 © Howard Hall |
The moon hid in the shadow of the Earth and the tide ran full and hard. A south wind began building just before sunset and by dark it raged against the current whipping the sea into froth-covered violence. I leaned against the gunwale of the Ambar III and watched the foam race by the hull. A warm wind blew through my hair and I looked up at the spectacular star-spangled sky and thought, "This sucks".
It was typical behavior for the Sea of Cortez. She invites you to make a night dive by offering a warm breeze, placid waters, and an indigo sky filled with diamond dust. Then, by the time you've dragged your wet suit on, she's changed her mind and flies into a rage of wind and current. We'd already gone through the trouble of tying the stern of the boat to the rocks so that we'd be close enough to shore to get our surface-supplied movie lights down to the dive site. I didn't want to waste the effort, but the diving conditions didn't look pleasant. Bob Cranston looked at the foam rushing by the boat and said, "What da ya think?" I was hoping he'd suggest that we call off the dive, insisting that the current was too strong. But he offered no easy excuse.
"The current can't be that bad right up against the rocks," I suggested, hoping for some argument. We'd been working underwater all day and we were really beat. I didn't feel like making the dive and interpreted my own reluctance as laziness. "I guess we should at least try", I said with zero enthusiasm when Bob offered no helpful excuses.
Mark Conlin was suited up and had the movie camera on the stern. After I jumped in he handed me the camera then followed with the light cables. Bob dug into the bait tank and pulled out a small mackerel he would use to attract eels. The purpose of our dive was to get nocturnal scenes of moray eels foraging on the reef.
I swam toward the bottom as fast as I could to avoid drifting too far from the boat. Once on the bottom, the current was still strong and I knew Mark was going to have a tough time with the light cables. I swam up stream a few yards and found a flat spot on the reef to work. Bob dropped in and I indicated where he should dispense the bait. He began swimming back and forth over the reef fanning small clouds of minced mackerel into the rocks.
Moray eels were already out foraging on the reef, but finding one and following it until it finds something to catch and eat is not very practical. We used the bait to bring hunting eels to us. The bait also attracted fish, crabs, octopi and other animals which often fell prey to eels. The idea was to use bait to concentrate the activity in the vicinity of the camera. After the bait was laid, Mark, Bob and I settled down to wait for something to happen.
Fifteen minutes elapsed and the only thing we had attracted was a swarm
of tiny polychaete worms. Thousands
of the dark red worms gathered around my movie lights forming a dense cloud.
Occasionally I would shake the lamps to disperse the cloud, but after a
half hour the swarm was so large it entirely engulfed me, occasionally making it
difficult to see. Worms were everywhere. They
swarmed around my regulator forcing me to purse my lips tightly around my
mouthpiece. But there was nothing
that could keep them out of my ears. They swam in and out of my ear canals at
will. Often one would become
temporarily lost deep down near my eardrum and its frenzied collisions with my
tympanic membrane would send unpleasant chills up my spine that caused me to
shiver so violently that I nearly ejected my mouthpiece.
I was about to give it up when things suddenly began to happen. A large scorpion fish swam up and settled on the sand in front of my camera. He was about fourteen inches long and as big around as a loaf of bread. Brilliant colors adorned his row of venomous dorsal spines. The scorpion fish hungrily eyed a school of small fish that dashed in and out of the lights attacking the swarm of worms. A dozen or so blue-and-gold snapper also arrived attracted either by Bob's bait or the school of small fish.
Then the eel showed up. He was a six foot-long panamic-green moray as big around as my leg. His lower jaw was a good eight inches long. He slithered down over a rock and into a hole emerging a moment later on the sand right beneath the lights.
The eel settled about eight feet away. The snappers seemed to ignore him and occasionally one would swim dangerously close to the eel's terrible jaw. Several times the eel struck at the snappers, jerking his head sideways and slashing with his jaw. But the snappers proved too fast.
After a few tries at the snappers, the eel grew frustrated and began moving toward the scorpion fish that was hungrily eyeing the small fish gathering around the lights. I slowly laid down and looked through the camera. Perhaps I could get a shot of the scorpion fish swimming away after being disturbed by the eel. I turned the camera on as the eel came up behind the scorpion fish. I couldn't believe what happened next.
When the scorpion fish saw the eel it leapt off the bottom to dash away. But the eel was already moving and struck quickly grabbing the fish just behind the head. I couldn't believe it! It happened full frame, right in front of the camera and, amazingly, the camera was running! The scorpion fish went stiff and erected its venomous spines which certainly pierced the lining of the eel's mouth. But the eel held on and turned to swim away. With my eye to the viewfinder, I leapt up off the sand to follow.
I expected the eel to drop the fish any second as it felt the pain of the powerful venom. But the eel held tight and swam rapidly across the reef. I followed, keeping my eye to the viewfinder and praying that Mark could keep up with the light cables. A jerk on the cables would ruin the scene. The cables could get stuck between rocks, or the drag from the current on the 250 foot cable could slow Mark down. I expected to feel the jerk any second and watch in frustration as the eel swam away, never to know what happened to both it and the scorpion fish. But somehow Mark kept up.
Across the sand and over the rocks the eel swam. Occasionally, it snapped at the scorpion fish gaining a better grip. Finally, the eel swam into a hole. I settled on the reef with the camera running, amazed that Mark had been quick enough to keep up with the light cables. The eel still held the scorpion fish in its jaw. Then, as I watched through the viewfinder, the eel began swallowing the scorpion fish head first! I thought the scorpion fish would be much too large for the eel's mouth. But the eel dislocated its jaws, which greatly enlarged its mouth, and engulfed the fish, spines and all. In a moment the fish was gone leaving a huge bulge in the eel's stomach.
I couldn't imagine what it must be like to have those terribly venomous spines embedded in the lining of my stomach. I half expected the eel to roll over and die right there, so I kept the camera running for a minute or so longer. But nothing more happened. I turned the camera off and watched the eel lying there pumping water in through its mouth and out through its gills; the dreadful fish still forming an obvious bulge in its stomach.
The scorpion fish had been swallowed alive and occasionally struggled against the confines of the eel's stomach, causing the eel to flinch spastically. But after a while, bulge in the eel’s stomach seemed to relax and the moray turned smoothly and disappeared deep into its hole. "God, what a shot! God, what a stomach ache!", I thought. I turned to Mark and Bob, raised a clinched fist and silently shouted out my enthusiasm. They responded with equal excitement. Then I checked my air pressure and contemplated the up-current swim back to a warm bunk on the Ambar III.