“All right, is everyone ready for a test dive?” Mr. Savage asked. We all gave the “okay” sign and he gave us one right back. “Whenever you’re ready, just go to the bottom and meet your safety divers there. We’ll run some sound tests to make sure we can hear you crystal clear up here and then you guys can come back up and test the snorkel gear.”
Safety divers always dove with us to keep us safe in case of an emergency, like our air tanks springing a leak. They stayed close enough to help if anything went wrong, but far enough away to not be in the shot. Feye once said he wanted to be a safety diver when he grew up because they can also volunteer to be part of emergency, rescue, and investigative operations.
We gave one another kisses on the cheek—as we did before every adventure—and then looked at the water below. Our parents were the first to dive down, followed by Feye and then me. I released the air in my scuba vest, which was keeping me afloat at the surface, and let the weights in the vest take me under the water. As I began to sink under the surface, I felt water suddenly rush into my mask. That wasn’t supposed to happen! My first instinct was to panic, but I quickly pushed those thoughts away and filled my scuba vest with air again to pop back up to the surface. I waved my arm frantically to signal something was wrong. Suddenly, I felt myself being yanked back to the dock.
“Are you okay?” Connor asked. “What happened?”
I tried to talk, but he shook his head and took the mask off.
“What did you say? I couldn’t hear you through the mask.”
“I don’t know, it just started filling with water,” I said. A crew member radioed down to my family to let them know I was experiencing technical difficulties but was fine.
Connor examined the mask to see if there was anything wrong, then looked back at me for a quick second before reaching both his hands behind his head and shaking loose his ponytail. He handed his hair tie to me and said, “It’s your hair! Your long hair is getting in the way of the mask forming a proper seal around your face. Tie it up with this.”
“Thanks, Connor!” I said as I pulled my hair back and made a quick braid. I looked at his shoulder-length hair and said, “Wow. Your hair is almost longer than mine!”
He handed me my mask back and winked. “You’re just jealous of my beautiful locks!”
I coughed out a laugh and readjusted the mask back onto my face.
“All good?” Connor asked. I gave him the “okay” sign and jumped back into the water. This time when I dove down, no water came into the mask. I slowly sunk to the bottom, near the big metal structures that kept the boat hotel above the water.
“Can you hear me, Adrianna?” a crackly voice came through the mask. It sounded like Feye. He waved at me through the crystal clear teal water. I remembered to hit the button and replied, “Loud and clear!”
“Testing, testing, this is topside. Can you guys hear me?” I heard Connor say. One by one we let him know we could hear him perfectly. The next voice we heard over our headsets was Mr. Savage telling us to swim around the boat hotel to make sure our gear felt comfortable enough, and to stay alert for interesting wildlife.
“All right, Villalobos family, we want to show off Cuba’s pristine marine habitat to the viewers. That means we’re looking for beautiful coral, dramatic overhangs, colorful animals, big fish … and this place is ripe with sharks!” Mr. Savage said into our sound system. “I want Julio and Evelyn to talk about what they see, and kids, I want you to inject your enthusiasm into whatever they point out! We want excitement! Don’t be afraid to play up being scared when a scary shark or monstrous eel comes out to play.”
The habitat in front of us was far from scary. The coral reef, vibrant with life, was the healthiest I had seen while out diving. Small schools of colorful fish darted in unison between the coral that swayed gently with the current and bigger fish lazily eyeing them for a potential meal. I kept my eyes out for flamingo tongues, one of my favorite small animals in the western Atlantic Ocean.
It was like the coral reef was listening to my wishes because on a delicate sea fan was a cluster of flamingo tongues. I hit the microphone button and exclaimed, “Mom! Dad! Feye! Check out these beautiful flamingo tongues!”
I saw Mom turn around instantly and give me a thumbs-up. Flamingo tongues are a snail that eat away at soft coral, like the sea fan it rested on. I love their bright pink and orange colors and their cool black spots. The most fascinating thing about these snails is that this brightly colored part of them isn’t their shell at all—it’s actually the snail’s soft tissue, which wraps around the entire shell!
As we swam to the front part of the hotel, near where we had first arrived, we could suddenly hear a lot of noise from the boat above. It sounded like running … Was something wrong?
“Hey, topside, this is Julio. Is everything okay? We hear a lot of noise above us,” our dad asked. There was silence for a minute or two and we all stopped swimming, waiting for an answer. Our parents floated a bit closer to us, each holding one of our hands.
“Hey, guys, we have a big figure coming your way,” Mr. Savage finally said over the radio. “We can’t tell what it is and we’re trying to identify it. Can you see it? It’s just ahead of you!” The safety divers formed a protective circle around us as they talked through sign language.
The water visibility was a little bit murkier on this side of the hotel, but it wasn’t impossible to see … Oh, there! Yes! I could see a big, slow-moving creature coming our way!
“It’s a manatee!” our mom exclaimed. As the manatee got closer, we heard splashes above us and looked to see that we suddenly had two of the camera people with us. Mr. Savage must have asked them to join us to make sure their equipment worked, too. We suddenly heard Mr. Savage over our headsets telling Mom to get closer to the manatee and talk about it.
She let go of Feye’s hand and swam ahead, getting closer as she explained to the cameras what we were seeing. I struggled to pay attention to her as I looked at the big Antillean manatee. It had dark, round eyes and a wrinkly snout with whiskers. I’d never seen one up close and personal before!
As I saw Dad swim to meet Mom by the cameras and also narrate, I tried to remember what I had read about these manatees. They usually weren’t more than twelve feet long, and this one looked smaller than that. It definitely didn’t weigh as much as they usually could, which was up to 1,200 pounds.
“Very little is known about manatees in Cuba,” I heard my dad say as the manatee went up to the surface to breathe.
“Kids, do you want to say anything? Get close to your parents so we can get you in the shot!” Mr. Savage said, and our safety divers led us to our mom and dad.
Feye hit his button before me. “Human threats to these gentle animals include them getting caught in fishing gear and hunting. It’s illegal to hunt manatees, but some people still do.”
“Perfect. Adrianna, anything to add? It seems the manatee is ready to swim off and we want one last shot of all of you with it before it does,” said Mr. Savage.
This was my first big moment to speak on Wild Survival! I couldn’t mess it up! But as I stared into the camera, I couldn’t think of anything important to say.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and Feye pointed to the side of his mask. Oh! I had forgotten to push the microphone button. I said sorry again, this time pushing the button, telling them I had nothing.
“I think you need to study up on your Cuban wildlife, Adrianna,” Mr. Savage said over our headsets. “But at least we could hear you once you remembered to hit your microphone button. Great gear test run, Villalobos clan. Now, get back up here while I work with the camera crew down there.”
I could feel my face heating up.
My family gave one another fist bumps as we made our way back up, but I couldn’t help feeling disappointed that I couldn’t even think of one measly manatee fact to share. I had to do better next time!
Our parents spent the morning shooting scenes with an overhead drone. Mr. Sav
age wanted to get a lot of shots of them looking dramatically over the side of the boat as they zipped around the mangroves. According to him, this scene would be the opening of the show and would introduce our parents as superhero wildlife defenders.
I had seen Dad practicing his best “dramatic serious hero” look in the mirror earlier, and I had burst out laughing so loudly he chased me from the room.
While they were out filming, Feye and I decided to stay behind with part of the crew to film some of the ecosystems around the floating boat hotel. Mark and Alice from the camera crew followed us around as we described the different animals we saw both under and above the water.
Nearby, deeper in the mangroves, was a small sandy spit where Cuban rock iguanas crawled around under the hot Caribbean sun. Mark and Alice suggested we stop to film them since we might not get another chance to have just us kids narrating. “All right, Feye, tell us a little bit about Cuba’s reptiles and lead into talking about these iguanas. Adrianna, then we’ll pan over to you and you can tell us more about them, okay?” Mark said once he had set up his camera to record us.
He hadn’t noticed Feye leaning on a mangrove taking selfies. Mark frowned.
“Feye! Come on!” he said.
Feye held his hands up in defeat and stuffed his phone in his pocket.
“Hey, I need to remember my time here with pictures!” Feye said. “I go everywhere with this phone, so I don’t forget a single moment.”
He straightened his shirt and looked into the camera. “Cuba has over one hundred and thirty species of reptiles, and about eighty percent of them are endemic, meaning you can only find them here. Over half the reptiles are actually lizards, like the Cuban rock iguana!”
He continued, “The Cuban iguana can get up to five feet long and can weigh around fifteen pounds. These iguanas can be dark gray or brown, and they all have this beautiful banding around their bodies.”
“Perfect! All right, let me watch this to make sure we’ve got a good shot,” Mark said as his eyes focused on the camera screen, with Alice looking alongside him.
I pouted, feeling left out and thinking that my brother was hogging all the camera time. I needed to prove I knew a lot, too! For instance, I knew that there were over eighty species of mangrove. Cuba was home to four of those: the red mangrove, the black mangrove, the white mangrove, and the button mangrove. I had seen their photos in books before, so I thought I would be pretty good at identifying them. I hadn’t tried earlier, but since we were up close and personal now, I thought I could give it a shot. I stared at the mangrove in front of me and realized I had no idea which one it was!
With a shrug, I gave up and instead joined Feye in watching the yellow-brown, scaly iguanas up above in the mangrove branches. Most were sleeping, their beady red eyes hidden. One stirred, and I pointed it out to Feye so he could see the large lizard begin to climb up a branch. The thick tail of the iguana swung from side to side and its claws made a scratch noise against the mangrove wood.
“If we’re lucky, we might see—” Feye stopped short as the climbing iguana launched itself from the branch above into the water below.
“Whoa!” I cried. We both scrambled closer to watch the iguana swim easily in the murky green-gray water.
Mark and Alice were still hunched over the camera screen, talking about something in hushed tones. They had completely missed the amazing iguana action!
“What a spot!” Mark said, finally looking up. “We already have a lot of great footage, and we’re just getting started. Now we just need to find this Mega Croc Savage keeps going on about.”
“I thought Mr. Savage just wanted ‘Mega Croc’ in the title of the show to attract viewers,” I said.
“The injured croc is big, but I don’t know if I’d call it ‘mega,’” Feye added.
Alice shook her head. “There’s a legend around here that there’s a monster croc. It’s supposed to be like twenty-five feet long, weigh a few tons, and be an absolute terror.”
“But … it’s legendary. So, it couldn’t really exist, surely,” Feye said slowly.
Feye and I were about to ask more questions, but we heard the roar of a boat engine and turned to see our parents and Mr. Savage heading our way.
“Time for lunch!” my mom called. “I can’t wait to hear about what you saw this morning!”
* * *
As we sat down for lunch, I shot a glance over at my brother, and then to Mr. Savage. I wiggled my eyebrows in the universal signal for “Should I ask him about the Mega Croc?” Feye nodded slightly.
“Hey, Mr. Savage?” I started.
He looked up at me, wiping his mouth with a napkin. “Yes, Adrianna?” he asked.
“Can you tell us more about this Mega Croc?”
I could tell my dad wanted to interject because his mouth opened up, but it quickly shut when Mr. Savage waved at him and chuckled. “Of course I can!” He began to tell us how the locals have been talking about a massive crocodile that could be a hybrid between the American crocodile, like the injured one we were looking for, and the Cuban crocodile.
“It isn’t totally out of the question,” our dad hesitantly told Mr. Savage when he was done with his tale. “The Cuban crocodiles are losing their genetic identity because they’re interbreeding with the more abundant cousin, the American crocodile.”
We had heard about Cuban crocodiles before. Some family friends had seen them in the wild before and were terrified—one said it was like looking at a devil because of their raised eyebrow ridges and dark eyes.
“The Cuban crocodiles could once be found roaming all throughout Cuba but are now only found in large numbers in the Zapata Swamp,” my mom added.
“The cameras aren’t rolling, you know,” Feye joked. Mom stuck her tongue out and we all laughed.
“Now you’ve said it yourself! The genes of two dangerous predators mixed into one super-aggressive crocodile,” Mr. Savage exclaimed, his drink slamming down onto the table for emphasis as he talked. “Maybe the injured crocodile got into a tussle with the Mega Croc!”
I could see my mom frowning.
“Do you think the injured croc has died?” asked Feye.
“No, I don’t think it did. It may be hiding, though. Lying low,” said our dad.
Suddenly, all our radios crackled to life as someone said, “¿Están ustedes allí? Are you guys there? We have a crocodile sighting! ¡Vemos un cocodrilo!”
Our mother grabbed the nearest radio. “We’re here. Where is it?”
“It’s near your boat hotel! And it is HUGE!!” the voice said.
I gasped. Could this be one of the crocodiles we were looking for?
Everyone sat frozen until Mr. Savage started barking orders. “All right! Julio, grab the tracking gear. Evelyn, get the medical kit just in case this croc is the injured one we’ve been searching for. Kids, why don’t you come along for this, too.”
“Yes!” I cried. Immediately, Feye and I clambered onto the boat before Mr. Savage could change his mind. My parents took off in different directions to gather supplies. While they packed our boat, another set of crew members went ahead to see if they could find and wrangle the crocodile.
In just a few minutes, our second boat was ready to go, and we were speeding through the ocean. The curved white roots of the mangrove trees rose out of the blue-green water. Overhead, their leafy branches formed a vivid green tunnel of sorts.
As we rounded a bend and came into a more open section of the channel, we easily spotted the first team’s bright white boat against the dull brackish water.
Our boat slowed to a stop, and Mr. Savage got on the radio. “What’s happening, Pablo?” he asked the other boat’s captain.
“It’s a big croc all right!” Pablo’s gravelly voice said over the radio. “But it isn’t the injured one. The muchachos lured it out of the water with some chicken and have it tied up for you.”
Our boat slowly motored forward to join the other and Pablo waved us over. Behind him
, on a small stretch of muddy land, a large croc had been restrained by his crew.
“Aw, man. I really wanted to see them pull the croc out of the water,” Feye said.
“Well, we’re just getting started, Feye!” my mom said. “We promised some of our Cuban university friends that we’d put tags on any crocs we found. The information the tags collect will help them figure out how these large predators use their habitat.”
Mr. Savage stroked his chin, a glint in his eye. “Footage of you all tagging a croc is less exciting than footage of the guys wrestling one, but we’ll make it work!” He grinned like he’d made a very funny joke, but I could see my parents exchange an exasperated look behind his back.
My mother started poking around the boxes of gear, pulling out the tagging equipment.
“Can we help?” I asked, dying to be a part of the action—finally.
“Can they, Julio?” Mr. Savage asked our dad. I could see him perk up at the prospect of getting us all on camera at the same time.
“Feye has put tags on smaller crocs before. Not much different to put a tag on a larger croc!” Dad said, shrugging.
“And what about me?” I asked, not wanting to be left out.
They all turned to me. Dad looked concerned, but Mom took my hand and smiled. “I’ve got a very special job for you,” she said.
“Fantastic!” Mr. Savage cheered. “The croc is already prepped, so let’s tag this bad boy up and inject some science into our episode!”
My mom quickly set out the tracker and a small pot of glue on a tray and handed it to me. “Here’s your very important job,” she said. “Prepping the tracking device for Feye!” She grinned triumphantly.
All I had to do was add enough glue to the tag to make sure it really stuck on the croc. While it wasn’t the most exciting job, I got to participate, which was something! I’d done this many times before at home but never with cameras watching me.
Crocodile Rescue! Page 2