Glass Eels, Shattered Sea

by Charlene D'Avanzo

I looked to the side for a moment and then turned back. “I do love Ted, and he loves me as well. When he’s away at a meeting or something, I really miss him. We talk on the phone every day.”

  “That’s certainly what it looks like from the outside,” she said. “You’ve said that Ted wants to live with you, but you’re not sure. What’s holding you back?”

  I studied my hands for a half minute and added, “You’re right about that glass of wine, Harvey. This would be easier with a little alcohol. Right. Um, what’s holding me back?”

  “Try going for one word. What is it?”

  “Fear. I’m afraid.”

  “Of?”

  “Losing my independence. Losing myself.”

  “Has Ted ever done anything that made you feel like that was happening?”

  “Well, no. No, he hasn’t.”

  “But…?”

  “But I’m afraid he might.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Hmm, what?”

  “Here’s what I’m thinking,” Harvey said. “Don’t jump on me, okay? It’s just an idea. Go with it for a day or so, and we can talk about this again. Deal?”

  I wet my lips. “Now I’m really curious to hear this but afraid at the same time. Sure, what’s the idea?”

  “Mara, both your parents died in a terrible accident when you were only nineteen. I can only imagine what that was like. Maybe you’re afraid you’ll lose Ted just like you lost your parents, so you keep him just far enough away that it won’t happen.”

  Blinking away tears, I said, “I’m worried that if we live together I might lose him?”

  “Yes, I’d guess it’s something like that.” Squeezing my hand, she added, “Let the idea roll around in that big brain of yours, see what you think, and keep in mind that this has nothing to do with logic.” She uncrossed her legs and stood. “Right, now it’s dinnertime, and I’m starving.”

  Dinner featured homemade tomato sauce with meatballs or calamari, both my favorites, but I was distracted and hardly knew what was on my fork. Glancing at Ted seated at the other end of the table, I went around and around with Harvey’s idea. Was she right that I was scared of losing Ted if we lived together? If so, what could I possibly do about it?

  Seeing that I was distracted and knowing why, Harvey brought me back to reality. “Mara, Nick has an idea for something after dinner that sounds good to me. Two years ago, he dove down in Alvin to one of their permanent bottom stations. He’s got a slideshow. What do you think?”

  With a nod, I said, “Great. Just the ticket,” and she understood exactly what I meant.

  After the dishes had been cleared away and leftover food carried back into the kitchen, the mess hall became our classroom. At the front, Nick stood to one side and fussed with his computer until an image, the submersible Alvin, popped onto the projection screen.

  “Can everyone see that okay?” he asked.

  One of his students, standing in the back of the room, called out, “Looks good from here.”

  “Thanks. Before I start, I put this slideshow together for a general audience. If anything is unclear or there’s too much jargon, please let me know afterward.”

  Nicked turned toward the screen. “A few years back, I was fortunate enough to travel down to the abyss in a submersible called Alvin. I hope this slideshow gives you an idea what that’s like.” He pointed to the image of the sub. “As everyone in the room knows, this is Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s submersible, Alvin. The sub was named after Allyn Vine, a WHOI scientist, although,” he said with a grin, “some think the cartoon chipmunk was its real inspiration. The navy directed the first dives in the mid-sixties. On one, they looked for and recovered a lost H-bomb. After that, the scientists took over. In the 1970s, Alvin attracted world attention with the discovery of the Galapagos Rift deep-sea vents off Ecuador. Nobody expected bizarre life forms, like six-foot tube worms, to live in those utterly dark, deep, deep waters.”

  23

  The next image showed a schematic of the submarine, which Nick pointed to as he spoke. “Alvin holds three passengers—typically the pilot and two scientists. The pilot looks forward, and each scientist to the side though a little porthole. The actual window to the deep sea is small, but for the very first time Alvin let biologists glimpse a world they never imagined they’d see with their own eyes.”

  Turning toward his audience, Nick said, “Understandably, many of you don’t think twice about Alvin, just like we disregard the space station and the rest of NASA’s amazing achievements. It’s not an exaggeration to say that Alvin revolutionized deep-sea research.”

  Taken through one of the round viewports, the next photo was of water, lit from above by the sun. Nick said, “The sub is weighted and sinks when her ballast tanks are flooded with water. As we began to drift down and the water became increasingly dark blue, I felt nervous for the first time. After all, we were in a tiny sphere, completely on our own, sinking to the ocean depths. If something went horribly wrong, there’d be nobody to save us.”

  With that remark, I sucked in a quick breath. No surprise there, since my parents died in a small submarine. Leaning over, Harvey whispered, “You okay?” Nodding, I mouthed, “Yes.”

  Nick’s next image showed the viewport with deep twilight outside. “A hundred meters—that’s 300 feet—down. We can’t see anything except the usual marine snow: the detritus of ocean life sinking down to the bottom. This next photo,” Nick said, “is about 1,300 feet down. It was cold in the sphere at that point, but my long underwear kept me reasonably warm. Good thing, since we could hardly move around in that tiny space. Outside it’s completely dark, except for a flash of bioluminescence here and there. Plankton of various sizes flash beyond the viewport, but you can’t tell what you’re looking at. I’m going to go quickly through these next slides of various animals, some illuminated by their own bioluminescence, others by Alvin’s lights.”

  A few of the animals were easy to identify—jellyfish, good-sized copepods, bizarre fish. Others were like nothing I had ever seen before.

  “Here’s a fish hanging upside down,” Nick said. “Being in that position at this depth doesn’t seem to matter much since the animals aren’t responding to light cues from above.”

  Nick clicked through more images of strange-looking creatures. Then, pausing, he said, “The pilot announced we were very near the bottom. Suddenly, wham! We hit the bottom and stirred up a big cloud of mud. When the mud cleared, we cruised along the bottom. Here are some of the animals down there.”

  The next set of slides showed big red sea urchins with black spines, a two-foot-long fish that looked like a snake, rosy-colored shrimp, delicate anemones scattered on the bottom, a sea cucumber, and a big rattail fish with eyes the size of my fist.

  Saying that he wouldn’t show the next slides to a general audience, Nick ended with graphs: zooplankton data from water samples he had collected on the way down.

  The appreciative group applauded the slideshow and offered some good ideas for a presentation to the public. One student suggested Nick talk about nitty-gritty things like how someone “goes to the bathroom.” Another thought he should explain what bioluminescence is and why animals do it. A third student suggested he describe the Galapagos Rift discovery in more detail.

  After thanking the audience for their suggestions, Nick said, “Since you are all here, does anyone have any observations or questions about what you’ve seen on the cruise?”

  One of the students raised her hand. “I’ve seen photos of the Sargassum out here, but didn’t expect there to be so much of it. The biomass is astounding.”

  “Excellent point,” Nick said. “Biomass of Sargassum here and elsewhere has increased dramatically over the last decade or so. It’s an enormous problem on the coast of the Caribbean, parts of South America, and in Florida. As you might guess, nutrients are the cause. In the Amazon basin, for instance, forests have been converted to farms, and fertilizer is running off that land into the Amazon
River, which then flows into the ocean. Maybe some of you have seen the result?”

  Standing, another student said, “It was really bad in Cancun. The beaches were covered with Sargassum so thick you couldn’t walk through it. In shallower water, the seaweed smothered fish, sea cucumbers, sea urchins, and crabs.”

  After addressing several questions about the Sargassum problem, Nick thanked everyone. I turned and studied the handful of crewmembers standing in the back. Most of them were chatting with each other, but one stared at a group of students, sitting around a nearby table. I followed his line of sight to Alise and turned back to watch him again. The man was so fixed on Alise, he seemed totally unaware of the mate who stood next to him, trying to get his attention. I looked for a gold ringer on his finger, but his hands were behind his back.

  Someone called my name. It was Ted, trying to get my attention from across the room. I held up my finger to say, “Just a minute,” and turned back, but the staring crewmember was already gone.

  24

  Ted’s big grin told me he was pretty excited about something.

  “You look like you won the lottery,” I said. “What’s up?”

  “I got permission from the bridge to go down into the bow chamber,” he said. “Both of us.”

  “Ted, that’s awesome. I haven’t been in the bow chamber since grad school.”

  “And the Sargasso is the perfect place for it. We’ve got to go right now.”

  I rubbed my bare arms. “I’ll need warmer clothes. See you at the ladder. Heading down there in ten minutes.”

  I hoofed it back to the stateroom, grabbed a fleece top, changed into jeans, and met Ted with time to spare. He watched from above, as I held on to handrails and picked my way backward down a narrow ladder.

  Ted stepped off the ladder to join me. He shouted, “Welcome to the bowels of the ship.”

  While “bowels” isn’t quite the term I would have used, it certainly was the case that we were in a different domain. On the upper decks, Intrepid’s engines were a distant drone. Now their rumble vibrated in my eardrums and forced us to yell to be heard. The smell of diesel, an odor that makes me nauseated, was pretty strong as well.

  I wrinkled my nose. “I’m not wearing my seasick patch.”

  “You go first. Climb into the bow chamber,” Ted said. “You won’t smell it there.”

  As opposed to climbing, one slithered into the bow chamber. I squatted at the bottom of the ladder, lay on my belly, and shimmied head-first over to the round viewport. It was definitely worth it once I got there, but the whole procedure was awkward to say the least.

  Nose pressed against the glass, I stared into blackness, as my eyes adjusted to the lack of ambient light. In a moment, the water was alive with flashes. Most were fragments that came and went in the distance, like floating bits of firefly light on a moonless night. These, I assumed, were copepods: tiny animal plankton, flashing for some unknown purpose. Suddenly, a glorious, large creature floated right by the window—a long, rolling, barrel-shaped salp, glowing to beat the band.

  Ted called down, “Anything?”

  “Just saw my first salp! Looks half my height, loop-de-looping. So bright, it doesn’t seem real. Like a Disney movie or something. Good lord, there’s another one!”

  I lay there until I was stiff from the cold and being stuck in one position. Then I picked my way up the ladder and stepped aside so Ted could enjoy the show.

  As extraordinary as bioluminescence seems to us landlubbers, it is very common in the ocean. Most marine creatures, roughly three-quarters, make their own light. But they are not the ones we are most familiar with, like dolphins or turtles. Instead, glowing marine critters are squid, salps, comb jellies, krill, corals, deep-sea fish, and many more.

  Bioluminescence serves a variety of functions, including defense. Threaten a Sargasso squid and it will eject a luminous cloud in your face and dart away. Like any potential predator, you’ll be blinded by the light and miss the squid’s fast exit.

  Over half the fish species living in the Sargasso’s deep, murky “twilight zone” also produce light, mostly from the undersides of their bodies. Since mid-water fish in desert seas have a hard time finding mates, these distinctive patterns of light probably help species identify each other. Most animal light is the result of a chemical reaction, like that produced by fireflies. It’s an example of the extraordinary biochemistry shared by dissimilar creatures that live in completely different realms from one another.

  From down in the bow chamber, Ted called, “Comin’ up.” Rubbing his arms, he stepped off the ladder. “That was terrific,” he said. “But I should’ve worn fleece like you did.”

  “Hug me,” I said. “I promise to share my heat with you.”

  He pulled me toward him. “Not just smart and beautiful—generous too.”

  Lulled by the engine’s drone, we stood like that until footsteps from above broke the mood.

  “How about we go up on deck and take in the night sky?” I said. “It’ll be lovely out there.”

  Stepping back, he squeezed my hand. “You bet.”

  Intrepid was steaming to our next and last station of the cruise—the western Sargasso Sea, where it borders the Gulf Stream. The eel researchers were especially interested in sampling there because eel larvae travel west from the Sargasso to rivers along the northeast coast.

  As we climbed back up the ladders I considered whether this would be a good time to describe the conversation I’d had with Harvey about relationships. Feeling unsure of Ted’s reaction, I decided against it.

  We had my favorite nighttime viewing spot on the upper deck to ourselves. Given the late hour, that wasn’t surprising. Exhausted by their grueling sampling and sorting schedules, most scientists and crew were either working or sleeping. Generally type A myself, I felt a twinge of guilt.

  Ted, on the other hand, was pleased. “Terrific,” he said. “Nobody is up here.”

  Warm with a delightful breeze, it was a lovely Sargasso Sea night. Ted leaned against the ship’s bulkhead, I leaned against him, and together we watched nature’s show.

  Above us, the density of stars scattered across the sky was unlike anything I had witnessed before. And below that brilliant display, the ship broke through the sea and set the surface waters aglow with sparkling bits of blue light.

  “Look at the bow,” I said. “It’s like we’re plowing through cerulean fire.”

  “Amazing,” Ted whispered. “I’ve never seen bioluminescence so blue.”

  I was about to ask what marine creature was responsible but quickly decided to simply enjoy the show.

  Something big leaped alongside Intrepid ’s bow. Leaning forward, I said, “Ted, look! Dolphins riding the ship’s bow wave!”

  We ran to the starboard side and held on to the railing to watch the show. One after the other, dolphins jetted in from both sides and raced into the ship’s bow wave. Chirping nonstop, they were dolphin ghosts engulfed in glitter. Then suddenly, as quickly as they appeared, the mammalian travelers were gone.

  Side by side, we stood there for a good while and soaked it all in. Finally, Ted pulled me toward him and whispered, “I will never, ever forget being out here on the Sargasso Sea. With you, it’s splendid. Without you, it wouldn’t come close.”

  Relieved that I hadn’t spoiled our splendid moment, I held on tight.

  25

  The next morning I hadn’t planned to follow the suspicious crewmember, whom I had nicknamed “Gold Ring,” but suddenly the opportunity arose—so I took it.

  Lingering over my third mug of tea after Ted and Harvey left, I had a good view of the cleanup area behind Mark’s row of stoves. Several guys, including Gold Ring, were back there rinsing stacks of dirty plates and putting them in the dishwashers. As he stopped to speak to another crewmember I got a chance to take his measure. Short and muscular, with kinky black hair, wide, baboon-like nostrils, and ferret-like eyes, Gold Ring was malevolence in the flesh.

&
nbsp; My mug empty, I was about to leave when my target said something to one of the other washers, wiped his hands on a dishtowel, and headed for the exit.

  As the mess hall’s door closed, I opened it and stepped out. Already at the end of the corridor, Gold Ring’s foot was on the bottom rung of the ladder leading up to the 01 deck where the labs were located. When he disappeared, I quick-stepped to the ladder and looked up to make sure he had already climbed off. Then I quietly picked my way up the rungs to the next level.

  Sure enough, to my right, Gold Ring walked toward the chemistry lab door. I took one step back down the ladder and peered around the railing in his direction. By then, his hand was already on the lab doorknob, which he turned back and forth without success. After the acid incident, Harvey had locked that door. Smart, smart lady.

  Expecting the man to walk back to the ladder, I retreated two rungs. But he remained standing in front of the locked door. Back at the top, I squinted to see what he was up to.

  Silently mouthing, “You goddamn SOB,” I was horrified to see Gold Ring dig into his pants pocket, pull out a key, open the door, and step in.

  How had he managed to get that key? As I considered the question, it occurred to me that I had not given Gold Ring the credit he was due. Apparently we were dealing with someone more connected—and therefore more dangerous—than I had realized.

  I wasn’t sure what to do next. Walk into the lab and confront the guy? Nope. That would blow my cover. Run and get Harvey or Ted? Not yet. Wait for Gold Ring to come out?

  Waiting seemed like the best idea, because the man would have to get back to work. I could leave the mess right after he returned and hoof it to the lab to undo whatever mischief he had set in motion.

  Back in the mess hall, my butt slid onto a chair when Gold Ring walked in and returned to his post by the sink. I hurried to the stateroom and walked in as Harvey stepped out of the head. Her toothbrush was in her mouth.

  She said, “Wha—”