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Note: I wrote this short story while producing my first major film, Seasons in the Sea in 1988. Back then Bob Cranston was a simple diving assistant and Norbert Wu was just learning to take underwater photographs. How things have changed! After this story was published, the Worm Rock became somewhat famous locally which seems rather funny since it is just a small rock buried under ninety feet of dark cold water off the coast of San Diego. Many local divers have photographed it. Norbert Wu still has yet to find it. Worm Rock Howard Hall
Falling. The electrical cable of my surface supplied movie lights snakes by a few feet away as I descend. Forty feet below the surface I begin to see a dull yellow glow beneath me. Good. The movie lights are lying on the bottom and they're working. I land on the sloping sand bottom at seventy-five feet, pick up the movie light bracket and mount it on my 16mm movie camera. The ocean floor slopes away before me. The horizon is black. The sky above is dark green. Dark green and cold. I enjoy a sense of isolation. This is not some Caribbean diver's paradise; not like diving in a bathtub or a tropical aquarium. Here I feel swallowed up by ocean, part of something too large to be knowable. The oppressive cold and darkness is welcome. Anything can happen here, anything seems possible. I turn and look up following the light cables toward where our boat, the Betsy M, hangs suspended beyond the limits of visibility. I see a figure of a diver hurtling toward the bottom. Bob Cranston descends with the thirty-pound tripod. He hits the bottom hard raising a great cloud of silt laden-sand. His mask is half full of water, but I can see that he's grinning. So much for the fun part of "bringing the tripod". Bob slips off his fins, slides the straps over his left arm, then picks up the tripod and walks down the slope toward me. I look up toward the surface again expecting to see Norbert Wu following Bob. But Bob shakes his head indicating that Norb won't be coming. It seems that all the air leaked out of Norb's camera housing when he jumped in. So Norb was busy on the surface washing his expensive Canon camera system and watching it depreciate. Of course, I'm sorry about Norb's camera, but still I can't help but laugh. Norb has made five or six descents to the Worm Rock, but he has yet to actually see it. Something always goes wrong. Most often he's missed it because we'd given him inaccurate directions: We told him to descend to ninety feet and swim south instead of north. And we told him to swim north at seventy feet instead of at ninety feet. We told him to descend the slope to one hundred and ten feet and circle around. Norb trusted us and followed our directions and never actually found the Rock. We gave Norb inaccurate directions because he's our friend and he's serious about his photography. And because we always got a laugh out of his disappointment at the rocks he found on these dives, since we knew they were always the wrong rocks. I swim down the slope to ninety feet, then turn north and follow the ninety-foot line toward the Worm Rock. There's nothing but sand here; sand covered with small white sea urchins and red bat stars. A few moments later I see a shadow on the sand forty feet away. As I get closer it develops into the familiar shape of the Rock. Again, I'm surprised by how small it is. The Worm Rock is only seven feet long, four feet high, and four feet wide. The small size surprises me because there seems to be endless subjects to film here. For me, this tiny rock at the north tip of North Coronado Island is one of the most spectacular locations for macro photography in Southern California. This is my fifteenth dive on the Worm Rock, and it will certainly be the last dive I make to shoot movie film here. I've already shot a disproportionate amount of footage on this tiny rock and I've got to start spreading the budget around to other locations, otherwise I'll have to change the working title of my NATURE film from "Seasons in the Sea" to "Worm Rock". I simply can't afford to shoot any more film here. I watch Bob struggle to set up the heavy tripod, hindered by the slight dizziness that nitrogen narcosis produces at this depth. I vow to shoot only a hundred feet or so; to use the footage sparingly, responsibly. I slip my fins off, toss them to Bob, and mount the camera on the tripod. Then I pick up the whole monstrous system and move closer to the rock. The lights reveal a kaleidoscope of color. The rock is literally covered with large tube worms, tens of thousands of them in every imaginable color. I watch in amazement as the Rock flashes from dark red to purple as the worms withdraw suddenly and expose the purple encrusting coraline algae beneath. Photographic subjects are everywhere. I see a nudibranch I've never seen before - white with orange spots. I set down the tripod and look through the camera's lens. I pull the zoom lens wide, find the nudibranch, then push in tight for a close-up. As the nudibranch marches slowly across the rock, disturbing the tube worms, colors flash as they pop into their tubes. Beautiful! Absolutely magnificent! I see something else move and realize it's a nearly transparent shrimp with bright red stripes. I focus and shoot. Through the lens I watch as the shrimp cleans its antenna then is joined by another shrimp which starts cleaning its antenna too. A moment later I find a tiny sculpin nestled among the worms. The colors are wonderful and I roll another thirty seconds. God, this stuff is beautiful! It's undersea Fantasia! Subjects are everywhere, each more beautiful than the next! I look up from the camera and see Bob looking at his decompression computer. That's a bad sign. I check mine as well. Damn, only eleven minutes left. I look at the bar graph and note that it's the fast tissues that threaten to cross the line. Slow tissues are not the limiting factor. I can decompress the fast tissues out relatively quickly if I go over the line. Eleven minutes. I check the footage counter. I've already shot more than two hundred feet! I was only going to shoot a hundred! How the hell did that happen? Bob grabs my shoulder and points. It's an octopus, possibly the smallest octopus I've ever seen. It's only two or three times the size of the individual tube worms themselves and its flashing from bright red to opalescent blue as it crawls through the worms. Unbelievable! I pick up the tripod and move in closer. The octopus is a living jewel. It walks through the forest of tube worms and as they snap into their tubes, the octopus flashes its colors in response. As it moves across the rock I pan as far as I can then pick up the tripod and follow. Holding focus for more than a few seconds at a time is extremely difficult but if I can just get one good take it could be spectacular. It could be the best macro shot, the best since, since the last time I dived the Worm Rock. Damn, I'm doing it again. Over shooting. I can feel Bob's presence behind me. I don't want to look at my computer. I check my film counter instead. Oh great! I'm out of film! How long have I been rolling footage of that octopus with no film in the camera! Real smart. I'm pushing the limits here and I've been out of film for the last five minutes! I push back from the camera and give Bob a slash motion across my throat then point to the camera. He sails my fins at me and I put them on as fast as I can. I check my computer and get bad news, an "up" arrow - decompression. Great! Bob reaches for the tripod hesitantly. He knows we don't really have the time and air to bring it back, but that's his job. I signal him to forget it. He gives me no argument. I push off the bottom with the camera and lights. Then as I move up slope from the Rock I pull the lights off and let them fall away toward the sandy bottom. What was I thinking of? How could I shoot a whole roll of film in thirty minutes. Two hundred bucks in film and processing! And I've already shot three rolls on that bloody rock. This is going to turn out to be the "Worm Rock Show." The editors in London are going to have a fit. It must be nitrogen narcosis, it must be. Yeah, they're going to get tired of that excuse. "Sure, I knew better but, hell, I was narced!" Bob and I stop at thirty feet and check our computers. Three minutes and ten seconds decompression at this depth. Not much. After three minutes we move up to twenty and Bob switches on the Oxygen from our decompression hose for five minutes precautionary oxygen decompression. I look down into the green water. The light cables are being pulled up. Norb must know we're decompressing and finished with them. Either that or he's rigging them from the mast to hang himself over the loss of his camera. But the tripod is still down there. Someone's going to have to go back and get it. Suddenly it strikes me! I shot all that octopus stuff pushed all the way tight with the zoom lens! I never got a good establishing shot! In fact, I should have shot most of the octopus stuff at medium wide. Then you could have seen the octopus moving through the fields of worms instead of just the octopus full frame. And I could have held focus better at a wider position! What was I thinking? Damn! It would have been so easy to do it better. And a lot better at that. A medium wide shot would have been spectacular! Why don't I think before I shoot! It could be the best macro shot I've ever done... Well, the tripod's already down there. It wouldn't take long. One more quick jump on the Worm Rock. Sure. We've got to get the tripod anyway. I'll only shoot a hundred feet. And Norb has yet to see the Worm Rock. We could send him on ahead, tell him we'll meet him there. Tell him to swim straight down the slope and then turn south at 120 feet. |
