  I snatched the gun five feet above the murk, in an ear-popping dive, saving Tom 150 bucks. But now I was wondering if I could save him. Custer had better odds at Little Big Horn. Still more triggerfish joined the melee from all sides. Must have been two dozen now. Their little pig-eyes twirled crazily, flashing with blood lust, as their buck-fangs nipped, slashed, and reduced the snapper to a tattered mass of skin, bones, and scales. Still Tom refused to part with it. It was the principle of the thing, dammit. His first fish out here.

  An inexperienced diver looking at Tom right now might think he was waving. I knew better. That's the motion of a hand that's felt a hot stove, or a poorly placed hammer blow ... or a triggerfish's teeth. Yep. That huge cloud of bubbles erupting from Tom's regulator confirmed it. He was trying to swat at them with his uninjured hand, but then another triggerfish grabbed that one. Now Tom was waving that hand around, with the triggerfish still attached.

  The triggerfish's fangs were caught in the glove webbing. Tom was trying to pull him off with his previously-bit hand but one nipped that thumb and he started the waving routine again, with the other triggerfish still yanking away at his other hand. Oh, for a video camera.

  My swatting and poking availed little. We're talking a fullfledged feeding frenzy here. Tom's lesson was coming, with a vengeance. He jerked his head sideways and his hand shot to his ear, rubbing and tugging frantically at his earlobe. The clouds of bubbles spewing around him almost looked like a blown regulator hose.

  Again, I knew better. It was just his lung-emptying howls of terror and confusion spawning those bubbles. Nothing like a human earlobe to titillate a hungry triggerfish. That morsel of tender pink flesh jutting out from under the mask strap drives them to a tooth-popping frenzy. And nothing, but nothing, so terrifies a veteran rig-diver like the thomp-thomp! of triggerfish teeth popping at your ear.

  The sound didn't scare Tom, though. At first he didn't know what it meant. That's normal. First time you hear it, you're never scare
d. You're confused. What the hell's that? you think. Did I pop a strap or a hose? Then you turn and look into that little bucktoothed fucker's face, his eyes twirling crazily, dinky little fins going a mile a minute.

  Still you're confused. Your hoses and straps look fine. You don't associate the sound with the fish. And the fish looks harmless and stupid. It makes no sense. So you turn back. Then, "OOWW!"-he takes a chunk out of your earlobe. Mercifully, Tom's was a small triggerfish, maybe a foot long, and it took a chunk commensurate with his mouth size. Tom's ear was bleeding, but he'd heal quickly. His lobe was still there, minus a little skin.

  After this he'll learn to associate the distinctive sound of triggerfish teeth popping underwater with the horror of facial mutilation. A shark might lacerate a leg or an arm. You see the pictures all the time. Some poor surfer or abalone diver with a line of black stitches across an arm or torso. Nothing like that from a triggerfish.

  Hideous. Simply hideous. Short earlobes are almost the distinguishing mark of a veteran rig-diver. A few nips out of the upper ear are also dead giveaways. At weddings, funerals, graduations, and other such wearying affairs, especially of distant friends or relatives, I always study the male earlobes around me in hopes of finding a kindred spirit. Mutilated ears usually mean an engaging conversation on a topic of mutual interest. Even better, we usually clear out anyone around us in short order. Ear mutilations serve as a badge of honor at dive club gatherings in Louisiana-a Purple Heart of sorts.

  After you feel the first bite, the sight of a triggerfish near your face chills the very bowels. It's the most dreaded sight in the Gulf. Forget all that buncombe on Shark Week. Forget all those menacing Jaws. With sharks you never see the one that hits you anyway, or so I hear. With triggerfish you see everything, almost in slow motion. It moves in stealthily, in plain view, usually with a gang, like a pack of hyenas surrounding a lame wildebeest. They circle you first, looking you in the eye, sizing you up, looking for any exposed tidbit. Nothing sneaky about them.

  Tom was looking at three of them, hovering around his face right now. Jab! I poked the closest one away with the point of my gun. But it circled back in seconds, positioning it for another chomp at Tom's ear. Once they get a taste, earlobes are like potato chips to a triggerfish. They can't eat just one.

  A triggerfish is about one-third mouth-mouth muscles, actually. His eyes lie almost in the middle of his body. Everything in front of them is mouth muscle. These muscles converge on a little pout of a mouth-a harmless, even ridiculous, little orifice. It compares to a shark's or barracuda's toothy maw about like an armadillo's mouth compares to a wolf's. But the little fangs within are as sharp and cruel as anything sprouting from that shark or barracuda.

  Halfway into a keg at a dive club meeting once we speculated that the creators of Alien might have used a triggerfish's teeth as a model for their creatures. When that slimy big-headed sucker opened his maw and those teeth jutted out my first reaction was: "Geezum, almost as bad as a triggerfish's!" To scale, a triggerfish's fangs are powered by about five times the muscle as a shark's. A shark bites, then shakes vigorously to shear off a mouthful with his saw-edged teeth. A triggerfish bites, andchomp, that's it. Like pruning shears, off comes a chunk of flesh, an earlobe, a fingertip, a tidbit of thigh, of calf, of shoulder, of cheek and, oh yes ... of scrotum.

  I kid you not. Verified by three sources, including the victim. But he was asking for it. A veteran diver already when it happened, and still clipping fish around his waist. A fish clip is like a huge safety pin that you attach to your weight belt. You spear fish and stick them on through the gills where they flap around enticingly as you fin around. Do this in the vicinity of triggerfish and you're setting the table for a triggerfish banquet alarmingly close to extremely sensitive anatomical regions. Considering the location of the clip, it's like asking for that brief surgical procedure required of male opera sopranos in Renaissance Italy or harem guards in Ottoman Arabia.

  Most of us escape with a few scars on our thighs or buttocks and learn our lesson. Chris wasn't so fortunate. He says he was swatting away at a triggerfish that was shredding a pompano on his clip when he felt the bite and howled.

  Bob quickly swam over. He was sure Chris had blown a regulator hose. He said he'd never seen such volume of bubbles from exhaling before. Then he thought Chris might be having an appendicitis attack from the way he was doubled over. Then he saw the culprit dangling between his legs, tugging away.

  "I couldn't laugh!" he says. " God, I wanted to-but I just couldn't. It was horrible! Chris was kicking and poking, all doubled over, bubbles everywhere. So I started poking at the damn trig gerfish with my gun, but Chris almost strangled me. I though he was gonna shoot me! What happened was, the freaking fish wouldn't let go! Every time I jabbed it he just bit down harder and my jab caused him to pull harder on Chris's balls! Geezum, I didn't know what to do! We finally swam up together. He got out the water with the goddamned thing still hanging from his crotch! Terry and them were going crazy on the boat when they saw it. But when Chris yanked off his mask they saw his face, heard his screams, and stifled the laughter somewhat. We had to pry the fucker's jaw open with a dive knife. It was unbelievable. Turned out Chris was lucky. It was a Main Pass dive. The water's always cool in that area because of the currents, so his balls were shriveled. The triggerfish only grabbed skin, and didn't take much with him."

  Nothing like that for Tom-yet. Now he was back to swatting with his spear gun; now he was reaching behind himself and clutching a buttock. I finned closer, jabbing away at the marauders and saw that one somehow was attached to his butt. Yes, of course, here's the one drawback to our bogalee wet-suits (old disco clothes). A trig's teeth can get caught in the fabric. With a normal wetsuit, they bite and rip off a chunk of the foam suit. With ours, their teeth get entangled in the polyester fibers. Then they try to disentangle their teeth, can't, and chomp back down, and again, "OW!" Of course, down here it comes out in a cloud of bubbles as "brulll! brulll!" complete with bucking motion.

  What a scene. I was about to jab at the butt-biter, then remembered Chris's ordeal. Did I want Tom to lose a chunk of ass? Then I saw the pants seat bulging out. The triggerfish didn't have his ass now, just his pants. WHACK! I poked him with my point and actually impaled him. The bastard still wouldn't let go. I grabbed him by the tail and yanked. Nothing. We couldn't shake him loose!

  Now Tom was back to tugging at his ear-his other ear this time. Then he jerked his butt inward. The trig on his butt must have bit down again. I grabbed the triggerfish again by the tail and pulled. This way I could at least keep him from biting Tom's buttock again. With a firm grip on the triggerfish with one hand and my spear gun in the other, I motioned for us to go up.

  Looking around, I saw Pelayo as a faint bubble-spewing blur on the opposite side of the rig, oblivious to our plight.

  We started swimming up with me holding the triggerfish away from Tom's butt. What a scene. Halfway up I dropped the spear gun to dangle at my side and reached for my dive knife. Tom looked back, his eyes bulging in his mask. I nodded, trying to calm him. He nodded back. I started prying the little bastard's mouth open, working the blade between those locked fangs. Incredible, the power of these little suckers' mouths. A piscine version of a pit-bull. Worse, actually. A pit bull's jaws aren't designed to crush mollusks.

  I finally sprung his teeth and he immediately turned around and clamped onto my sleeve. I jabbed him twice with the knife near the eyes and he finally let go. He swam off clumsily, sideways. His blood-crazed gang noticed and converged around him. They could tell he was wounded. A little tatter of flesh hung from his eye, and one of his comrades moved in for a bite. Now another joined, and another.

  I tapped Tom on the shoulder and pointed, just as two others attacked. They'd rip him to pieces within half a minute, I figured, as I finned towards the surface. Tom looked over, arched his eyebrows jauntily inside his mask, and shook his gloved fist at them.

  At a recent Grand Isle
rodeo it was the non-diving sightseers gawking at the sharks. It always is. They ooohed and aaahed. They marveled in horror at the teeth, they touched them, they teased their kids about Jaws-the whole bit. Bona-fide rig divers were crowding around a fouteen pound triggerfish. The fish was barely two feet long, but it sent shudders of horror through the assembled crowd of divers.

  "Hope you got a kill shot." Chris remarked.

  "I wouldn't want that sucker on the end of my shaft alive!" Pelayo blurted.

  A triggerfish is a genuine man-eater. He attacks you in order to rip off chunks of your flesh and swallow them. These little bastards attack divers with more gumption and ferocity than any thing else in the Gulf. You'll search the dive and saltwater fish manuals in vain for any mention of the triggerfish's ferocity and appetite for human flesh. Indeed, you'll read about a clumsy, innocuous, goofy-looking member of the wrasse family. But you'll always read about sharks.

  I know of exactly two divers bitten by a shark. I can't name a diver who hasnt been bitten by triggerfish.

  I was afraid we'd never get Tom in the water again. But he laughed off the triggerfish assault as we motored towards some shallower rigs further north where we expected the murk to dissipate. We had about two hours of light left.

  Sure enough, as we pulled up to one in about 70-foot depths we saw that the water was gorgeous. "Must be the currents," Pelayo remarked as we strapped on the gear. "There's no figuring them out."

  "It's all that south wind," I said, as I waved to two rig workers staring from the railing above.

  Tom was actually the first in the water this time. When I plunged in and focused he was halfway to the murk layer, 70 feet below. I admired his pluck. But I was taking my time, looking for cobia. They always hang out near the surface. I had a bird's eye view across the whole rig, but none materialized as I slowly descended towards the upcurrent side of the rig. Some large shadows seemed to hover around the beams in that area.