Visiting Mr. Fish

 

Beyond the reef are the big white teeth of the sharks that swim on the land.

—Jimmy Buffet

 

When down in the mouth, remember Jonah. He came out all right.

— Thomas Jefferson

 

It was the winter of 1985. The phone rang. I hate that. Vicious intrusion of privacy..

“Hello?”

“Hey. Church; it’s your old pal. Will Miller.”

“Do tell, what’s up, you old bilge rat.”

“Life in the food chain; hey, I’ve got a proposition for ya.”

“Shoot.” I love propositions.

“I own this boat in the Cayman Islands. I had a water ski business going with it and a local guy as a partner. Well, it seems the boat and my partner have disappeared.”

“Somehow that doesn’t surprise me, Will.”

Well, anyway, if you go down there, find the boat,

you can use it as long as you want. Start your own water ski gig.”

Then the kicker... “I’ll pay your way them,” he said.

“I’ll leave in the morning... what’s the name of this boat?”

“Shasbot.”

“What’s the name of your partner?”

“Moby.”

“As in Dick?” I didn’t like the sound of this.

“That’s right. He hangs around the Holiday Inn. Can’t miss him; he’s a big guy”

“Really.” I hung up the phone. Off to the Cayman Islands to retrieve a speedboat from a large Caymanion named Moby Dick.

I love phones.

The Cayman Islands, three small, low-slung, mangrove-covered isles 200 miles west of Cuba. The islands themselves am not spectacular; people come for two masons.

The diving and off-shore banking.

In 1985, there were only three hotels, but 500 banks and 1,000 lawyers (most no more than a deposit box).

The flight from Houston roIled to a stop; we disembarked onto baking tarmac and walked toward the humble terminal. A huge sign was mounted on its roof “THE PENALTY FOR BRINGING DRUGS INTO THE CAYMANS IS PRISON.” It seemed rather hypocritical, as over half the plane was packed with Colombian and Oriental dope dealers, fiberglass briefcases handcuffed to their wrists. It didn’t take Sgt. Joe Friday to figure out those cases were filled with dirty money destined to be washed in the Caymans’ private banking world.

A slicked-back Latin in a sharkskin suit stepped up to customs:

“Hello again, Mr. Valdez, what have you to declare?”

“250,000 U.S. dollars.” He opened his case to reveal stacks of hundreds. No one batted an eye.

“Fine, sir, next? Ah, Mr. Woo, nice to see you again...”

A slicked-down Oriental in a silk suit opened a bomb-proof attache.

“Ah, one-half million in U.S. dollars,” declared Mr. Woo.

“Fine, sir, how long will you be staying with us this time?”

“One hour.”

“Fine. Next? Ah, Mr. Chuch. from Colorado. anything to declare?”

“Naw, just some dirty clothes and this prop...”

“WHAT!! A PROPELLER FOR A BOAT?”

The entire room went silent, staring at this propeller smuggler.

“It’s against the law bringing mechanical items into the Caymans. There are duties, taxes, where’s your import license?”

I was led away for a intense search of my personal belongings while 40 of the world’s most corrupt gangsters sadly clucked and shook their heads.

“Fool, try to smuggle a propeller? What an idiot... cluck, cluck.”

I grabbed a cab the five miles down Seven Mile Beads, a trip that took us through the quaint colonial town of George Town, Cayman’s center of commerce. There are a few other villages on Grand Cayman; one in particular comes to mind. It is called Hell. There is a nightclub in Hell called the Club Inferno. It is owned by the McDoom family... all true.

I checked into the Holiday Inn.

“And how long will you be staying, Mr. Church?”

“Oh, a couple weeks anyway... By the way, how much is the room?”

“185 dollars per night, for a single.”

I checked out of the Holiday Inn. Stashing my duffle with the bellman, I hit the pool, looking for the man called Moby.

“Dat be Moby der!” The bartender pointed to a black statue of David. Four suntanned blondes leaped about him like puppies.

“Ah... Mr. Dick??... Ah, Moby??”

“Wha hoppon, mon? Who be you?”

“I’m your new partner in the ski business.”

“Not ‘less you got a new prop for ol’ Shasbot.”

It took four days of work till Shasbot was seaworthy. We launched her and opened ‘Tow Job Water Ski.”

There were 2 busy days per week. On Tuesdays, the Love Boat landed and for a few hours Seven Mile Beach was hopping. Then nobody.

On Thursdays, the Russian Love Boat landed, same scene except no one could understand each other. That meant we had five days a week down time, so that’s what we did. Went down, under the sea.

The water surrounding the Caymans is crystal clear. One hundred-foot visibility and a protected reef make it the best diving anywhere.

The reef itself, chaotic overgrown textures and colors, is like swimming through an alien hobbit town.

And ol’ Moby Dick knew his reef.

“Look der, de parrot fish. Kinda like Michael Jackson, it ain’t sure what sex it is. Starts out female, but dies male.”

Coral itself is an animal; what you see is the calcium secretion of an animal. This tiny blob of protoplasm creates beautiful stone forests, and castles, the design genetically planted in its particular species. Could there be a dimmer bulb of awareness than a wriggling little coral polyp, and yet it’s nature’s architect.

It’s human arrogance to see creatures as repulsive, as if there is a scale on which the value of creation can be measured.

Take the lowly octopus; this creature is so ugly it can’t even stand the sight of another octopus. It spends its life alone. Yet an octopus is intelligent. It thinks. It can unscrew jars, untie knots, change its skin color and texture, and it has eyes, like human eyes, that emit emotion. Happy, sad, afraid, yet still you would never really be come fond of an octopus.

The largest octopus ever found, by the way, washed up on the beach in St. Augustine, Florida 1897 — arms 90 feet long, 180 feet spread.

Or take the squid; there are  hundreds of squid species, ranging in size from less thar an inch to over 60 feet. A squid has

the sound the largest eyes in the world; some can reach 15 inches in diameter. But it’s squid sex that has everybody talking. It seems these slippery devils get together every few years and have an all-out orgy. Jacques Cousteau witnessed a squid orgy that covered a square mile. A grotesque scene of havoc and desire as they sucked and wound about each other, seemingly not caring which sex was what.

In the end, the females sank to the ocean floor, laid their eggs and died. Cousteau estimated 20 million corpses littered the bottom.

Moby pointed out cleaning stations, crevasses where large grouper and others were being attended to by tiny wrasse. Normally dinner for the grouper, this tiny fish would swim about in the grouper’s mouth cleaning its tongue of parasites. Other wrasse cleaned the grouper’s scales. A dozen other large fish waited their turn outside the opening. Kind of a fishes’ Last Detail, if you will.

Moby taught me how to catch conch (the difficulty level of catching, say, a meatloaf) and how to prepare the grisly beast (a process involving three hours of pulverizing it with a large hammer).

He showed me where to look for lobster...

“Lookie dat coral-head der, dem bugs dem wavin’ dem feelers like so... [waving feelers act]. I’ve seen dis bugs go on a walk-about 10 miles long.” Every once in a while lobsters will just start walking. Single file, the lines can reach 20 miles long. No one knows where or why they’re going.

We passed an idyllic two months dragging Russians about the bay, pursuing fish where they lived. Moby was what you’d expect from a partner... untrustworthy, shiftless, lazy... I suppose that’s why we got along so well. These were happy days... there was no hint of the gruesome tradedy about to shatter our peaceful lives……

 

-To be continued

 

Visiting Mr. Fish: Part 4

by Steve Church

 

All de fish in de sea bite, but de shark get da blame.

— Moby Dick

Aaeeeyaaayaaayaaayaaa

— Johnny Weissmuller

 

Sting Ray City is not a car lot on Colfax. Sting Ray City is the oddest tourist destination on earth. This is a special spot on the reef of Grand Cayman where you can actually take a bag full of squid parts, sit 10 feet under water and have live unsupervised stingrays swarm all over you. Sound like fun?

A sting ray’s body is cartilage, like a shark; it soars on wings more fluid than the most graceful bird. I was being smothered by their urgent feeding. Wings beating my face mask, poisonous barbs passing inches from my skin. It was like being mugged by extraterrestrials. But the most unnerving part of this bizarre experience was their faces. The soft white underside of a ray reveals a grinning, toothless human baby’s face. I’d had enough in minutes.

Sting rays are prehistoric life revealed. The manta ray is 20 feet across and can weigh two tons. There is not a more deadly or satanic-looking creature in the seas, yet this beast is a plankton eater, little fazed by man’s intrusion. As if man himself were a mere blink in its 200-million-year life. They make me uneasy.

Moby had another favorite undersea creature encounter, his li’l pet Waldo. Waldo by no means was a pet, he was the most evil, gruesome, eight-foot moray eel known to man. For years local divers had been thrilling clients by hand feeding fish to this monster. Waldo had gotten fat and lazy. He refused to hunt, just waited for the next handout. Waldo was as big around as a scuba tank and getting dangerously aggressive. The other divers had refused to approach him of late... not Moby. Moby loved that eel.

The eel, in my opinion, had never loved anything.

There was another unique diving experience to be found on Grand Cayman. The Cayman Trench, or actually a rift in the sea floor. A canyon 23,000 feet deep, 1,200 miles long.

You, the unsuspecting diver, will be paddling along along in 20-foot deep waters that stretch a mile off shore when suddenly you’ve swum right over a cliff and it’s seven miles down into black infinity.

With the finesse of Wile E. Coyote you tenderly back paddle, trying to avoid the inevitable plunge. Sure you float just as well, or just as poorly, in 20 feet of water or in 23,000 feet of water. It’s deeper than that. It’s deeper than your imagination; to know the far, reaches of yourself you must know this depth. Of course it will be eternally dark and cold, four degrees centigrade. And of course the pressure at 5,500 pounds, or 21/2 tons per inch will squash you like a tortilla. No matter... you’re drawn to it, trying to fathom these fathoms.

As you stare into the depths, solitary creatures appear and disappear against the black magicians’ coal of water. Turtles and sharks appear silently, magically, and glide into infinity.

We made night dives, and made a startling discovery. Fish actually sleep!!

Maybe you didn’t know this maybe you didn’t care, but the fish you see during the day are sawing logs now and a whole new set of faces are out. You can actually pick up a sleeping fish and slap the ... but let’s talk about the new faces.

Cardinal fish and squirrel fish with huge dark eyes. Bioluminescent fish that glow a bluish light and fish with headlamps for looking in coral holes. Sea urchins roll about the bottom as millions of tiny shrimp are reflected in the lights.

There is an occurrence that seems almost miraculous in warm seas and that is bioluminescent plankton. When agitated, these little guys glow different colors. Your body glows, a stroke of the hand looks like a wave of a magic wand. Your partners glow and every fish that passes leaves an eerie glowing jet trail. Strange clicks and groans surround you. A night dive is like an intense dream, where you’re there...but you’re not. You’re part of it but you’re not.

Our story begins on a deathly still Caribbean morning. The humidity had gummed my eyelids and fogged my brain, it would take shock treatment to be fully awake today. A sickly gray sky hung low, like a shark’s belly, over a sea of polished silver.
I was propped under a palm tree, staring slack-jawed at the ocean, injecting oranges with Appleton, for the day’s lunch basket. Moby slumped down the beach, looking strangely worried.
“What’s up, partner?”
“Mon, I think we in trouble...” he stared at his feet. “I went to see my grandmother last night, she live over in Hell...”
“You have a grandmother from Hell?” This was rich.
“Ya, Mon,” he missed the joke and went on...”so my grandma been having strange dreams lately, she calls de whole family in and throws de bones, kinda sees what’s up.”
“You’ve got a grandmother from Hell that reads the future?”
“Dats what I’m tellin’ you... and de future don’t look so good.”
“For who”
“For us, Mon!! She sez de ‘Evil Eye’ is on Tow Job Water Ski.”
A chill ran down my spine from the intense look in Moby’s eyes.
“Now, Moby, throwing the bones... that’s Voodoo stuff, that’s nothing to worry about.” I tried to sound sure of myself.
“Dats what you think,” he stared at me.

“Quit talking like that, Moby, youre giving me the willies. Let’s go get the girls.”

We had met two Eastern stews the night before and had promised them a day’s diving off Shasbot.

The girls, it turned out, were both experienced divers and we passed a perfect afternoon exploring Cayman’s colorful reef. It was late afternoon when I headed Shasbot for home.

“Hey, let’s go see Waldo!” yelled Moby over the Evinrude.

“How much air is left?”

Moby checked our gauges. “1,000 pounds a piece, about 15 minutes each, plenty!!” he yelled.

I spun the wheel and Shasbot banked toward the eel’s den.

“But we don’t have any fish for him!!”

“Not to worly, Mon, ol’ Waldo come to me!!”

We looked at each other, started laughing, and broke into song... ‘When the moon hits your eye, like a big pizza pie, that’s a moray!

We anchored above Waldo’s coral head and donned our gear..

“Remember, girls, don’t go deeper dan de bottom!” Moby grinned and rolled into the sea; we all followed.

The huge eel lived in a hole in the coral that was just inches bigger than the eel itself. Its muscular eight-foot body would back into this cave, leaving only beady, demonic eyes glaring from the darkness. His jaws opened and closed, forcing water through its gills and exposing dagger-like teeth.

The girls and I gave the beast a wide berth, but Moby swam to within three feet of the opening and started waving his hand, fish-like.

Two reptilian eyes followed Moby’s hand, the eyes evil as the devil itself... evil...eyes... THE EVIL EYE!!

“MOBY!!” I screamed through my regulator.

At that second, the moray exploded from the crevasse; Moby’s hand disappeared down its throat to his forearm, his body immediately started shaking violently as the massive eel tried to tear the limb away. Moby was a big guy well over 200 pounds, but he was being thrown about like a rag doll. The stewardesses and I stared in shocked horror, unable to move, as green blood started to cover Moby’s violently thrashing body. (The color red is refracted from water within a few feet, leaving green in its place.)

One of the girls broke for the surface 20 feet above us, as the eel retracted into its den. Moby’s body slammed into the coral, his scuba tank clanging against the rock, his arm disappearing down the eel’s cave.

The valves on Moby’s tank had yet to be damaged and he had somehow managed to retain the regulator in his mouth, but his mask was half filled with sea water, his eyes wild with pain and fear. An eel’s teeth are inverted, pointed back into its mouth. Getting caught in an eel’s mouth is like a Chinese finger torture; the more you struggle, the deeper you go. Moby was being held fast against the rock, r pushed away, then slammed back; bits of flesh floated in the blood pumping from the cave.

I suddenly noticed the number of fish that had gathered; drawn by blood and frantic thrashing, they now darted about Moby pecking at the floating carnage. Three barracuda lurked five feet away and I realized it would be seconds before the sharks arrived.

Then something stopped my heart... his pressure gauge, dangling from its long hose swung into view. Moby had 200 pounds of air left and at his frantic breathing rate that was about two minutes.

I grabbed the gauge, shoved it in front of his mask, then motioned to the stew to grab his tank harness. We both heaved against the harness, pulling Moby a few inches from the coral. He managed to get his knees under him,

his arm still disappearing into the crevasse. We all looked at each other with the awful realization of what had to be done; there were seconds left...

On a count of three, we all heaved against the eel’s grip and, with a hornfying scream, Moby’s hand was torn from the hole.

The force of his scream had blown the regulator from Moby’s mouth and he floated frozen in horror, staring at his mangled limb. The skin was virtually gone, peeled away from the forearm down. Hunks of flesh and tendrils of muscle waved from the gruesome stump as small fish darted in tearing away at them. At least two of his fingers were stripped to the bone, a skeletal hand in a sea of green blood. Moby screamed again, a primal sound that froze my soul.

We grabbed his harness and stroked hard for the surface, dragging Moby like a sack of dead meat. We somehow managed to drag his bleeding hulk into Shasbot, where the girls immediately tied a tourniquet and started treatment for shock. I held the throttle open till we reached the hospital 2O minutes later.

Seven hours later, Moby had come out of surgery. I sat in his room watching clouds race past a full moon out his window. A freak storm had hit, blowing palm fronds and coconuts through the air. With a loud crash, a large object hit the hospital’s tin roof.

Moby jerked awake... he stared at me, trying to get his bearings.

“Da boat!!” he mumbled.

Suddenly I remembered; Shasbot had a cinder block for an anchor, no match for this wind. I raced from the room, ran three blocks to the beach and stared out to sea. Shasbot was gone... blown out to sea... never to be seen again.

I left the Caymans a few days later, leaving Moby with Tow Jobs’ meager bank account. We kept in touch for a few years after that.

After several operations and grafts, they were able to save the better part of his hand; he did, however, lose two fingers. Moby never dived again.

It took me three years to pay Will Miller for Shasbot.

I have never been back to the Cay-man Islands; I hear it’s crowded now. Spoiled by its own success.

-The end.