Oceanic Life

Tom sat across the table from me. Slouched in the padded blue benches where we ate our meals, Tom flashed an impish smile at me. We'd been sitting for almost an hour sharing stories, telling tales of younger years, Tom, like many diminutive men, tried to regale me with myths of conquest. I looked over at Mick, the other deckhand, who smiled into his Coke swirling it round ice tinkling the plastic glass. We'd finally gotten around the topic that I knew was coming.

"What the (sunshine) is a pastor," he asked as his forehead scrunched up as if the question actually hurt. As my children will eventually read this, I'm going to insert the word 'sunshine' for the word that usually signifies carnal knowledge unlawfully gained. (Sunshine) was a very popular word on the boat, not just with the deckhands. The word seemed to morph into every different kind of speech, sometimes it was even inserted into the middle of other words as if to stress the meaning by adding (sunshine) to it.

I am not a prude by any means, but it was interesting to me to watch (and listen) to many of my fellow fisherman transform from whatever profession they previously held to their new profession which was full time sailor, or even pirate, if you will. As beards grew longer, vocabularies grew smaller. So, when one of the pirates (fisherman) couldn't figure out what to say next it was just as easy to slip in a (sunshine). (Sunshine) was used for all verb tenses, nouns, adjectives, adverbs (which is a really funny thing to behold). I even heard one of the men use (sunshine) as definite article once. Oh well, what happens on the Capricorn Star stays on the Capricorn Star, unless, that is, one of the pirates writes a blog.

I laughed as Tom questioned me on my calling in life. "A pastor," I said, "is a person that works in a church and attempts to help other people."

Tom scratched his head and took a drink. "So you're one of those Christian thingies?"

"I guess you could put it that way, Tom." Mick had begun to giggle a little. Tom, twenty years of age, perhaps had not experienced the vastness of life yet and, due to the house size chip on his shoulder being small, it wouldn't surprise me if it took a while for him to learn a different meaning of life. Mick, on the other hand, had traveled the world, married but as of yet hadn't settled down. Mick was thirty-three, had reddish brown hair and a flock of freckles that covered most of his body. His legs actually looked the skin of a giraffe. I didn't tell him that though. Mick usually had a controlled laugh, hesitant, a few 'ha ha's' and then it was all done, but at Tom's second foray into the wide world of spirituality, he couldn't control himself.

"You don't know what a pastor is?" he asked Tom.

It was obvious that Tom's hackles were about to be raised and I could see him want to assert himself to Mick, but Tom finally realized that Mick wasn't laughing at him, but for him.

I changed the subject. "What do you like to do, Tom? Do you like to fish?"

"Nah," he said settling back into his seat. "I like to dive but I don't like to fish. It's too boring for me." I didn't point out the irony of his working on a fishing vessel and I'm pretty sure Tom would have thought the word 'irony' would have something to do with a laundromat.

"How about you, Mick?" I turned the question on the Mick. It was obvious that Mick was an intelligent, thoughtful man. He reminded me of many bartenders I'd seen, slow to speak, but insightful when asked a question. To this point, Mick seemed a calm, caring man who tended to gravitate towards the pirates who struggle with the trip. During my hours of seasickness, Mick was one of the first to see if I would survive. Almost a saint, I guess.

"I love the reef. I'm planning on getting my captain's license to do reef trips someday."

"I like to kill things," Tom said.

"Thanks, Tom, we'll continue with your journey into your psychology in a little bit," I said. I remembered back to the afternoon, Tom standing on the duck board, cudgel in hand beating a mackerel senseless in order to bring it up. I inwardly shook my concentration to move back to Mick. "I'm new to this side of the world. Tell me something about the reef."

Mick took a deep breath and smiled. This was his sweet spot; I'm sure we could have sat there all night and Mick would gladly have described every part of the Great Barrier Reef. "The reef is about 2,600 kilometers long stretching from the northeast tip of the continent to the middle of the east coast of Australia. Around 8,000 years ago, the water in the oceans was much more shallow but as the waters rose, the land 160 kilometers from Australia was submerged. The reef, which had already started growing in these shallow waters had more room to grow."

"How does it grow?" I asked.

"There are lots of different kinds of reef but the interesting part of this place is that the organisms all grow together. They are dependent upon each each other whether the reef itself, the fish, the snakes, the turtles, the squids - all of it. It's a very tenuous place."

Tom added his bit of knowledge. "The reef only grows about one centimeter every 100 days." He looked out the window his blue eyes seemed to be searching for something in the dark. "I guess you can see how old this place is." My mental arithmetic was not that good, but it was obvious that the reef was old. Very old.

Mick continued after a sip from his Coke. "The reef never breaks the surface. It can't survive in the open air and, usually, when it approaches the surface, it dies."

It seemed to me that the reefs should thrive near the surface as that is where most of the smaller fish tend to be. I told him that.

"I suppose that the reef could do well but it takes an enormous beating from the cyclones that wash through here every year. You'll see it tomorrow when you go snorkeling. You'll notice that the floor of the ocean on the reef looks like a dead wasteland. If you are expecting colors and beauty, you will probably be disappointed."

I was already disappointed because as I had dreamed of snorkeling, I wanted to take pictures with my underwater camera of the colors of the reef, the turtles, snakes, sharks...

"And, there will be sharks. Sharks love the reef." Tom was looking at me trying to gauge my reaction - fearful or feigned bravery. I think he saw more fear than anything else. The biggest fish that I got to see in Illinois was a largemouth bass which you could put your fingers inside of its mouth and maybe come away with an abrasion at best. Some of the fish we had brought up in the last few days had been chewed cleanly through by sharks. Some of them looked as if they had been cut by a laser. "And, they love human flesh."

Mick held up a hand and smiled. "Tom, you know as well as I that sharks are almost completely harmless. They just have a different way of sensing the world." Mick turned his attention to me again. "You know, Reid, how when babies are really little they like to put everything in their mouth - to test what it is?"

"Mick," I said, "All babies are really little."

Mick rolled his eyes, "shut up, (sunshine)er"

I opened my hands to him, "Please continue, Mr. Cousteau."

"As I was saying," Mick started again, "Just like big babies put things in their mouths, sharks do the same thing. It's the way they sense the world. That's why when some really big sharks are caught they have tires and metal inside their stomachs. They aren't really trying to eat them, they just want to know what they are."

"So that's why take a chunk out of people?"

"Exactly," Mick said. "Almost always sharks have plenty of food that they like to eat; you've seen how picky the sharks are here. They will only eat the fish coming up that they want to. They'll leave all the grassies and leatherheads but attempt to take all of the coral trout, sweetlips etc. They can afford to be picky. When a shark takes a chunk out of a person, a leg, an arm, a side..."

"A head," Tom added.

"Almost never a head," Mick said, " They are simply trying to experience what the strange object is in the water. They have an incredible sensing organ in their nose; not only can it locate even the smallest amounts of blood in the water, it also senses heartbeat. Incredibly, a shark can locate its prey by the rapidity of the pulse of an object. When it can't sense a heartbeat, it will often think that the object is either struggling or else dead. As sharks are tremendous foragers, they will cull the easiest prey that they can."

"So, what are you trying to tell me?" I asked.

"Sharks attack surfers because they think it is a struggling fish. When surfers paddle out on their boards, sharks see something that looks like a fish in distress. Then, when they approach the object, they don't sense a heartbeat because the surfer's heart is hidden by the board itself then, voila, surfer is now down to three limbs."

"Or headless." Tom was being very helpful.

"I'll make sure that I don't take my surfboard out tomorrow."

Mick smiled. "That would be good. And make sure you don't wear red."

The next day dawned brightly. The ocean seemed to be making her bed for us, the waves diminished to almost nothing. Warwick, Russell and I decided to try out one of the dinghies motoring out to the shallower parts of the reef to catch some other reef fish. We caught plenty of fish; at first I was catching the most as Russell was hopelessly working with what he termed the (sunshine)ing anchor rope. It was fun to watch my brothers-in-law work out their differences of opinion. Like two bulls squaring off, they argued over where to drop the anchor. I stayed out of it knowing that my opinion would be like the sound of mosquito swirling around the head of said bulls.

Eventually, we brought in a good catch of fish, then, as the morning ceased to be morning and the afternoon sun rose hot over the waves, we motored back to the mothership to prepare for our snorkeling adventure.

After lunch, Mick drove us to another shallow part of the reef where we could swim amidst the columns of reef. On the way, he explained to us why we weren't allowed to spearfish anymore, which was a source of annoyance to Russell as he had purchased a relatively expensive (for my taste) spear gun for the trip only to find that spearfishing was not allowed on Capricorn Star expeditions.

"Last year, not on Capricorn Star, but on a different boat, a man died from spearfishing not from shark but from drowning. There is a thing called shallow dive blackout. He had been doing too many dives down and simply blacked out while underwater and had drowned." I was already checking my breathing and preparing not to go under the water too many times. I'm such a wuss. It's like some well meaning Australian once told me, "Guess what, I heard that a guy was killed by a spider bite when the toilet seat he was sitting on released its eight legged prey on his butt."

I've been checking every toilet seat since.

Mick pulled over the reef and invited us to drop over the side and check out the underworld of water. He hoped that we saw some sharks as well. I didn't really like the sound of that, but I felt more comfortable as I looked over at Russell who was sporting a brilliant red sun-safe top. He looked like a gigantic coral trout. I remembered Mick's words from the night before, "Just don't wear red."

I guess Russell could feed the sharks first.

As we entered the water, it was incredible to notice how dead everything looked. Broken pieces of coral were littered across the floor of the ocean not twenty feet down and instead of brilliant colors, oranges, reds, blues - all those that I'd been expecting and hoping for - the only colors were greens, grays and dull whites. There weren't many fish either, some small ones floating across the top, but as I finned my way through the water in my oversize snorkeling boots, I realized how difficult it was to swim not only because of the oar sized fins but the current in the ocean is incredibly strong. It was like swimming upstream in a river. Added to that was the fact that I was swallowing enough seawater to fill an indoor aquarium, I didn't stay in the water that long. But for a few moments, I watched Russell and Warwick picking their way through the columns finding mackerel, cod, shark, turtles and such. Even in the wasteland, there is life. I waved to Mick, giving him the international distress sign of a horrible swimmer thrashing about in the water hoping against hope that nothing was getting in front of my rapidly beating heartbeat and he drove the boat over to me telling me to pull myself in. I was cold and ready to be out of the ocean but I was really surprised how difficult it was to pull myself over the edge of the dinghy. I landed with a thud. I looked up at Mick who was doing his best not to laugh at me.

After we retrieved the other two, Russell in his shark attractant top and Warwick with his six foot something frame, we drove back to the mothership and, after changing clothes, we hurried back onto our own dinghy to continue fishing. During the next hour we caught relatively little. I did catch a shark which was exciting for me, but Warwick caught a grassy and let it flop into the boat by my leg. I felt something sharp but thought nothing of it at that time but I should have looked at Warwick's face as he noticed that the fish had actually stuck in my leg for a moment. If I would have have known that, I would have noticed that a piece of its fin was sticking out of my leg. Funny thing, though, Warwick wasn't going to say anything because there was still fishing to be done.

There's a true pirate for you.

The reef is a beautiful place. Oceanic life is completely and utterly different than I ever could have imagined. The sea life, the five meter wingspan of a giant manta ray that flew past our boat, the poisonous sea snakes, the squid (I imagined a kracken to come take down our boat a few times) - everything including the currents of the sea was alien and beautiful. It is something that I never would forget.

That night we returned to our boat, our beds and our lives off the water. I approached Tom and asked "What are we going to be doing tomorrow?"

"(Sunshine)d if I know," he said. I could have sworn he added an 'aargh matey'. "But all I know is, I'm ready to kill something tomorrow. And, I'm ready to go home."

Isn't it a great thing to be trapped on a boat one hundred and sixty kilometers from home?

The One That Got Away

At four o'clock in the morning I looked around at the grizzled faces seated beside me eating a breakfast of cold cereal, dry toast and a cup of sloshing coffee. As I had been the first one to awake, I watched intently as the doorway to the front of the boat disgorged the groggy fisherman like a mother bird regurgitating its meal for her little ones. These men, seven days of (mostly) white stubble lining their hardened, sea weathered cheeks, could hardly be distinguished by the average tourist in Gladstone, Queensland, from twelve homeless men who might be loitering, or lurking, in the shadows of the quay.

Starting conversation was nearly impossible at that hour and, for the most part, exhaustion was written on their faces like words in a large print edition book. They could no more wish me good morning as they could throw a large coral trout back into the sea. It was a morning for silent reminiscing. Each man tried to remember, as best as he could, what in the world had just happened for the previous week.

Robert, my father-in-law had dropped the suggestion for this fishing adventure a few months earlier. He had regaled my imagination with his exploits of previous years out on the reef. Fishing amidst the coral reefs of the Great Barrier to Australia, photos of vibrantly colored fish, aquamarine waters, fluffy white clouds, and broad smiling men holding unnaturally large catch - I could smell the adventure of it, but Robert was only holding the worm on a hook in front of my face; there was no room on the Capricorn Star for the likes of this American. For fifteen plus years, this group of a dozen men, like the twelve disciples of two millenia past, had crossed the South Pacific Sea to anchor themselves in the midst of a catch. By the way they talked one only needed to drop a lure over the side of the boat and a Leviathan would gather it in his mouth and seemingly pull the boat into the ocean. I wanted very much to go on this trip but there was no room in the inn - only in my imagination.

The boat carried men who belied their appearance that night: businessmen, engineers, geologists, doctor, computer guru - but until one of their group became ill, it was devoid of a pastor. My guilty fear was that I prayed too hard to go on this trip thus causing the Job-like calamity of one of the twelve, but even with my eventual passage on the steamer, there was still room for one more thus assuaging my guilty conscience.

I guess they just needed a pastor on the boat.

We prepared weeks in advance for the weeklong trip on the Capricorn Star, a seventy-five foot boat - white and powdery blue (not too manly colors, if you asked me) - preparing the rigs, ten ounce lead sinkers tied onto line spoked with hooks and beads and all sorts of fish attracting designs. Robert, Elsa, Greta and I prepared a bucketful of them the night before we left and silently I wondered to myself, "Will we really need this much gear?" As much lead as we were putting on the boat, I was sure that we would need no other ballast and had dreams of pirate ships jettisoning weight as the storms of the fickle ocean pressed mercilessly upon the U.S.S. Minnow-like boat. (For those who don't know that reference, it is the name of the boat on the T.V. show - "Gilligan's Island" - I won't even begin to use this story as a metaphor for who Ginger, the movie star, would be).

The night before we left, Robert showed me all the fish we might (and might not) catch and with each flip of the page of his chart, he giggled with an almost childish, Christmas like exuberance. For Robert, this was his early birthday moment, a chance to be young again; to hang out with the boys; to laugh at ribald jokes and forget, for just one moment, that his hand wasn't working the way it used to. A few weeks ago, (the doctors still don't know exactly what happened) Robert lost the ability to use his right hand for anything other than waving hello. Some thought it was a small stroke, others thought something neurological or even a pinched nerve, but all in all, Robert was frustrated that this very thing might sabotage his fishing adventure.

Until... the electric reel.

Throughout the week on the boat it was fairly obvious when Robert caught a fish. For most fishermen, there is a routine on how landing a fish plays out. For instance, Adrian, when snagging a fish, would look around, smile and make sure everyone was watching what he was doing. Because he was in the middle of the boat, the fish that he would be bringing up from Davey Jones' Locker were obvious to all. But, it was humorous to me to watch his antics (mostly from jealousy, mind you, because when someone in the middle of the boat brings a fish to the surface he brings everyone else's lines and lures with him). Adrian was always the first one to get his line in the water, even before the skipper yelled out from his perch in the front of the boat "All right, let them down!" I so much wanted to beat Adrian to the bottom sometimes I surreptitiously would tinker with his reel when I went by, wrap the hook around his own line a few times - but it would never work. Adrian was the early bird of fishermen. Every time we stopped, he had his slab of fish wound through his hook and was halfway to the bottom before I could even get my pole between the other two men who stood beside me.

Anyway, Adrian, when hooking his fish would laugh and giggle as he 'struggled' to get them from the bottom, his pole bending this way and that, grunting as loudly as Sharapova landing a strong backhand to the corner. All fisherman make different noises when they fish, but Adrian's call was like a 'nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah' in my face and just once, I wanted to outfish him. It never happened, but in my own mind, I once dreamed of a fish pulling the rod out of his hands as he tried to rub it in that he was catching fish to wipe the smirk off his face.

What can I say; I'm a pastor, not a saint.

Robert, on the other hand, didn't need to verbally tell anyone that he had caught a fish. He let his reel do the talking for him. The electric reel that he had bought literally sang as it pulled a fish up from the bottom of the reef. It sounded like a plane taking off from the runway and every time that Robert pushed the up button, I imagined his face taking on a look of sheer pleasure as all heads turned to watch the tip of his rod bounce here and there pulling the brightly colored trout from its home. As his prize would near the surface, his reel would beep once, then a second time, until finally, like the last seconds before a bomb goes off, it would emit one long beep. Gradually, we would not look over to see him until we heard the third beep. Then, when he would catch one, he would look over to me, while I was untangling my line from the four other men not named Adrian in the middle of the boat, and say, "Did you happen to see that nice coral trout that was carried behind you?" His gloating made me sweat and I dreamed of a shark shredding his trophy fish at it was pulled from the water, like Jaws finding pleasure in a scantily clad water skier.

Fishermen are the most jealous of all 'sportsmen.' Even though they might be friends (and a few of us relatives, in my case) they look with envy as green as the sea itself when another fishermen pulls up a fish bigger than the minnow you just caught. Outwardly they say, "Hey, Robert, nice fish!" but inwardly their hearts are spewing curses at Neptune, king of the sea, hoping that Robert snags the coral reef the next time down. Fishermen are rarely content with quantity; they want quality - big, hefty fish as if the size of the fish is a reflection of the size of their... egos. Needless to say, for most of the week I was catching small fish, one after the other, and if on land I would have been keeping these beautiful fish to savor and enjoy with my family, but as I pulled these 'grassies' up from the bottom eventually cutting them up as bait, I grew even more envious of others, especially of my brother-in-law, Warwick, who was bringing up trophy sized fish and shouting across the deck, with thinly disguised boastfulness in his voice, "I've got six. How many have you got, Reid?"

I've always been a competitive person. I'm sure that it comes from my birth circumstances sharing a womb with two others, having to fight for everything, every bit of space, every bit of attention. But competing with in-laws is a completely different thing. Especially when they are as large as my brothers-in-law are (even my father-in-law dwarfs me). I want to compete with the big boys; I want to show them that this (smaller) American is just as able as these Paul Bunyanesque Aussie brothers to catch fish and to laugh and boast about my exploits. I wanted to impress them.

My first impression on the boat, though, was probably not what I had wanted. After a five hour drive to Gladstone, beginning at 7:30 a.m., we connected with Russell and Warwick at the Capricorn Star docked in the harbor. Warwick, all six feet-three inches and multiple-kilograms-heavier-than-I of him, was standing beside the boat unloading his gear that they'd brought on the plane. Warwick was wearing a blue-flowered Hawaiian shirt and shorts, his tanned skin reflected his days in the sun. His brother Russell, even larger than Warwick, stood beside his brother and as I approached, Russell extended his hand and his smile that I've come to really enjoy, and said, "G'day, mate. Welcome to Australia." It's the first that I had seen Russell since emigrating to the country.

I am the first to say that I am really lucky to have a fantastic set of in-laws. Christine's brothers, Russell, Warwick and Malcolm, along with her sister, Sandra, and her parents, have been openly welcoming all the days of our married life. We have similar interests, we connect on many different topics, I feel included when we gather together; but when we compete, all relations are thrown out the window. Warwick threw down the gauntlet first. "What do you say we put a little bet down on the fishing this week." As we drank a beer to the adventures that were to come, we laid down the rules: Most fish kept and biggest fish. I shook their hands and toasted their glasses. I'd been fishing many times before. How hard could it be?

We boarded the boat about four o'clock p.m. and as we sailed from the harbor in calm seas I had, in my head, the haunting melody of the movie "Titanic" running between my hears. Small pipes and violins filled me with a sense of foreboding. The skipper, Scott, told us it may be a 'little' rough on the way out.

All one hundred and sixty kilometers.

Because I'd been fishing on the reef before and because I'd fished in relatively un-calm seas, I thought that this would be no problem. In fact, I was so confident of my abilities that I consumed four pieces of greasy, oily, pineapple and ham pizza. (It would not be the last mistake of the night.) After we left the safety of the harbor, the seas came up. The southerly winds pushed at the boat in the worst possible way. Because we were traveling northeast, not only did the boat lurch up and down but side to side, also. My brain, tossed this way and that, began to lurch also. And Mr. Domino's pizza was starting to tell me he wasn't enjoying the ride. It was at that point, two hours into our sixteen hour adventure, I thought I might have made a mistake by praying to be allowed on the fishing adventure. God has a funny sense of humor, I think, and as I made my quivering-legged way to the back of the boat towards Russell and Warwick, I asked one more thing of the God of the universe:

Please don't let me puke in front of my brothers-in-law.

God must not have been able to hear me through the crashing of the waves against the side of the boat. Russell would later say, "I've never seen anyone spew that hard. It looked like a fire hose." Sixteen more episodes of vomiting later, the most miserable night of my life continued to drag on. Every time I looked up, my eyes rolled back into my head and my stomach would heave. I slept with the slop bucket. I wrapped her in my arms imagining just for a second that she would have pity for me. She evidently did not hear me either.

There are all sorts of slang for throwing up in Australian lingo: chunder, thunder from Down Under, technicolor yawn - all colorful names of what was going on in my life that night and I think I subconsciously named each time. I felt really sorry for Robert who was 'sleeping' in the bunk below mine. The sound of my retching must have left him in a terrible state and he even admitted to me later on in the week, "What have I done? What will these other salty sea dogs think of my world-record-shattering-longest-night-of-puking American son-in-law?"

I love making great first impressions. As the night drew to a close and as the sounds of breakfast reached my ears the next morning (which caused new, violent waves of nausea thinking about food) I fell out of my bed to notice the other eleven members of the fishing crew and four boat crew avoid me like the plague as if seasickness were contagious. What is worse, being sea sick or seeing the looks of pity from those around me?

And we were still only one day into the trip.

I got away on the fishing trip, a holiday, a vacation, if you will. But what unfolded in the next six days has left me with indelible and incredible memories which I will cherish for a lifetime. I will finish the story in two more parts.

Bon Voyage, readers.