Jurassic Waters

by E. Coulombe

Lono was a classic Hawaiian waterman - more comfortable in water than on land. He was up early the next morning, pushing Michael as he struggled into a wet suit, all the while complaining that he didn’t need one.

  “No, you need it Michael. I seen your skinny body shivering in the water. Whenever we come out, takes you a long time to get the blue out.”

  “You’re not wearing one.”

  “Cause I got all this fat to keep me warm.” Lono patted the dark, taut skin covering his six-pack belly of perfect muscles.

  “Oh yeah, right.”

  “No really, when I need one, I wear one. Usually in the winter. And it’s good protection, I already know what not to bump into, but you’re just learning.” He picked up his spear and checked the point. “Just wear the damn suit. Feels awful out but when you get in, feels like nice warm layer of blubber. Besides, it’s camo, what could be cooler than that?”

  Michael squeezed his skinny legs into the full body suit and pulled the zipper up the back. He buckled dive weights around his waist. Lono did the same with his weight belt and strapped a dive knife on his calf. He then clipped a three-foot cord, attached to a dive bag, onto his belt. Holding spears, they finally entered the water.

  Earlier that day, Lono had climbed part way up the cliff behind their camp and spotted the best entry point – a place this side of Nokilo Point, where a channel had been partially cut through the reef by a stream. They waded into the shallow channel barefoot, on loose sand, until they were in water up to their thighs. Donning fins and masks they launched themselves, and keeping their bodies stretched out and rigid and their lungs full of air they were able to float above the jagged reef until they reached the channel. Once in the bay Lono looked behind to see that Michael was behind him, and then he kicked out to get beyond the gentle shore breakers. He stopped to set up his dive bag.

  “How’s that wet suit working for you,” he asked Michael when he pulled up alongside.

  “Okay. Pretty comfortable really. But won’t it make it harder for me to dive by making me float?”

  “Yeah, a little. Which is why you’re going to be the guy attached to the buoy.”

  “Hey, Lono, that’s not fair, you never said….”

  “No, it’s okay really. You know I’ll be able to dive deeper than you anyway, and someone has to keep the catch right?”

  “Shit man, you have no idea how deep I can go, I have incredible lung capacity. I was captain of the swim team at St Alban’s. I won the regional butterfly stroke three years in a row cause of my massive lung capacity!”

  “Excusssse me,” Lono teased, “I’m impressed. Don’t worry. Just kidding. We always take turns holding the bag,” Lono said as he clipped the bag to Michael’s weight belt.

  Lono and George had decided the boys would make a systematic search of the bay, sweeping up the coastline to the tip of Nokilo Point, in as close as possible, Lono covering the first ten feet, Michael beside him searching the next ten. Then they would transect back, covering the next twenty feet of reef in a similar manner. They would continue transecting until it was too deep to be able to see the ocean floor with a snorkel.

  Lono hugged the coastline, staying near the break, for their first sweep out. The coral encrusted lava rock was only a few feet below, forcing him to focus on the break, and distracting him from the search. He popped his head up and shouted to Michael. He waited for Michael to do the same. “You’ll need to stay close to me on this first pass, cause I gotta really watch the break and the reef and keep us out of trouble, so I can’t really see much. Stay close in and be my eyes, okay?”

  Michael smiled and gave him the thumbs up sign that Lono had taught him not to use for diving – the okay signal meant everything’s alright, but thumbs up meant we need to surface. Lono laughed as Michael worked to adjust the strap on his mask. You really had to admire this kid, he thought, fresh out of suburban Connecticut, and into this shark infested water and you never hear him say no, in fact he seems to have no fear at all. A few scares might actually be good for him, teach him a bit more respect for this water.

  He’d seen foolhardiness before, usually in the mainlanders. They’d jump in and start swimming in the gnarliest waves or the strongest currents, and never realize the dangers – til it was too late. Stupid haoles. You’d think they could look at the water and see it’s power, Lono thought, as he held his head above the surface, scanning the shoreline to spot landmarks in his mind that he could use to locate himself quickly if needed. This is a powerful ocean, and it can sweep you away in a second, he thought. Thirty deaths each year in the state, twelve just on Kauai. None on Nakoa. No stupid haoles here.

  Lono suspended himself over the reef without moving, testing the strength and direction of the current, knowing that it’s always good to know which way your toughest swim will be. Avoid the panic, he thought. Many of the drownings in Hawaii, especially the older men, the newspaper’d say it was a heart attack, but Lono knew better. The panic had killed them. The ocean held them back or caught them in a little swell, maybe showed them something they shouldn’t have seen and … bam! Fear got em. They don’t count that as a drowning, but they should. The ocean killed them just the same.

  When Michael finished fooling with his strap again, he flashed the okay sign, correctly this time, and Lono bit down on his snorkel and started out. Visibility was perfect as he scanned the reef beneath; the surface chop was small, and the fish abundant. Lono immediately spotted a good size alua, at least twenty pounds, and instinctively he pulled his spear up and placed it across his left palm. But he had to stop himself. Catch that now and you’ll be dragging that bloody thing all day, he told himself, and then have those damn Lehua sharks coming around again.

  That was really strange at the huikilau, Lono remembered, something cutting up everybody’s legs so badly. He’d never seen that happen before. Sometimes fishing at the Waimea River mouth sand sharks would show up. one time, He remembered, after a hard rain and tons of sediment coming down from the canyon, the water was real murky, and murky water attracts the night time bottom feeders. So Kalani guys all went out with nets. Lono and a couple of guys were sitting around a fire on the beach, laughing their heads off cause they could hear Kalani guys, cursing and cussing the damn sand sharks, who’d decided to join in the feast. It must have really hurt but the guys never let go the net. No way they were going to let those stupid sharks have all the fish, they told Lono.

  It had been much worse at this last huikilau. There were so many bites, like maybe fifty sand sharks the way the guys were talking, and Lehua Bay is not a murky river mouth - and the huikilau wasn’t at night. Never seen that before. Probably part of whatever’s going on out here.

  A cold chill swept over him.

  Looking to his right, peering into the deeper waters, he replayed the vision of a large shark suddenly appearing out of nowhere. Cause that’s what it always looked like. Straining to see into the depths and you don’t see anything but sunlight playing in water, but it gets darker and darker as you look, and you feel like you’re seeing a long way out. But you’re not. Like a wall there, only you can’t really tell and then suddenly – vroom – a shark appears, as if out of nowhere.

  The first time Lono saw one he didn’t have a weapon, no spear, no knife, just his own slower moving body against that perfectly designed predator. All he could do was swim for the shallows as fast as he could, cause if you don’t have a weapon you’re gonna be afraid, and they can smell that fear, and then the only thing that’ll save you is dry land. He made it, not because he could out swim the shark, but just because the shark lost interest. He never went out without a weapon again.

  He turned around and checked to see that Michael was just behind. And then there’s panic, he thought, yeah, that’ll kill you out here too.

  Lono scanned the hills and valleys of rock and coral and listened to the crackling sound of thousands of small shrimp. The black spined vanna and cream colored sea urchins dotted the landscape. A school of c
onvict tangs pecked seaweed from the rocks. A yellow surgeonfish swam by with its surgeon’s blade protruding near the tail, and a box shaped pufferfish, with its rapidly beating fins, hovered along side.

  Okay so far, he thought, good sized coral means a healthy reef. Good fishing too. His gaze followed another twenty pound alua, and again his hand reflexively gripped the spear. He checked himself. Lono the angler had become Lono the explorer. Steady now, he told himself, looking for something else today. Exactly what, he couldn’t be sure. ‘For whatever you’ve never seen before’, George had vaguely instructed them.

  Lono tilted his head up and saw the surf break straight ahead. He headed to the right to swim around the reef that was causing the break. But here the reef dropped twenty feet below, making it difficult to see the bottom. He shifted the spear to his left hand, doubled in half, and dove straight down to have a look around. The crackling sound grew louder. Using his free hand, he anchored to the reef and slowly scanned the ocean floor.

  Everything looked normal, a few scattered fish – a cleaner wrasse following a parrotfish, and a stone colored flounder camouflaged against the sea floor, a stick-like trumpet fish suspended vertically sucking up its prey. He saw a red pencil urchin wedged between the rocks and stuck his spear inside a large, dark crevice. Explorer or not, if there were any lobsters around he’d catch ‘em for dinner. But nothing. Two minutes later he swam back to the surface, blew out his snorkel, and took in a deep breath.

  Checking Michael’s position, he started along the shallow reef again.

  Here the sea floor changed slightly. It was flat with large tubular grooves randomly etched across the surface. Rock-boring beige colored sea urchins, four inches across and covered with three-inch spines – hundreds of them -- had mowed the coral and etched out these fantastic tubular designs. The zigzag patterns, intermingled with random flashes of light from the wind-stirred surface, had an eerie effect on Lono. He shook it off. Focus, he told himself again, keep your head clear. He cleared the breakwater and continued swimming left around the point, where the sea floor changed once more. Massive lava rocks, dragged into the sea by some long ago storm; lay on the ocean floor, covered with large towering corals that looked like castles made of dripped wax.

  There’s something really different here, Lono thought. But he couldn’t put his finger on it.

  He dove again. A sandy orange color on the ocean floor stood out in sharp contrast to the surrounding black rocks. He anchored himself nearby and studied it. What in the hell? He inched closer and the orange moved slightly. Oh, yea, one of those frogfishes, he thought. Boy, are you ugly. And your camouflage isn’t working so good, cause you really stand out against that black rock.

  That’s it! That’s what’s different. The reef’s too dark. Instead of a light sandy brown, which it usually was, here it was black like fresh lava rock. He dove again and this time ran his bare hand along the reef. Jagged lava poked his skin. It should be smoother, he thought, it should feel slightly spongy from the algae covering it, but – that’s it, the alga's been scraped off! He swam a full circle, and saw more of the same. All of the rocks had been scoured, like a giant vacuum cleaner had come along and sucked them clean.

  He surfaced quickly to tell Michael, but when he got topside and looked around he didn’t see the blue snorkel floating nearby. He spun around but still didn’t see it. He put his face back in the water, and breathed a sigh of relief as he watched Michael’s lithe body ascending from the bottom. Jeeze, Lono, he admonished himself, get a grip; no panic, man, remember.

  When Michael surfaced Lono told him about the algae, and they dove down together to check it out. It smooth black lava rock was unlike any reef Lono had seen before, but other than that he couldn’t find anything wrong with it. He and Michael were out fairly far, and still had a long swim back, so they collected a few samples for George and headed in, transecting alongside their original route.

  “Things are definitely different, and it’s not just the water,” Lono laughed as they walked up the beach, and he shook the dive bag. “It’s me coming in with a bag full of rocks, instead of fish!”

  George dropped the shell he was examining, and ran across the loosely packed berm to help them with their gear. Eagerly, he grabbed the bag, and a grin spread across his face as he felt the heavy weight. “No, don’t get too excited,” Lono warned, “nothing out there. At least nothing I hadn’t seen before. Except for these rocks.” He reached into the bag and pulled them out for George. George looked quizzically at Lono.

  “It’s clean George, that’s what’s different. There’s no algae growing on it. Like it's been picked off. And the closer you get to Nukilo point, the cleaner they become.”

  “Yeah, I see what you mean,” George said, stepping into the water and picking up a loose rock from the sandy bottom for comparison. “It’s like the rocks found in the bottom of the upper tide pools. Because they’re dry at low tide, they can’t support algal growth. Could it have been from a tide pool?”

  Lono shook his head.

  “Could it have been an area where fresh water was seeping in from the shore? Algae grow more slowly in the microcline.

  “Maybe,” Lono answered, “but I didn’t see any change in the water, the way you do when you hit a freshet and the water gets all cloudy and mirage like.”

  “How about a change in temperature?” George asked. “Notice anything like that?”

  “Yea, I kind of did,” Michael answered this time, “it was warmer out there, but I couldn’t figure out why.”

  George looked out to sea. “Well, maybe the other side of Nukilo point will be shallower. Perhaps that affects the temp around the point, makes it so the algae can’t grow.”

  Lono looked doubtful, “that’s a stretch George. But whatever it is, we should check out the other side

  “Right,” George agreed, but his manner belied it.

  “What? You don’t think we should check it out?”

  “No, I definitely think you should check it out, but I’m thinking maybe Michael should stay on shore with me.”

  “I was thinking exactly the same thing myself,” Lono quickly agreed.

  “Well, that’s not exactly what I’m thinking,” Michael retorted. “Anyone care to hear what I’m thinking?”

  “Did you hear somebody say something Lono?” George teased. “I could’ve sworn I heard a voice coming from somewhere,” he moved his head around pretending to catch a distant sound. “Oh, well, never mind. Let’s go eat lunch.”

  “Funny George, very funny.” Michael said, exaggerating his tone of voice. He followed George to camp. “I’m not staying on shore for you to baby-sit me. I’m going with Lono. What’s more, he’s not going out there alone as long as I’m part of this expedition. So just get over it.”

  Lono smiled and shook his head. “Teenagers, George, what are ya gonna do with em? C’mon, let’s eat, I want to get going.”

  Although it seemed close, it took over thirty minutes to walk to the smaller bay, Ko`olau iki. It would have been faster to cut across the point which separated the two bodies of water, but the thickly intertwined naupaka shrubs made it impassable, forcing them to walk on the narrowing beach. As they progressed around the point the sand disappeared, pushing them further up onto the rocky slope, until finally they were left with only a narrow goat trail along the edge of a high steep rock face. Slowly they picked their way across.

  Ko`olau iki literally meant ‘little Ko`olau’, and it was a pleasant surprise to George when they finally got there. The small cove was defined by wave carved cliffs on each side, ending in an abruptly rising sandy beach, above which a steep cliff rose to a second hanging valley. Water cascaded over the lush green cliff, splashing into the pool below.

  George helped them carry their gear to the beach and waited while they suited up next to an entry point Lono had spotted as they’d rounded the point. Michael looked up the valley, at the fresh water pool below the water fall. “Hey, look guys. I call
first shower as soon as we get back.”

  “You really don’t need to go at all Michael,” George said. “I feel responsible, and I promised your mother I’d look after you.

  “George. I’m going, so quit trying. I’ll testify that you did everything in your power, but that as usual you were powerless to stop me.”

  “Not really funny,” George said, but smiled. Lono laughed and hi-fived Michael. “All right, go ahead, endanger yourselves,” George said, “and see if I come to your rescue when you’re trapped by a man eating monster fish.”

  As soon as Lono entered the water he could tell something was different about this ‘little’ bay. The water was murkier, but not dark. It was fuzzy, as though his mask had fogged. He raised his head to check, but his goggles were clear when he looked at the shore. Sticking his face in the water, they seemed fogged again. Must be a plankton bloom in here, he thought, but odd we didn’t see it around the bend, they’re not usually so localized. He swam further out. The reef was on his right side now, and it dropped down gradually to a depth of about eight feet. He heard the sound of his own shallow breathing through the snorkel tube, a sign that he was anxious. Come on, loosen up he told himself. Remember, panic kills.

  He came upon an immense coral encrusted boulder, and swam cautiously around it. On the far side, boulders were strewn across the ocean floor, creating numerous dark cracks and crevices. In one crevice he noticed a bright color, dove down to check it out and discovered a gray, cylinder shaped anemone with an orange top, clinging to the rock and swaying with the changing currents. He surfaced, drifted a few feet further, and spotted the same orange color. He didn’t recognize them, and decided to get a sample for George. Several of them surrounded a clam-like shell which he also didn’t recognize. He removed his knife from his leg strap, pried the clam off the rock, and stuffed it in the catch bag. He cautiously touched the cylinder shape and it responded with a slight movement, but didn’t sting. He pried it loose as well, and placed it in the bag alongside the clam.