Note: I wrote this story many years ago, back when spearfishing for giant seabass was still a noble sport. Reading it, I realized how much has changed. Kelp forests have receded dramatically in the intervening years. During a recent trip along the Big Sur Coast, I was amazed to see how little kelp was left. And there is almost none growing in the Point Lobos State Park. On a trip aboard the Vision out of Santa Barbara I also noticed that there is very little kelp growing in the California Channel Islands. Twenty years ago, the kelp forest surrounded the islands and stretched nearly the entire length of the Big Sur Coast, and it flourished at Point Lobos. Kelp forests seem to be going the way of coral reefs.
Angle sharks were extremely common when I made the dive written about below. And hammerheads and mantas were common in the Sea of Cortez. They are all now equally rare. Surprisingly, and contrary to the ending of the story, the black seabass moratorium seems to have worked. These behemoths are now frequently seen in the waters of the California Channel Islands. And in places you can predictably see a dozen on a single dive. When I wrote this story, I never would have believed that possible.

The Golden Forest

by Howard Hall

   It was the summer of 1967. I was swimming through the golden twilight in a kelp forest at the southern end of San Clemente Island. Jim Nerison was ten feet to my left guiding the borrowed seven foot long Potts speargun through the dense fronds.

 I had to load the gun for Jim. Either my upper body strength was slightly greater than his or I was considerably less clever. Probably the latter. I learned to dive from Jim. He wasn't an instructor. I was certified by an instructor before Jim taught me to dive. Perhaps I shouldn't say he taught me. But I learned by watching him. He didn't actually share his gifts, but he didn't conceal them either. He was the best. And yes, he was clever enough to pass the gun for me to load, knowing that the effort of stretching the third 5/8 inch band the length of the six foot shaft would bring tears to my eyes. The gun was so powerful that it always knocked my mask off when I fired it. I could never see where the shaft went and therefore never managed to correct my aim. So I never actually killed anything with it.

   It would be Jim's first time firing the gun. I carried a slightly smaller weapon - only six feet long. Both guns had reels with over 100 feet of heavy line. We would need every inch of the 100 feet if we were to shoot a 500 pound black seabass. And that was our intention, despite the fact that neither Jim nor I had ever seen one. Jim had suggested that the giant kelp forests of Pyramid Cove would be a likely spot. I was inclined to agree with him because he was inclined to be right about such things most of the time.

   Visibility was more than 100 feet, but so little light penetrated the dense kelp canopy that the large rocks we swam over became amorphous animate shapes, their shadows impenetrable. It was the best kind of light for hunting monsters - dark, surreal, exciting. Each large boulder we passed seemed to transform into huge creatures with gaping rubber-lipped mouths and obscure eyes. Then just before the sudden rush of adrenalin reached my muscles and my thumb released the gun's safety mechanism the boulders transformed once again. Only rocks.

   Ahead there was a brilliant light silhouetting the algal trees, an almost theological glow. When we reached it we found ourselves at the edge of a cliff looking out over a plain of white sand forty feet below. There were dozens of large bat rays out over the plain, each flying slowly and silently with lethargic strokes of their deltoid wings. And, occasionally, where a ray would touch the bottom in search of a crustacean or mollusk, five foot angel sharks would burst up from their concealment beneath the sand and glide away.

   We watched for only a few minutes before pushing off from the cliff toward the plain below. But the sight of those rays and sharks burned itself into my memory as one of the most beautiful experiences I remember underwater. At the time, however, our purpose seemed more urgent. The spell I had come under was quickly broken as we began our descent. It seemed quite logical that we would find the giant seabass at the base of the cliff. After all, if Jim and I had been giant fish, that's where we would have wanted to live.

   We swam north along the base of the cliff at ninety feet until it turned east. Here the cliff produced a deep canyon into the kelp forest before running west and then proceeding on again northward. The narrow canyon was in the shadow of the kelp trees on the top of the cliff. It was just the kind of place Jim had imagined finding the giant bass, and, of course, he was right again. And not just one! Hovering over the sand deep within the canyon were two giants of at least 400 pounds, perhaps larger. Perhaps much larger!

   We were standing in the sand at the mouth of the canyon. The fish were about forty feet away deep within the gorge. Jim tapped my shoulder nearly causing me to leap clear of my wet suit and tank harness right through the neck seal. With hand signals he indicated that I should go to the right and he to the left. Immediately, I understood his meaning. We should swim up over the cliff and along its edge then come over opposite rims of the canyon to shoot down on the fish. I instantly began to move.

   A few seconds later I glanced over my shoulder to check Jim's progress. I immediately stopped. Jim was kneeling at the mouth of the canyon. His right hand was on the trigger and his left was holding the butt of the monstrous Potts gun as he pointed it into the gorge. Then he fired. Action and reaction. The heavy shaft leaped into the gorge toward the hidden fish. The butt of the gun recoiled back and knocked Jim's mask around the side of his head positioning it neatly over his left ear. The leader line went slack and the muzzle of the gun dropped toward the bottom as Jim cleared his mask with his free hand. I assumed he had missed. But suddenly the leader tightened jerking Jim up off the bottom as his arm was nearly separated from his shoulder and his mask was repositioned over his ear. Oh no, he had one!

Suddenly, one of the monsters rushed up over the cliff and nearly collided with me! The gun in my hand never moved. It had happened too fast. I looked back at Jim and saw him attempting to reload his gun. His fish had pulled free. Deceived by the size of the huge fish and the extraordinary visibility, he had been out of range when he fired. He had lost it. But our failure to land a fish was not entirely his fault, according to Jim. I had misunderstood his hand signals. He had meant, "You take the one on the right and I'll take the one on the left". When he told me I couldn't believe he was serious. That he had been so outrageously optimistic. But, of course, that was Jim.

   My almost photographic recollection of that dive, so many years ago, really ends there. I passed my gun to Jim and reloaded his - undoubtedly causing a temporary aneurysm. Then we rushed off in pursuit only to return to the boat with terrible CO2 headaches. I had been seventeen years old. We had been a couple of high school kids, out in a boat, on our own, hunting big game in the most beautiful forest I had ever seen. I remember it as if it were yesterday. I haven't heard from Jim in fifteen years.

   They put a moratorium on spearing black seabass eight or ten years ago. The moratorium was as timely as most moratoriums associated with marine wildlife. It coincided with the almost complete disappearance of the animal. Occasionally one swims up from the seamounts along the Pacific coast of Mexico only to find itself trapped in a gill net or on a sportfisherman's hook. Gill nets are indifferent to moratoriums. Sport divers almost never see the giant black seabass anymore.

   But the kelp forest hasn't changed much. It remains divinely beautiful. Filled with bat rays and angel sharks, sea lions and dense schools of fish, it remains the most beautiful forest I have ever seen.

   I've had some good diving in many parts of the world during the years since 1967. I'm still a hunter, but now I shoot animals with my camera instead of a gun. It's much more fun with a camera because I'm not obliged to kill anything and I'm not limited to only animals that taste good. And people pay me to do it! Pay me! I'm damn lucky and I know it.

   Those of us in the marine life film business are asked several questions redundantly. One of the most common is: Where is the best diving in the world. It's a question that has no simple answer. There are days in the Sea of Cortez when the manta rays beg you to ride on their backs and hammerhead sharks pass overhead by the hundreds. And there are days at the same spot when you see nothing and can't even get an available light exposure pointing the camera straight up! But whenever someone asks me that question, especially if I'm near my home in Southern California, I can't help but think of the day Jim and I went hunting for giant seabass, of one hundred foot visibility in the twilight of a golden undersea forest, of rocks that developed faces, of shadows as deep as one's imagination, of an undersea cliff at the forest's edge. And of bat rays flying silently over a plain of sand.