Beside me, Harvey said something into her regulator that sounded like “goddamn” and “cold.” I nodded as glacial streams of water oozed down my neck, up my sleeves, and around my ankles.
Aaka leaned over the side of the boat. “You okay?”
In unison, we gave her a thumbs-up.
“Have to clear my mask,” I said into my regulator.
“Okay. See you in a sec.” Aaka disappeared from view
Underwater, I had to tip my head back three times and exhale hard to get water out of my mask. I surfaced as Ted and Aaka swam over. Aaka made a circle over her head with her arms. “Okay?”
The three of us repeated her gesture.
Aaka took the regulator out of her mouth and hung onto the boat. “Great. Let’s go down the bow anchor line slowly. That’ll make it easier to regulate the pressure. Mara, Harvey, why don’t you go first?”
With a quick flick of my fins, I floated to the anchor line and grabbed it. Harvey did the same, and signaled me to go first. Assuming she wanted to take her time equilibrating her ears, I nodded and slipped under the water.
The everyday sounds of Haida Gwaii—voices, birds, and slapping water—were gone in an instant. I’d left the airy world and entered the muted, dense undersea domain of fish, kelp, and seals.
At first, my own in-and-out “Darth Vader” breathing swamped all other senses. I took a moment to make sure seawater didn’t seep into my mask, blinked, and looked around. Just a few feet below the surface, I was in a realm utterly foreign and immediately treacherous. Light—bright, warm, friendly—had morphed to muted blue-grey. Icy fingers of water invaded tiny channels at my neck, ankles, and wrists. What I did every moment without a thought—inhale, exhale—hinged on a phone-booth volume of air squeezed into the tank on my back.
I checked my depth gauge. Then hand over hand, I gingerly followed the anchor line down. Seawater pressed in on me with greater force each time I grabbed the line.
Water is astonishingly dense and weighs a whopping sixty-four pounds per square foot. For each twelve inches I descended, pressure on each square foot of water increased by sixty-four pounds. Hence the need for the regulator clamped between my teeth. The first part (stage) reduced high tank air pressure to a breathable one. Stage two allowed me to exhale air with the same force—pressure—as the surrounding water.
Since evolution didn’t design human ears to withstand underwater pressure, ears are a particular problem for divers. Every five feet or so, mine began to hurt. If I didn’t stop to equilibrate inside/outside pressure by swallowing, yawning, or holding my nose and snorting gently, I’d likely end up with punctured eardrums and an aborted dive.
About twenty feet down, I checked the depth gauge and craned my head back. Harvey held onto the line and hovered right above me. My bubbles joined hers and glided up to the surface. Aaka and Ted, who hadn’t submerged yet, were black silhouettes with big fins against a dull yellow sky. The hull of the boat loomed over me, a wavy, dark blob.
Foot by foot, I made my way down the line, clearing my ears all the way. A couple of times, I glanced up to make sure Harvey’s dark profile was directly above. Apparently, she had no difficulty adjusting to rising water pressure because her progress down the anchor line matched mine. I stopped to read my depth gauge once more. Thirty-five feet. I looked up. Aaka and Ted were just above Harvey on the anchor line. So far, so good.
Aaka had asked us to stop at forty feet before we descended further. When my gauge registered that depth, I held onto the line, waited, and looked around. What looked like snowflakes streamed by. These were plankton, tiny animals and plants at the mercy of the currents. Herring-size fish zipped past in crowded schools. Like swarms of bees, they arched up and down in uniform precision. Beyond the fish, a wall of yellow-gold kelp swayed back and forth and stretched to the sky. We’d swim over to the kelp forest at the end of the dive.
Aaka dove down, righted herself, and hovered beside me.
“Wookay?”
With my thumb and forefinger in a circle, I signaled “okay.” Aaka drifted up to Harvey who repeated the gesture.
Aaka backed up and held her fist in front of her facemask—the “hold” signal. She ascended, checked with Ted, and came back down. Thumb down, she signaled “descend.”
Hand-over-hand and pausing to adjust to the pressure, I moved down the line. My fins touched bottom at seventy feet, and I pushed outstretched arms forward to back away from the line. Hovering just above the bottom, with my mask and ears clear and breathing like Darth Vader, I looked around.
Aaka had anchored the boat on a small flat area between a rock wall and the kelp forest. Smart lady. We could examine the different habitats without going very far. The bottom was carpeted with an array of pink and purple life. Bubblegum-tinted anemones waved hundreds of fleshy tentacles into the current. They looked lovely, but each tentacle was designed to eject a threadlike harpoon that paralyzed shrimp or little fish that got too close. Little armies of round fuchsia sea urchins glided among the anemones and left trails of scraped-off rock behind them. Even the fish were red and pink. A well-camouflaged coral-and-green fish rose off the bottom, startled me, and slid past my facemask.
We circled Aaka and waited for her to show the way. When she seemed satisfied each of us had cleared our masks and ears, and had plenty of air and no concerns, she pointed in the direction of the rock wall and held up ten fingers. Ten minutes. Then she rotated a hand around her wrist. About ten minutes for us to explore the wall.
Aaka and Ted took the lead. Harvey and I waited so we could follow without bumping into them. Side-by-side, we reached the wall and slowly swam alongside it.
An astounding abundance of creatures lay below and beside us. Carpeting the wall were bright yellow sunflower stars, huge blue-top snails, orange-peel nudibranchs—big snails without shells—that looked like dragons, and beds of plum-rose anemone. But it was the larger animals that most drew our attention. We trailed a giant octopus until it slithered into a crevice impossibly small for its bulky body. A grunt sculpin looking like a dwarf-striped pig tiptoed across the rock, a cartoon ballet dancer. We floated above an old man’s face that stuck out of a hole—the wolf eel, a long eel-like fish with an enormous head. The creature demonstrated the terrible crushing power of its jaws when it grabbed and clamped down on a good-sized sea urchin. Urchin spines really hurt, something I knew too well, so I cringed as the fish munched on its prey. But it simply swam away, spines spilling out of its teeth.
Before we knew it, Aaka and Ted swam back to us. She pointed to the kelp forest, our next place to visit. I checked my watch. Only twenty-five minutes to go. On our way, we stopped to gape at an ocean sunfish, Mola mola. Longer than I was tall, the fish appeared to be an enormous flattened round head with a tail. A sea lion swooped down to take a look at the sunfish, saw us, flipped its fin-like tail, and sped away.
Close up on the seafloor, the kelp looked like a bunch of swaying, skinny brown trees. Instead of roots, each one grasped the bottom with its holdfast, which looked like oversized chicken feet with toes dug into the rock. I craned my head back. Each stipe reached for the sun, its ribbony fronds swinging back and forth with the current.
Aaka stuck her thumb toward the surface—the “ascend” signal. Together, we used our fins to glide upward. To stay vertical, I had to kick harder against a current we hadn’t experienced earlier. Aaka stopped about halfway up the kelp canopy and indicated we could swim through it slowly with our respective buddies. She held up her hand and held out five fingers. Did we remember the five safety rules?
I ran though the list in my head and turned toward at Harvey. She nodded, as did I.
Aaka made quick circles with her forefinger, moved her hand up and down, and tipped her head. I understood she had warned us about a down current and nodded.
Ted and Aaka floated up about twenty feet before they glided in. I gave Harvey the “wait” hand signal so we could take a moment to just look at the forest first.
She nodded.
Above us, kelp fronds glowed red-yellow in filtered sunlight. Akin to a forest of real trees, Macrocystis rose straight up from the bottom to the surface, and their fronds looked like branches with leaves. About halfway up the kelp canopy where we were, there was enough room for us to safely swim among the fronds. Divers were at risk at the surface, where the kelp was thicker and denser.
Harvey pointed toward the kelp, and we slowly slid in. Speckled light from above dappled across the rich brown fronds. A little farther in, the water turned blue-green as the canopy grew denser. Harvey pulled out her punch, stopped every couple of meters, and slipped samples into the plastic bags. She touched my arm and signaled we should return to the canopy edge. Reluctantly, I slowly turned around and swam beside her out into open water. There, we checked our air pressure. Both tanks were over half full. Good.
We entered the kelp again. Harvey pointed to the surface, where a school of blue-gray fish swam between swaths of brown kelp and patches of bright blue water. She glided in front of me and stopped to take a kelp sample.
Above, the school scattered when a seal swooped down and headed right for us. As the seal swirled like a top, sunlight scattered off white blotches that covered its body. It went right for me and stared into my facemask. Enormous dark eyes and a downturned mouth gave the animal a solemn expression at odds with its playful behavior. After inspecting my mask, the seal backed up and circled me.
Turning, I followed its movement and marveled at the perfect design. The sleek, torpedo-shaped body, stubby fore flippers, and dual hind flippers allowed the animal to zip through water with minimal effort. With its blubber insulation and adaptations—tolerance of lactic acid and ability to re-inflate lungs underwater—this was a mammal that could stay submerged for hours.
I held out arms wrapped in neoprene. Creatures from above, we had dropped into the seal’s domain with lots of noise and tons of bubbles. Without high-tech protection from the cold, plus imported air, weights and buoyancy regulators, we were about as vulnerable here as we’d be on the moon.
In an instant, the seal was gone.
I turned to look for Harvey. Out of nowhere, a down-current grabbed me and threw me deep into the kelp bed. Ragdoll in a wetsuit, helpless against the tremendous pull, I spiraled down, down, spinning with the swirling water.
14
Arms flailing, I tried to fight the single-minded surge—grab onto something, anything. It was pointless. There was no way to stop the sickening downward spiral through a torrent of river filled with seaweed.
My body spun more slowly and finally came to a stop. I closed my eyes. The world spun around again. Bile bubbled up into my throat. I popped my eyes open and took deep breaths to calm my nauseous stomach.
Throwing up into a regulator was a very bad thing.
I did a quick inventory of my body. Nothing hurt and, thank god, every piece of gear looked to be in place. My mask still covered my face, the BC wrapped tight around my chest, and fins were attached to both feet. And most critically, thanks to my death clamp, the blessed regulator was still in my mouth. Hyperventilating and scared shitless, I sucked air and scanned my body again. It was astounding, but all appeared to be well.
Except for one thing.
Like a mummy, I was shrouded in kelp.
I twisted left and right as far as possible within the seaweed constraints. Tried kicking my feet and pushing my arms out. It was no good. Kelp stipes and fronds wound around and around me. Perfect slimy ropes.
There was no way to know my depth or how far down I’d gone into the kelp forest—and, of course, where Harvey was. Somehow, the pressure gauge on my tank had slipped out of the BC where I’d secured it and was just visible beneath a kelp frond. I squinted to read the numbers. Three-hundred psi. Well past the turnaround point and, because I was sucking air, slipping down fast. I closed my eyes and listened to my yoga teacher’s voice in my head. Slow and steady. In…out…in…out. That’s it. In…out.
When I’d calmed down some, I assessed my situation once more. It was bloody dangerous and laugh-out-loud ridiculous.
Trussed in kelp, I could run out of air in minutes.
I tried to ignore the physics underway in my tank. When divers use up most of their air, each inhalation is more labored and painful. It’s like trying to suck water through a straw from the bottom of a nearly empty glass. At some point, there’s no water to suck.
Preoccupied by the danger facing me, I didn’t notice the seal at first. The creature peered into my mask. Gotta be a hallucination brought on by fear and low oxygen, I thought. The vision’s nose bumped my faceplate. My head jerked.
It blinked. I blinked. Eye to eye, we communicated via thought.
“So you’ve never seen a human wrapped in kelp?”
She—I felt the creature had a female temperament—blinked twice. I took that as a negative.
“Help?”
No response. Of course not. This wasn’t Lassie, for god’s sake. She left my field of view. Panic returned. I was alone again.
Moments later, she was back. I tried again. “Help?”
This time, she tipped her head. Then, as gently as a doting mother, she bit into kelp blades that constrained my right arm. Pieces of brown kelp floated upward. With the free arm, I reached for the BC pocket.
The pocket was just big enough for two gloved fingers. I grasped the end of the knife and by inches, pulled it out.
My friend eyed the knife, backed away, and tipped her head again.
I nodded. Our eyes met once more and, with a swirl of her sleek body and a tail swish, she was gone.
The blade easily sliced through my kelp restraints. Moments later, I was free. Light streamed into the kelp from my left, so I turned in that direction. Gingerly, I used the “kelp crawl” to glide through swaying seaweed. The final blades wiped my faceplate, and I popped out of the canopy into glorious open water.
I looked up. The sun, higher now, was a wavy circle of bright light at the surface. The boat’s hull, dark in bright blue water, swung slowly on the anchor lines. Best of all, Harvey floated ten feet directly above, fish-eyes behind the mask fixed on me. I looked at my dive watch to confirm that we were at a safe depth.
I pointed to the anchor line. She stretched her arm down in my direction and made a big circle with her thumb and forefinger. “Okay.” I repeated the gesture.
With a couple of flicks of my fins, I reached the line and held on. Harvey did the same and looked down. I stuck up my thumb. She nodded and we both crept up the anchor line. My tank neared empty, and each inhalation took more and more effort. The boat looming above had to be closer, but it didn’t look it.
Desperate to reach the surface and suck in fresh air, I only wanted to let go of that goddamn line and use my fins to zip up to the surface. But my training kicked in, and I stopped at regular intervals to clear my ears and let blood gases equilibrate.
Finally, my goal was within reach. I broke through—into the realm of air-breathing creatures.
I spit out my mouthpiece, sucked in cold, clean air, and pushed the mask up off my face. Salt water stung my eyes, but it didn’t matter a bit. Harvey hung onto the boat’s hull. I grabbed the hull line.
“Jesus, Mara. What the hell happened? One second you were right there, gone the next.”
I took in a breath and blew it out. “Current. Sucked me down.”
“Current? What current?”
“The—” Another inhale. “You didn’t feel it?”
“No. You were there in the kelp, then gone in a flash. I swam out to see if you were in open water, looked down, and there you were. Right below.”
Quick calculation. Harvey’s maneuver would’ve taken about thirty seconds. “Um, how long was I out of view?”
“Well under a minute.”
I coughed. “Um, seemed longer. Hey, let’s get out of this ice bath so we can head back. A soak in that hot water’ll be a dream.”
Aaka was already in the boat.
Standing, she looked down to regard her three charges. “Weight belts first. Super slow. For goodness sake, don’t drop them or they’ll end up on the bottom.”
I unsnapped my belt and raised one end just high enough so Aaka could reach down, grab it, and haul the heavy thing into the boat. She repeated the gesture with Harvey and Ted.
“Great,” she said. “Tanks next.”
One by one, we unfastened and slipped out of our scuba tanks. Aaka reached over the side and pulled each tank up the gunwale and into the boat.
Our gear aboard, we hoisted ourselves over the inflatable’s soft gunwales—another reason why the boats are so popular with divers—and fell into the boat.
Aaka pulled up the anchors and started the outboard. She didn’t gun the motor until we were well away from Rose Harbor. To keep out of the wind, I sat on the floorboards and leaned back against the gunwale. No go. I shivered violently in my soaked wetsuit.
My tank was within reach. I checked the pressure gauge. It was dangerously low.
While we were underway, Ted handed Harvey his kelp samples so she could stash them in a plastic box. She couldn’t control her freezing hands, and Ted had to help her pop the lid.
“What’ll keep the plugs from going bad?” Aaka asked.
Harvey rotated her jaw so she could talk. “There’s preservative in each bag. Back in my lab, I determine if kelp assimilated the Haida’s iron.”
We helped Aaka tie up on the dock.
She said, “You guys are frozen. Scoot up to the bathhouses. I can deal with this stuff.”
The boat’s hull was littered with tanks, weight belts, fins, and everything else we’d used.
“You sure? There’s a lot of gear here.”
“Yeah. Part of my job.”
Harvey and Ted picked their way through the dive debris, stepped onto the dock, and headed up to the pier.
I’d just started down the dock when I turned back. “Aaka, did you see a harbor seal near the boat?”
Demon Spirit, Devil Sea Page 12