2000 Miles Under The Sea by David J. Horrigan as was originally published in the book “THE SPARK IN THE SEA”
During the summer of 1971, I spent my life charting abalone beds along the coast of British Colombia, Canada. I was covering 20 miles a day, seven days a week, underwater in remote areas. At that point in time, “scuba” was still a new resource, so I was diving in many places that had never been seen or explored by man before. We had a routine that worked well. The tender, the other diver, and I would head out from a “mother ship” in a skiff to a designated island. When we got in the water, the other diver and I would swim in opposite directions around the island, staying above 33 feet. The tender would then pick us up on the other side and shuttle us on to the next site. The waters along the Canadian coast are cold and we were suitably outfitted in heavy wetsuits, but the temperatures still limited our diving time. The presence of hard coral and giant clams in the cold water conditioned us to seeing unusual sights, and the occasional glimpse of huge octopus, wolf eels, and blackfish (killer whales) kept us on the alert. The learning opportunities came every day. The following five events happened during that project.
A Lesson in Attention
One sunny afternoon I had completed my search area ahead of schedule, so I took off my scuba mask and inflated my float vest. This allowed me to drift face upward and enjoy the warmth of the sun and the beautiful scenery above the ocean. While I floated in the gentle current, I was lulled into a reverie. Breathtakingly green foliage and stark gray rock formations drifted in and out of view. I was alone—miles from friends, doctors, mechanics, bathrooms with toilets, and cafes with coffee and hamburgers—because the islands we charted were desolate. But there wasn’t any loneliness in the desolation. The wilderness had a presence that, although devoid of humans, was filled with life and energy, and with the basic assumption of survival.
The actual assumption was “pay attention and you will survive.” However, on this particular moment, I wasn’t paying attention.
I first noticed that I was drifting a little fast, but the thought came and went without registering. Then I realized that I had drifted completely past the island. Snapping out of my reverie, I instantly focused, vented my vest, and started swimming back toward the island with all of my force, angling across the current.
But it wasn’t that easy. The tide was ebbing and the current was accelerating. It was clear that if I didn’t get out of the rip current in the next few minutes, it would pull me far out to sea. As can happen in that part of the country, a squall came up suddenly, blowing hard, turning the sky instantly grey and agitating the water. The island that had been so close and calming moments before was now a hundred yards away. The day that had been so beautiful was now filled with peril. My emotions were swinging all over the place as I continued to swim against the current. Suddenly, I felt very lonely. Unless I made it back to the island I would never be found.
From somewhere came the presence to stay focused. I swam hard at an angle to the current, concentrating on the power of my stroke, the kick of my legs, and the island in front of me. My focus was so lazer-like that the rest of reality seemed to drop away. Time became surreal—sometimes it was a single frozen instant and sometimes it was eternal. Nothing existed except me and the island I was swimming toward.
I do not know how long it took before my hand finally grabbed a branch and I hauled myself up on that rocky sanctuary. One hour or two minutes—I have no idea. What I do know is that there had been only one acceptable conclusion—survive.
Moments later, the sun broke through.
The tender showed up in the skiff a little while after that. I didn’t mention the incident to him or my diving partner. It seemed personal—something between me and the Great Teacher.
When Up Isn’t Up
When you spend a lot of time under water, dry land often seems strange, especially when you find yourself there unexpectedly.
I had been swimming along a shoreline, covering the miles at a 20-foot depth, when the water started to turn white and foamy. The disruption was intermittent, apparently caused by waves crashing on the rocks overhead, so I continued on course. I swam through the blind moments and then regained my bearings when the foam cleared. This worked well for a while, but twenty minutes later, the white bubbles came and didn’t stop. At first, I wasn’t too concerned, I just kept swimming straight ahead, but instead of clearing, the water continued to be full of foam and air bubbles. The sea would get dark and then light, and the currents were flowing erratically in all directions. When it started getting noticeably worse instead of better, I decided to surface and find out what was the problem.
Of course, that was a problem in itself. “Up” is easy if the light is coming from a visible “above” or if there are air bubbles rising in that direction, but where I was, the light appeared to be coming from everywhere and the bubbles were swirling about in a hundred different directions, pulled by the erratic currents. Only my lead weights kept me from being swirled as well. Finally, after swimming in a number of directions without going “up,” I decided to inflate my trusty vest. Perhaps it knew the way home.
Sure enough, I was instantly transported from froth to reality. Just as quickly I felt myself hitting something solid. To my surprise, when I emerged into the air, I was pinned to a couple of rocks far from the sea. I looked about and found that I was 40 feet from the shore, slumped in a heap of lead and rubber, high and dry. I had swum up a blowhole.
As I made my way back to the ocean, wrestling my way over the slippery rocks with fins and wetsuit, scuba bottles and mask, the word “dang“ was heard a few times by the sea birds watching this bizarre scene. It must have looked as though the earth gave birth to a sea monster.
The True Meaning of “Partners”
That inflatable vest proved to be a life saver many times. One time it saved two lives.
One afternoon, when my diving buddy, Tom, and I were looking at our chart, we noticed an island with an underwater peninsula. Intrigued, we decided to check it out before we left the area. It was already late in the day but we didn’t expect our excursion to take too long. The chart said the peninsula was at a depth of 35 feet and about 50 to 80 feet long. We stopped our boat near the area and drifted while we suited up. When Tom and I were ready, the tender repositioned the boat over the dive area. We both jumped in and duckdived toward where we thought the peninsula should be.
We were weighted with lots of lead—normal procedure for a shallow water dive. At 40 feet we couldn’t see bottom but we did notice a dark area off to the side. Thinking it might be our underwater peninsula, we headed in that direction. At about 80 feet it became clear that the chart was wrong. It was also clear that we should head back. I motioned to Tom as we continued to drift downwards and then pushed the valve that inflated my vest. I slowed as the inflated vest stopped my descent, but to my horror, Tom could not stop and was plummeting away from me at a startling rate.
We were in much deeper water than we had bargained for, something I didn’t realize until I stopped. My heart raced as I watched Tom fall. I will never forget the look on his face as he disappeared into the darkness. The increasing water pressure had pressed his mask up close to his face and in his extreme panic, his eyes seemed to fill the glass. Beyond the panic, I saw a helpless pleading. Then he was gone.
Tom was younger than I and less experienced as a diver. If his vest didn’t inflate, he should have dropped his weights but he obviously didn’t make the connection. Instantly venting my vest, I shot down in the direction he had disappeared in. With only one intention, I focused and swam with a fury. When Tom finally came into view, he was flailing his arms and legs in panic. I caught up to him, thrust my long ab iron tool in his hand, and reinflated my vest. The pressure was so great that only a small part between the inlet and the exhaust valve would inflate. It wasn’t much, but at that depth, it helped. We kicked and kicked and kicked until I noticed that our bubbles were going off to our left. My heart fluttered. All that time, we had been going the wrong direction. “Up” was left. I changed our course and continued to kick but Tom lost his grip and was once again falling into the darkness.
I had no Idea of our depth. I had no idea how much air was left in our tanks But I didn’t have time to care. I only knew one thing. He was my dive buddy and we would both return to the surface.
Once again I vented and dove towards the blackness and once again I found Tom flailing in terror. After catching him the second time, I grabbed Tom’s hand and jammed it into the slot in my flipper, hoping he wouldn’t lose that hand hold. Together again, we pounded for the surface, this time following the bubbles.
After a long period of intense focus the water began to get brighter. The black turned to grey and then to blue. Tom let go of my flipper when I was seconds from the surface. I thought he was once again plummeting to his doom. As I broke through, I frantically blew my regulator from my mouth, took a huge gasp of air, and yelled at the tender to bring more bottles so I could go back down. The tender jumped up, started the engines, and turned the boat towards me. Then Tom broke the surface like he was being chased by the Gods. He came out of the water almost to his waist. Blowing out his regulator, he sucked a huge lung-full of air. Our eyes connected. I was never happier.
Tom floated and breathed purposefully while I started to swim toward the boat. When I put the regulator back in my mouth, to my surprise, there was no air. My tank was completely empty. So empty, in fact, that it couldn’t have delivered air for some time. But while Tom and I had been underwater kicking for our lives towards the surface, I hadn’t been aware of it being low. For a moment, I wondered what I’d been breathing down there but then I decided it didn’t matter. There was plenty of air now.
Tom climbed on board the skiff about five minutes later, and simply said, “I don’t think that chart is right.” We went about the rest of our business in silence, chucking our suits and stowing gear, and then headed the dive boat back toward our mother ship. About an hour later, Tom put his hand on my shoulder. “Thanks,” he said. “You saved my life.”
After a long uncomfortable pause, I shrugged, “Well, I guess that means you owe me a beer.”
It’s true, I did save Tom’s life. But he honored me just as much as I honored him that afternoon. A man never knows how he will perform in a life-or-death situation until he is in one. I had wondered if I had what it took to be an honorable person, to be heroic, to place commitment above all else. And that afternoon I liked what I found out.
Big Fish, Little Fish
Mile after mile, day after day, over sand, rocks, and kelp, in clear water and murky, I covered bottom. Mostly I swam under my own power, but sometimes I would be towed by a small boat so I could cover more area. No one in that watery world ever contested my presence. Over a long period of time, this can give one a subtle feeling of superiority. Most shallow water dwellers are territorial, but my undisputed title as “Big Fish” allowed me to barge through their homes with little respect for their rights. That is until I met the Sea Monster, Teacher of Humility.
Now you have to understand that underwater everything appears one third larger due to the optical distortion, and distances and colors are also distorted because the red end of the light spectrum is filtered out of the light. After years of diving, I was used to this. I was also used to the ten-foot visibility I was experiencing as I cruised along that day, covering the flat sandy bottom at a relatively high speed. Nothing was unusual. In fact, the day bordered on boring. The terrain would be flat for a while and then it would rise up five feet and level out. Ten minutes later, it would drop down five feet and level out again. This bottom pattern had gone on continuously most of the morning. Furthermore, there were no signs of abalone to be found.
I was growing anxious to finish covering the territory and get on to more interesting scenery. Unfortunately, wishes have a way of coming true and at the same time, not understanding exactly what you meant.
I flipped up over the next five-foot rise. And froze. Before me was the most horrific thing I had ever seen in my life. Five feet across and three feet tall with horns and bumps and spines, the “thing” was flaming red and had eyes that were perched on the end of long stalks. It saw me instantly, and without a moment’s hesitation, it attacked. Running on enormous spider-like legs, in three steps it crossed the ten feet between us. Before I knew what happened, it was in my face.
I immediately got busy trying to figure out how to swim backward at high speed. I remember thinking that it was awkward to swim like that, but I am a quick learner. I was making progress when this thing pressed against my mask with its eyes on stalks.
I had been so slow in responding and escaping that perhaps that “thing” thought I was brave. It started to back up slowly. I was grateful because he took up my entire field of vision. Orange and bone colored, covered with armor plate, the monster looked like some kind of bizarre animal from another planet.
It continued to slowly back away, but its mandibles were gnashing and its giant pincers kept slashing at me. Fortunately, I was just beyond its range. As I gained momentum in reverse, I noticed that he wasn’t giving chase. However, I continued at my new skill until there was plenty of room between me and it. Then I turned my back to him and hightailed out of there.
It wasn’t until I was back on the boat and safe that I found out what it was, although its size must have made it a record holder. It was an Alaskan King Crab and the new undisputed holder of the title “Big Fish.”
Two Eyes, One Smile
I remember this next event as though it were last week. The water was crystal clear, but the overhanging trees and branches cast unusual shadows on the rocky wall I was swimming along. Under me at 30 feet was a clean sand bottom also covered with unusual shadows for early afternoon. There was no indication of abalone, so I was making good time. I could see 14 to 18 feet.
I approached the next rock overhang without changing speed but was filled with curiosity because caves often have interesting occupants. This particular cave entrance was seven yards long and about two yards high at the center. As I swam past the start of the opening, I saw an eye looking out at me from the darkness within. It was exceptionally large, about two or three inches in diameter. I assumed it belonged to a ratfish, a small ugly fish with disproportionately large eyes. The eye didn’t move. Feeling certain that it was, in fact, a ratfish and not something threatening, I didn’t change my steady pace. Two yards later, as I neared the other end of the cave’s entrance, I saw a second eye watching me pass. It was about the same size as the first eye and my initial thought was “Oh, there’s another one.”
Then I hesitated for a second.
My mind connected the two eyes, although I couldn’t fill in the blank space in between the eyes with a known species. ”Naw” I thought, “it couldn’t be one fish.” I stopped swimming about two yards from the mouth of the cave and turned around. I looked at one large glowing eye and then at the other—both were still watching me.
I started to become very excited about my discovery of a new, large species, thinking how they might even name it after me. But then a new feeling began to invade my mind and a sensation of aloneness swept through my body—a feeling of lunch. The precise feeling I had was more of being “one” with history than marine biology. I decided to leave the cave and continue my search.
To this day, I do not know what that thing was. Of course, this may be good. Science with all the answers is not science, it’s accounting. However, this adventure is big enough to be shared. Perhaps someday, someone a little braver than I will look that thing in both eyes and determine if perhaps there is a smile attached.
Future Insights 