Why I Don't Dive Anymore

Yeah, I used to dive, but I gave it up. Why?

Buy me another shot.

Ok, the last time I went diving was in the Bahamas, off New Providence Island, with my buddy Randolph. The conditions were ideal; the water warm, the currents steady, the sky crystal clear. It’s gorgeous out there. We were photographing an enormous Great Barracuda, “Sphyraena barracuda”, in an open stretch of sea. It’s not the safest pastime. Barracudas aren’t man eaters, but they will strike ferociously at anything silvery or sparkly that looks like a prey species to them. We weren’t that worried, though. We knew what we were doing. Randolph was even more experienced than me. Smart guy. He dived everywhere, from the Caribbean to the Red Sea to the Great Barrier Reef.

We were almost finished when a big shoal of fish rose up from beneath us. They were really colourful and there were lots of them. At first I thought they were a species of parrotfish that I didn’t recognise. As they pulled closer, I could see that they were parrotfish sized, but they were shaped quite differently, like no kind of fish I’d ever seen before. I chalked out a message to Randolph asking him what they were, but he just shrugged. His attention was on the barracuda. The shoal swirled beneath us in a slow clockwise rotation. There were hundreds of them, awfully far from shore for a reef species. Although each individual fish was a single colour, the shoal itself was wild looking. There were twenty different colours of fish, easily. It was beautiful, like a floating rainbow.

A single fish rose out of the shoal, swimming like it was sick or wounded. You know how they kind of streak around, wriggling? The barracuda took about a microsecond to pick up on that. You could just see it measuring the distance to the fish. Funny thing, though. Just as it looked like the barracuda was going to strike, another fish rose out of the other side of the shoal, wriggling like it was stuck on the end of a spear. Its timing couldn’t have been better for the first fish. The shoal had moved closer to us and was flattening out, broadening, rotating faster. The barracuda shifted over towards the new fish with a few flicks of its body, very sly like, floating over the shoal like a hawk flying over a rabbit warren.

The shoal reacted to that. It’s amazing how a shoal moves, as though it had a single, incredibly flexible body. It opened up in the middle, making a big ring hovering below the barracuda. You wouldn’t think that the blind instinct of a bunch of fish could make such a sophisticated shape. Fish aren’t smart, though, right? The barracuda followed the wounded fish right to the shoal. It was nearly in the middle of them, ready to have its lunch, like it was bellying up to a buffet. That was when it happened. If you had blinked, you would have missed it, seriously.

With a single twitch, the shoal contracted around the barracuda. Every one of the fish attacked the barracuda at exactly the same moment. Before the damn thing had a chance to react, it was lost inside a ball of writhing, snapping fish. It was stripped to the bone in a matter of seconds. I couldn’t believe it. I checked that Randolph had gotten it all on film and got a big thumbs up from him. He was grinning like a fool. Never seen anything like it.

The shoal drifted on, following the current, flattening out perfectly, giving us a beautiful view of all the swirling colours. We were getting low on air, so we agreed to head back for the boat. I rose up, careful not to rise faster than my bubbles, Randolph swimming just below me, the fish weaving and shifting in the water below him, creating a hypnotic pattern. Some were swimming in a clockwise circle, others in an opposite circle, some weaving regularly in and out, moving in concert like nothing I’ve ever seen. Randolph had some film left, so he started recording again, fascinated by the shoal drawing closer and closer to him. It was an amazing sight. The weirdest thing was, even though there was lots of different colour fish in the shoal, each circle of fish were the same colour. They all lined up by colour.

I looked up to the boat, then down to Randolph. He was just gone. I don’t know how else to put it. The fish had converged again and he had disappeared. A big burst of air exploded from this ball of wriggling, snapping fish. I panicked. Seriously, what would you have done? I dropped everything and swam for all I was worth, bubbles be damned. I spent the next 48 hours in a decompression chamber, the next two months in hospital, then the next six months in court. If they hadn’t found Randolph’s equipment I’d probably still be in jail right now.

No, don’t go. Please, stay for another drink. I’ll get this one. They knew what they were doing, I tell you. They knew what attracted Randolph the same as they knew what attracted the barracuda. The camera was wrecked, see? The fish were gone and the camera was wrecked. That’s why I gave up diving. Those fish are smart. Smarter than me. Smarter than Randolph, that's for sure.

(904 words)