Glass Eels, Shattered Sea

by Charlene D'Avanzo

  It came out in a tumble. “Alise’s assailant, I’m calling him Gold Ring, just walked into the chem lab and left a couple of minutes later. We need to get in there, and fast. Where’s your key?”

  “Bu ’ow—”

  “How he got a key? I’ve no idea, but I need yours right now!”

  She pointed to the top drawer of our nightstand. I yanked it open, saw the key, and grabbed it.

  Harvey threw her toothbrush in the sink, wiped her mouth, and was right behind me as I rushed back to the lab. I jammed the key into the lock and jiggled it from side to side. The damn door wouldn’t open.

  “Let me,” Harvey said. “It’s tricky sometimes.” With a more delicate hand, she easily opened the door and we stepped in. I nearly gagged from the smell.

  Harvey ran toward the row of gas cylinders lined up against the wall in the back of the lab. “Acetylene gas,” she yelled over her shoulder.

  I caught up with her. Hand on the valve of a gas cylinder nearly her height, she turned off the gas and said, “Traces of phosphine give it that awful odor.”

  Coughing, I said, “Good. Um, it’s not poisonous, is it?”

  She stepped back from the cylinder. “Acetylene? Not especially toxic but highly flammable, which is why it’s used for welding.”

  “So the guy could’ve caused an explosion?”

  “Yeah, and blown up the ship with him in it.”

  “That makes him doubly dangerous,” I said. “He knows just enough to be a nuisance but is oblivious about what could really happen.”

  Harvey checked the valves of two other cylinders, plus the straps securing them to lab wall. Stepping back, she said, “We need these gases for the spectrophotometers. There’s a danger here or in any lab, but of course there’s not usually a nutcase to worry about.”

  “Now what?” I asked.

  “Now I lock the door and we report what happened to the captain and chief scientist. Let’s see if we can find Ted as well. We can come back in an hour or so to make sure the gas has dissipated.”

  Up in the bridge, Captain Davies shook his head. “Never in my thirty-odd years has anything like this happened on one of my ships.”

  “Now what?” Ted asked.

  “First, I call home base,” Davies said. “They’ll contact the police so this guy is arrested first thing when we arrive in South Carolina. Then we get the chief cook up here and tell him what’s going on. After that, we can put this criminal under house arrest in his cabin so he can’t do any more mischief.”

  “It’s likely he hasn’t acted alone,” I said, “and someone made that key.”

  Davies blew out a long breath. “It does look that way. Which means, of course, that someone else could put this ship in danger.” He turned to Harvey. “Who made the duplicate keys for the lab?”

  “Let me think,” Harvey said. “Right. I had them made for another cruise a couple of years ago. Someone from MOI took care of it. That probably doesn’t help us now, does it?”

  “Don’t think so,” Davies said. “But I’ll check on that too.”

  26

  Afterward, Harvey, Ted, and I huddled on deck below the bridge and decided what to do next.

  “Let’s figure out who onboard needs to know about this and who tells them. I’ll check the lab again to make sure the gas has dissipated and everything is where it should be,” Harvey said.

  Ted nodded. “Good. Nick is chief scientist, so he needs to be in the loop. I’ll go find him.”

  “Considering what she went through, Alise should know,” I said. “She’ll be relieved the guy who pushed her overboard has been arrested.”

  “I’ll speak with the other chemists and tell them everything,” Harvey said. “They might have ideas about how this guy got his hands on a duplicate key.”

  I knocked on Alise’s cabin door and stepped in after she announced it was open. Book in hand, she was lying on her bunk. She sat up and pointed to the other one. “Have a seat. What’s up?”

  I brought her up to date and nodded as she said, “This guy’s a piece of work,” and “Incredible.” Finished with the update, I added, “We just met with Davies. He’ll put the man under house arrest, so that should be the end of the dirty tricks.”

  “Hope you’re right,” she said. “But someone got him that duplicate key and that person is still around. Unless…”

  “Unless what?”

  “Unless he stole the key from one of the chemists.”

  “I seriously doubt he knows who the chemists are,” I said.

  “Maybe one of them left their key sitting out on a table in the chem lab and our guy took it.”

  I shook my head. “Don’t think so. Anyone working in the lab would need the key to lock the door on their way out.”

  “He could’ve snatched the key when a chemist was in the spec room,” she said.

  “That’s true,” I agreed. “The spectrophotometer room has a door and anyone in there would be busy with the instrument. Harvey can look into that.”

  “Mara, think about it. This guy slips into the chem lab and steals a key when someone’s working there? That means he’s pretty daring.”

  I shrugged. “Yeah. Or maybe bonkers.”

  “Didn’t you tell me he was probably working for eel traffickers?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “It seems likely.”

  “In that case, maybe he’s desperate. If he messes up, he’s, um—”

  I finished her thought: “Dead meat.”

  As Intrepid steamed toward the coast and our last sampling station, a mix of panic and excitement set in. Crewmembers looked forward to spending time with their kids, wives, girlfriends, and everything else they had left behind and pined for.

  Scientists, on the other hand, had a different take on the return home. Behind the research cruise had been years of work. First, they had to come up with and vet research ideas and plans with a team of like-minded oceanographers. Next, they wrote grant proposals to the likes of the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)—and rewrote them one or more times after the proposals were initially rejected. Scientists fortunate enough to be granted funding, which could be fifteen percent or less of applicants, then spent more months planning, buying new equipment and fixing old, recruiting grad students, and hiring research assistants. Only after all the gear, instruments, sampling devices, and the rest were loaded onto the ship could researchers step aboard and begin the actual oceanographic fieldwork.

  Ship time also distinguished scientists from the crew. The mates, engineers, cooks, captain, and the rest might work on a ship for years at a time, but the researchers’ days at sea were limited by vessel availability, cost, and weather. For them, every day needed to count.

  As a result, tension in the labs was palpable. Biologists, including me and Ted, picked through sample after sample. Slowly, boxes holding labeled jars and preserved specimens piled up as containers needing to be sorted dwindled.

  Anyone walking into the biology lab would hear repeated refrains: “Are we ever gonna be done?” “Who took my marker?” and, “Whose samples are those?” among them.

  I asked Alise if things were as hectic in the chem lab.

  “Yeah, but it’s different,” she said. “Not so messy with jars and spilled seawater. It’s more about equipment issues. They’d like to use the larger-capacity rosette sampler, for instance, the one with thirty-six sampling bottles, and it’s giving them a lot of trouble.”

  “And we’re coming up on the final station pretty soon,” Ted said.

  “They’ll get it together,” I said. “They always do.”

  “Alise,” I said, “I know Nick is using MOCNESS again at the final station. What exactly is he trying to find out there?”

  “Whether the rapid decline in adult eels is linked to ocean warming,” she said. “He’s especially interested in the survival of eel larvae as waters warm.”

  Ted looked up from his sampling
tray. “I thought eels were pretty resilient to environmental changes because they live in freshwater, open ocean, and the Sargasso Sea.”

  Alise nodded. “You’re right. As I understand it, Nick thinks there might be a temperature tipping point for eel larvae. You know, water that’s just too warm for the little guys to deal with.”

  “There’s another way to look at it,” I said. “Eels live in freshwater rivers and migrate impossible distances out to the Sargasso Sea where they spawn. After that, vulnerable larvae must orient toward the coast, find rivers, grow up to be adults, and start the cycle over again.”

  “And?”

  “Well, that makes eels at risk from a number of very different man-made environmental stressors—warming that impacts larval drift and survival, pollution as larvae approach the coast, fragmentation and loss of the coastal habitats where they grow into adults, and overfishing by greedy eelers.”

  “So you mean,” Alise added with a grin, “that it’s complicated?”

  “Right. What ecologists always say.”

  Not long after Alise left to help the eel group, Ted announced that he’d had it. “I’ve got a much better idea than sitting here squinting into a microscope.”

  Straightening, I rolled my shoulders. “And what’s that?”

  “We brought our scuba equipment, and this is the last station coming up. Between deployments of the big net, let’s scuba dive to get our last seaweed samples instead of snorkeling. We’ll see a lot more. Besides, who knows when we’ll be in the Sargasso Sea again?”

  “Ted, that’s a terrific idea.”

  “Great,” he said. “If you clean up here, I’ll carry all our gear to the fantail and see you there in fifteen.”

  With no regrets whatsoever, I packed away the sorting paraphernalia and arranged our bottles in the right boxes.

  27

  Out on the fantail, it was a challenge to organize and put on our scuba gear without getting in someone’s way. Scuba stands for “self-contained underwater breathing apparatus,” and there’s a ridiculous amount of stuff: buoyancy compensator (BC), regulator, weight belt and weights, snorkel, mask, fins, and, of course, the scuba tank holding compressed air. Once more, after I wiggled into, wrapped around, and pulled on all of it, I realized that humans really don’t belong beneath the water’s surface.

  When the head crewmember on deck gave us the go-ahead, Ted and I stood at the fantail’s edge, held on to our masks, and fell backward into the water. I had scuba dived many times but never experienced a stranger, and more liberating, water entry. There we were, hundreds of miles from land and well over a mile above the seabed, in an utterly foreign, spectacular domain.

  Upright at the surface, we checked our gear once more, secured our facemasks, and sank below the surface.

  Most of my scuba experience has been in Maine where the water is turbid with marine life and numbingly cold. Diving in the Sargasso was completely different. The water was gin-clear, deep blue, and a delightfully warm seventy degrees. Beams of silvery light streamed down from above and steadily faded into the dim depths below. Strangest of all, at that moment anyway, we were utterly alone—not a single fish, turtle, or jellyfish was within view around, above, or below us. The whole experience felt lonely, just Ted and me in a vast, empty space.

  Upright in the water, Ted pointed to a nearby patch of Sargassum and tipped his head. I took that as, “Let’s go over there,” and gave him the scuba “okay” sign—thumb and forefinger in a circle, the other fingers extended. Side by side, we glided to the good-sized mat. Holding steady in the water, I positioned my facemask inches from the seaweed and let my eyes adjust.

  We had already snorkeled around the seaweed to observe it, but now we could examine the Sargassum mats in more detail. First, I was astounded by their massive size. Mats that looked a foot or so thick from the surface actually reached five feet or more down into the water. The area they covered was also startling. Snorkeling, we had only checked out the smaller mats. But as we glided under a large one for a good five minutes, I guessed its length to be at least a hundred feet.

  The seaweed was home to creatures of all sorts—tiny shrimp, snails, a little turtle, and a good-sized crab that was blue on the bottom and white on top. Despite the fact that we were looking at an utterly foreign zoo, the proximity of all that life was oddly comforting.

  The Sargassum anglerfish was most fascinating of all. Glum-faced, the little guy walked all over the weed on webbed fins. Fascinated and a little horrified, I watched him suck in and swallow a shrimp so quickly, the crustacean vanished in an instant.

  We glided below a dozen mats, grasped random Sargassum samples, and dropped them into the mesh sampling bags dangling from our weight belt. When our tanks approached empty, it was time to head back. As we glided back just below the surface, we could see Intrepid’s brick-red underside and two enormous round propellers. Sixty-odd humans needed all that bulk and steel to safely work and live in the foreign world that Ted and I invaded for less than an hour.

  Holding on to the base of the aft deck ladder, we slipped out of our tanks and carefully handed them up to waiting crewmembers above. The weight belts, fins, and collecting bags came next. Back on deck, we each wiggled out of our BC, pushed the masks up onto our foreheads, and enthused like teenagers at their favorite rock group’s concert.

  “That was awesome!” “Mind-blowing!” “Could-you-believe-it?”

  After we had settled down and before I started to shiver, I hugged Ted and stepped back. “Seriously, that was a dive of a lifetime. What a wonderful idea. No way I can thank you.”

  Wiggling his eyebrows, Ted grinned. “Actually there is, but it’s kind of, you know, private.”

  With Gold Ring under house arrest and a half-dozen scientists working in the chem lab, we had no reason to think there would be another lab incident. But it happened in the biology lab, a space we had not considered to be at risk.

  Given our exceedingly slow progress, Ted and I had stopped counting little animals on Sargassum and decided to hire lab assistants to finish the work back at MOI. As a result, we weren’t in the lab when it happened. But the other pickers, three grad students, were still at it as the ship steamed toward the coast.

  The ploy was simple and could have been horrifically effective. When the pickers left for lunch, someone walked into the biology lab, dumped out the water in their beakers, and refilled them with equally colorless hydrochloric acid. At full strength (which this was), hydrochloric acid burns human skin irreversibly. Splashed into someone’s eyes, it will blind them.

  The incident was less serious than that, but for the unlucky student a very frightening experience nonetheless. She reached for a beaker that should have been filled with water and instead splashed the strong acid on her hand. Screaming, she jumped up and knocked over the beaker. Acid spilled onto the lab table.

  Fortunately, her fellow picker was experienced with lab safety. She rushed the young woman to the nearest sink, turned on the tap, put the burned hand under running water, and asked a third student to get help. In a couple of minutes, the medic arrived, was told exactly what happened, and took over. As a result of everyone’s quick thinking, he said, the burn was fairly minor and would heal quickly.

  28

  Once more, Ted, Harvey, Nick, and I gathered on the bridge with Captain Davies and gave him the bad news.

  “Before we discuss the details, how is the young lady?” Davies asked.

  “She’s doing well, considering,” I said. “Thanks to her lab partner, she got her hand under running water immediately. The medic is with her now. He thinks the burns are pretty minor, and she won’t have any scars.”

  Davies nodded. “Glad to hear it. But now we know there are two criminals on this ship—one confined to his quarters and the other walking around free.”

  “Captain,” Nick said, “we’ve got scientists to protect. How do you think we should proceed?”

  Davies stroked his bearded chin. “I
want to prevent any panic but at the same time let all science personnel know just what has happened.” He turned to face Nick. “As chief scientist, why don’t you work with your colleagues here? Decide exactly what you want to say, who is going to talk to who, and keep your message accurate and brief. Let people know what to do if they spot anything out of line. Be careful about your tone. We certainly don’t want anyone to overreact.”

  “How do we prevent anything like this from happening again?” Ted asked.

  “I was about to get to that,” Davies said. “I’ll post a crewman outside each of the labs all day and all night until the ship pulls up to our pier. Only scientists with business in those labs will be allowed in.”

  Before we left the bridge, we decided that Nick would talk to each biologist, Harvey the chemists, and what they would say.

  Down on the deck, we huddled together to chat a while more.

  “With the guy who attacked Alise stuck in his cabin, I thought we were home free,” I said.

  Harvey nodded. “Me too. Usually at the end of a cruise, I’m worried about all the work that needs to get done. This time, I’ll just be happy to get off the ship.”

  Everything came off like clockwork at the final station. MOCNESS behaved, and the chemists deployed and retrieved their rosette twice without incident. Her work done, Intrepid pointed due west and headed for shore.

  The weather was perfect—sunny and warm—as we approached the South Carolina coast. By the time the pier was within view, everyone who could be was out on deck, their excitement palpable. As we got closer, people on shore recognized loved ones on the ship and yelled out their names. On the deck below mine, Mark, the chef, was waving his hand so hard I thought he was going to fall overboard.

  Captain Davies used the ship’s side thrusters to bring Intrepid snug up against the pier and powered-down the engines. The ship fell silent.

  Of course, this was no routine docking. Despite his anticipation, Mark couldn’t march down the gangway and engulf his family in outstretched arms. People onshore called out, “What’s wrong?” and “Why are you still up there?”